Facebook's users will no longer be able to share their political and religious views on the platform. The social media company will also remove addresses, and the "interested in" field which indicated a user's sexual orientation.
In a statement to TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson said:
“As part of our efforts to make Facebook easier to navigate and use, we’re removing a handful of profile fields: Interested In, Religious Views, Political Views, and Address.
We’re sending notifications to people who have these fields filled out, letting them know these fields will be removed. This change doesn’t affect anyone’s ability to share this information about themselves elsewhere on Facebook.”
The fields are part of Facebook's "About me" page, which were relevant during its early years. Facebook's decision to remove these fields is part of its effort to further streamline the platform.
The change was first tweeted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. He tweeted a screenshot of the notice sent out to users who had these fields on their profiles.
Facebook is removing religious views and ‘interested in’ info from profiles from 1 December 2022 pic.twitter.com/SKjSrtwUwm
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 16, 2022
Other social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram, which is owned by Meta itself, do not offer in-depth information fields to add as part of bio. With more people now knowing how their information is used by social media to target ads, the popularity of people using such features also declined.
Meta has been making a lot of changes to streamline its business and cut down on expenses. It has continued to crack down on employees involved in rogue activities. It also shut off its Portal business after laying off more than 11,000 employees around the globe.
Source: TechCrunch
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