The new Facebook privacy system is flexible and powerful, but the initial settings page appears written to hide it. Here's how to fix it.
Rafe Needleman
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
Facebook has made big changes to its privacy system, and you can't ignore them. If you haven't gotten this login blocker screen yet, you will soon.
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Confusing new settings page
The new simple privacy settings page appears to want to take all your wall posts and photos and make them visible to everyone on the Web. You don't have to accept that.
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There could be a better way
In this imagined screen, Facebook instead would only change your privacy settings if you explicitly asked it to. It also shows you that you don't have to give up all your personal data to the whole Web.
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You're welcome
Facebook gives you some feedback when you finish the update.
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There's still a lot of control
If you bypass the new settings page and drill into the real privacy settings, you'll find you still have a lot of very specific control over who sees what.
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Fine-grained control in a post
One big benefit of the new privacy system: You can specify, for each post, who gets to see it. You can even specify who doesn't get to see something.
