Facebook Makes Breakups Easier With New Privacy Settings for Your Ex

Up until now, breaking up with your significant other also entailed either keeping them as a Facebook friend and having to live with their continual updates reminding you of your failed relationship, or going all out and removing any trace of them from your life, nuking your profile of all remnants of the times you spent together. However, Facebook wants to help your healing process a healthy middle ground by introducing a range of new privacy settings that allow you to distance yourselves while maintaining a connection, however small, in the virtual world. Upon changing your relationship status to “single,” you will be prompted by several options that allow you to modify how much your ex’s updates appear in your feed, as well as selectively decide which parts of your profile your ex can see. Having done this, you will not be asked to tag them in photos or to message them, as well as giving you the option to go back to past posts and retroactively change their privacy settings to hide them from your ex, individually or in bulk. At the same time, you can use these tools to hide unwanted photos from a new companion, should they feel the urge to nose around your profile. While currently only available on the mobile U.S. platform, broken hearts nationwide will have much to thank Facebook for in the long run.