I really haven’t used Facebook, Inc. 196,64 +0,99 +0,51% for personal use (other than for marketing of the blogs) for many, many years. There was a few months in late 2019 early 2020 I did resume using Facebook to keep family, friends (and my former co-workers) informed about a close family member’s battle with terminal illness. Shortly after their passing, I once again distanced myself from Facebook. I had used Facebook in the past to connect to friends I left behind in 1993 when I relocated to Arizona as well as co-workers from former jobs and even people from the college and university I had attended in the 90’s. Even before the recent ‘events’ in the US and worldwide, I found most of the content posted to my feed to be political and extreme (and again not even talking about from 2020 and forward) in nature or the same meme already posted by countless others. I wasn’t seeing the life events (new job, new family, new home, etc.) anymore just the same ‘current events’ crap over and over. At least with Facebook having the ‘Business’ pages I was able to promote the blog on Facebook without having to “expose” (or even view) my personal page. I did look recently at my personal feed when I was trying to sort out posting issues with blog and found the interface too busy and the settings very confusing.
Facebook is removing religious views and ‘interested in’ info from profiles from 1 December 2022 pic.twitter.com/SKjSrtwUwm
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 16, 2022
Facebook is notifying users that it will remove four information fields from profiles starting next month. These fields include religious views, political views, addresses and the “Interested in” field, which indicates a user’s sexual orientation. The change will go into effect on December 1. A spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch in an email that the reason behind the change is to make the social network easier to use.
Facebook’s decision to get rid of these specific profile fields is part of its efforts to streamline its platform, which currently consists of several features that are somewhat outdated. It’s worth noting that the information fields that Facebook is choosing to remove are ones that other major social networks don’t offer. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have simple bios that let users share a little bit about themselves without going into specific details, such as political or religious views. In the past, people may have been interested in filling out their profiles with additional information, but as privacy infringements have come to light, users may no longer want to share extra details about themselves online.
Even when I was on Facebook actively, I kept most of my profile and activity set to ‘Friends Only’ and some ‘Only me’. Not even sure if I had used those soon to be removed fields as they either didn’t apply to me or not something I felt I needed to share (with Facebook). Overall, this is a good move by Facebook for both simplicity and security. The less personal information, the better. Facebook doesn’t exactly have the best track-record when it comes to user’s privacy.
via Tech Crunch
