Control Your Information: Anywhere, Anytime
You are in control of how you connect and share on Facebook. Recently, many of you said you wanted more streamlined controls, so we made a number of changes to provide them. As of today, you can use these controls no matter where you are …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third entry in a sequence Facebook began in 2009: March 2009's share-and-connect overhaul and July 2009's control-and-simplicity update each reworked how users set audiences for what they post. The new step extends those same streamlined controls beyond the desktop, so they work wherever a user logs in — significant given that Facebook already dominates third-party website logins across most categories ahead of Twitter, Google and Yahoo, per July 2010 data.
First-order effects
- Users gain the ability to manage connection and sharing settings from any device, removing the assumption that privacy configuration happens at a desk.
- Because Facebook sits behind most third-party site logins, changes to these controls propagate into how users' identities and sharing preferences behave across external sites, not just on facebook.com.
Second-order effects
- Twitter, Google and Yahoo, already trailing in the third-party login market, face pressure to match per-user audience controls if login choice becomes about control granularity rather than convenience.
- Site publishers relying on Facebook logins inherit whatever defaults Facebook sets, shifting some responsibility for user-data handling onto Facebook's control design.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, granular sharing controls become a recurring product cycle — each iteration pitched as user empowerment — making a platform's own settings interface the de facto governance layer for social identity, well ahead of any regulatory framework.
The trend: Social platforms are turning privacy and sharing controls into a shipped product surface, with Facebook iterating fastest and its login rivals forced to respond.