iBrowse: Pre-approving Facebook photo tags

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Drunken revelers rejoice: Facebook will let you decide if friends can attach your name to a photo before circulation. Currently your friends can add your name to a photo without your consent. You can remove it, but only after others may have seen embarrassing shots. Now, you can insist on pre-approval.

This won't affect whether your friends can add a photo of you, only whether your name is attached to it. Still, not having the name, or tag, can make it more difficult for people to find an embarrassing photo in a search.

Facebook said last week that the change is in response to user requests. Preapproving photo tags has been the most requested change, said Kate O'Neill, product manager for Facebook. The preapproval process will apply to written posts others tag you in. Plus, you have the option of preapproving what others tag on your photos and posts.

The company also is making other changes that will affect how users control what they are sharing. Facebook is trying to simplify privacy settings, which have many moving parts and have confused users. That results from Facebook's efforts to let users apply privacy settings to different parts of their profile. But the company has come under fire for pushing users toward disclosing more about their interests.