Over the last couple of days, you may have seen this notice at the top of your home page.

It links to this letter from Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, talking about some upcoming changes to the site.

The first part of the letter is an announcement that Facebook is soon going to be doing away with the regional Networks category that people could use as part of their privacy controls. For example, I'm currently in the Silicon Valley network and I do have some settings open to anyone in that network. But to be honest, I never really think about it much, and most of my settings are restricted to friends or friends of friends, so I'm not really able to comment on how much of an impact removing them from the system will have on others.

I do know that I just automatically bristle when I read these kinds of remarks explaining the changes:

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. (italics mine)

Now, it's quite possible that as the user base has very quickly grown to more than 350 million that there's some technical reason that makes this feature difficult to manage. If that is the case, I'd rather they just come out and say that, rather than give us more of that patronizing "we know what's best for you" drivel. But I don't know if that is the case or not.

Is this a change that's going to be a problem for you?

The second half of the letter discusses a new feature where you'll be able to change privacy settings on a post-per-post basis. For example, while you may have most of your photos open to all your friends, you may want to post some for just a few people to see.

They actually announced this was coming last July and I wrote about it in this post:

More Info About Facebook Privacy Controls Pt. 2

It sounds promising, but I'm not going to say anything more about it yet because I want to see how it's actually implemented. The letter isn't very clear about when it's coming, but it sounds like it may show up within the next couple of weeks (they'll probably roll it out in stages, like most of their changes). The important thing is when you do see it in your account, that you follow the directions that will be posted to revisit all your privacy settings to make sure they represent your wishes.

If you have any questions or problems with the new system when you get it, please let me know and I'll share them with other readers and try to find answers for them.

Posted in Facebook,Privacy/Security,Social Media