So you’ve been wondering how seriously Facebook takes privacy controls right? Apparently, not too seriously. At least, it seems to think a normal teenager’s status updates read ‘Finished my first 10k charity run,’ ‘I’m starting a drive to help the hungry’ or something along those lines. From now onwards, users aged between 13 and 17 can start sharing stuff publicly.
Now a regular person may say ‘Who cares? It’s not like all teens go around posting naughty pictures and starting rebellions online.’ Then there are the privacy pushers who’ll look absolutely flabbergasted at the idea of Facebook assuming the young ones are smart enough to understand that with greater sharing power comes greater responsibility.
And Facebook does not belong to any of these two groups
When you share posts with a restricted group of people, your reach is smaller compared to when you let a larger audience, the public, see such content. Most importantly, it’s easier for marketers to reach their feelers out and get to users when the stuff they share is out in the open. Introducing the public sharing option to its huge teen audience is Facebook’s latest big pitch to advertisers.
What’s set to change?
– If you’re between 13 and 17, the initial viewer group of your first post has been changed from Friends of Friends to a smaller audience of Friends.
– Teens can now let people they’re not Friends with Follow them. So followers can see the posts made public by they people they follow in their News Feed.
– Facebook will add an extra reminder to ensure users below 18 years take note of the fact that the posts they share with the public can be seen by just about anyone.