Still hiding in Facebook's shadows? Not for
much longer.
The company announced Thursday it is officially axing a privacy
setting that allowed people to hide their profiles from other users in
Facebook's search field.
The setting "who can look up my timeline by name"
had already disappeared from the options for some users -- specifically, those
who weren't using the feature in December of last year. Thursday's change
affects a "small percentage of people" on the site who were still
using the feature, Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) said, although it did specify how
many of its 1.15 billion active users were impacted.
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Facebook explained that the tool was outdated, because users
could be found in other ways, either by clicking on their name in a mutual
friend's Timeline or News Feed. The social network also said people became
confused when they were unable to find a friend via search.
It's the latest development in Facebook's long-running
privacy saga. Frequent changes to its privacy settings have confused some
users, and controversial statements from CEO Mark Zuckerberg about how people
shouldn't be doing the things they want to keep secret in the first place.
Earlier this year, Facebook expanded its internal search
capabilities with the roll out of Graph Search. The feature allows users to
sift through the social network's vast data trove to find "friends who
live in my city," "tourist attractions in Italy visited by my
friends," and similar lists. It also allows Facebook to eventually
challenge sites that rate and rank local attractions like restaurants and
hotels.
Facebook noted in the announcement that it provides other
privacy settings, including control over the visibility of each individual
post.
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