Facebook has announced that next month it will remove the ability for users to select their religious views, political views, and addresses and the “Interested in” field.
From December 1, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will make the changes in a bid to no doubt clean up their network, but will mean that users cannot easily state they are Christians in their profile. This will no doubt have an affect on advertisers targeting Christians, or those with a particular political party persuasion.
The update was spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra.
A spokesperson for Facebook told TechCrunch in an email that the reason behind the change is to make the social network easier to use.
“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,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “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.”
According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s decision to get rid of these specific profile fields is part of its efforts to streamline its platform, which currently consists of several features that are somewhat outdated. It’s worth noting that the information fields that Facebook is choosing to remove are ones that other major social networks don’t offer. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have simple bios that let users share a little bit about themselves without going into specific details, such as political or religious views.
In the past, people may have been interested in filling out their profiles with additional information, but as privacy infringements have come to light, users may no longer want to share extra details about themselves online.
M. Browning
Intentional Faith 