Facebook to allow users to share less

LOS ANGELES – Has Mark Zuckerberg had a change of heart?

For years, the Facebook chief executive pushed users to share more and more, much to the ire of privacy advocates.

But Thursday, the company announced that it will make it easier for users to share less, changing the default sharing setting for new users to friends only, instead of public, and make it easier for its 1.28 billion existing users to monitor and change their privacy settings.

The announcement comes just weeks after Zuckerberg signaled that Facebook would enable users to interact anonymously with third-party apps.

The shifts, observers said, might have less to do with a change in his personal philosophy and more to do with an attempt to keep his user base strong, fend off competitors and pre-empt government regulators.

“They’ve realized that if they want to continue to be successful, they have to focus on the user experience, and they’ve realized that users want some level of privacy,” said Shyam Patil, a vice president at Wedbush Equity Research.

“They also want to self-regulate so the government doesn’t get involved. It does seem like the government is getting more and more involved in privacy issues,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, users will see an “expanded privacy checkup tool” that will take them through a number of steps in order to remind them who they’re posting to and who can see various bits of personal information on their profiles.

The changes are expected to address chronic complaints from users who were hazy on how public their profiles were and sometimes surprised to learn that various bits of personal content were public.

Among the changes Facebook rolled out are clearer designations on posts about with whom the information is being shared.