Your Guide to Facebook's Newer, Better Privacy Settings

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Facebookers don't always trust their beloved social network with their privacy. To keep users happy, Facebook has overhauled its privacy settings, as they describe in a blog post, making them more transparent than ever before, giving us "one of the largest privacy overhauls in its history" believes Mashable's Ben Par. This is exciting for people who distrust Facebook and want more control over who sees what. But unfortunately, as they say, with more power comes more... annoying privacy settings to toggle. But luckily for you, we're here for you to help you through the changes.

The newest privacy settings affect two aspects of your Facebook experience: Stuff that shows up on your profile and what happens when you post something new.

Stuff that shows up on your profile. 

Before anyone could tag a photo of you and you really had no choice. Now you get to approve any potential taggings. And even if non-friends tag you, you have to approve it before it goes shows up in your photo stream. If you like the idea that you get to veto every heinous double chin shot before the world sees it, you have to manually turn on this setting. To do so, head to the "Manage How Tags Work" section of your privacy settings and turn on "Profile Review."

Say you don't particularly want your mom, or insert human here, to see certain vacation photos, but you're confused about which settings you picked. You can now see how your profile looks to her (or whoever) more easily, as Facebook has moved that tool to the top of your profile, for easy accessibility.

Sometimes you might not want something you're not even tagged in to show up. Removing tags and content is more clear now, you can remove the tag itself, remove it from your profile and even message the poster to have them take it down. 

What happens when you post something new.

Now you can retroactively change with whom you share a post. If you're the type of person with poster's remorse, this is the setting for you. Next to each post you can toggle with whom you share it even after it's been posted. They've also made it easier to select with whom you'd like to share, by placing the setting right next to the new post.

Additionally, Facebook has changed the language from share with "everyone" to "public," as they explain in their post. We are changing the name of this label from "Everyone" to "Public" so that the control is more descriptive of the behavior: anyone may see it, but not everyone will see it. This is just to make the setting more clear, and it's just a language change.

Maybe you want to jazz up your posts. You can now make them "more expressive," with a simpler way to add a location and tag the people you're with. Facebook has officially dropped "Place," though you can now add location to anything. 

Facebook will be rolling out the new feature over the coming days with a "tour," but if you ever get overwhelmed by all the new settings, you can come back here to your friend, The Atlantic Wire, to get through the confusion: we'll be sorting through it, too.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.