Facebook has loosened its privacy rules for teenagers, letting them post status updates, videos and images that can be seen by anyone, not just their friends or people who know their friends. While Facebook described the change as giving teenagers, ages 13 to 17, more choice, big money is at stake for the company and […]
Facebook has loosened its privacy rules for teenagers, letting them post status updates, videos and images that can be seen by anyone, not just their friends or people who know their friends.
While Facebook described the change as giving teenagers, ages 13 to 17, more choice, big money is at stake for the company and its advertisers.
Marketers are keen to reach impressionable young consumers, and the more public information they have about those users, the better they are able to target their pitches.
Facebook said numerous other sites and mobile apps, from big players like Twitter and Instagram to lesser-known ones like ask.fm and Kik Messenger, allowed teenagers to express themselves publicly.
“Across the Web, teens can have a very public voice on those services, and it would be a shame if they could not do that on Facebook,” Nicky Jackson Colaco, Facebook’s manager of privacy and public policy, said in a phone interview.
But unlike those other services, Facebook requires users to post under their real identities, which some privacy advocates said would make it much more difficult to run away from stupid or thoughtless remarks.
Facebook also said it had made the change to let its most knowledgeable users – socially active teenagers like musicians and humanitarian activists – reach a wider audience the way they can on blogs and rival services like Twitter.
By default, new accounts for teenagers will be set up to share information only with friends, not friends of friends as before. Colaco said the company would also educate teenagers about the risks of sharing information and periodically remind them, if they
The company, which has about its 1.2 billion users worldwide, is locked in a battle with Twitter and Google to attract consumer advertisers like food, phone and clothing companies.
Those brands want to reach people as they engage in passionate public conversation about sports, television, news and live events.
