In an effort to avoid confusion, Facebook has announced it will remove the option to hide your name in search results, chief privacy officer Michael Richter said in a blog post.
The setting was geared for the social media giant’s older search model, but with the advent of Graph Search, hiding a user’s name essentially became redundant.
“People told us that they found it confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn’t find them in search results,” Richter said in the post.
While a user’s name can appear in a search, Richter emphasized the importance of alternate privacy settings in order to keep a user private. Richter suggested choosing a user’s audience for each individual post.
“In the coming weeks, people who are sharing posts publicly on Facebook will also see a notice reminding them that those posts can be seen by anyone, including people they may not know,” Richter said. “The notice reminds people how to change the audience for each post.”
Graph Search has simplified the process of searching on Facebook, whether or not it’s for a restaurant in a city you’re visiting or friends from your school or workplace. However, it also complicated the process of one’s privacy in a search.
But now, Facebook has made the sacrifice of that option to remove oneself from a search, and establish privacy one post at a time.
