San Francisco:
Facebook is ending a feature that allowed users to hide from the billion-plus members of the social network.
The feature, akin to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, will be removed, meaning that someone looking for another Facebook user can more easily find that person.
"The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited," said Facebook's chief privacy officer, Michael Richter.
The setting made Facebook search "feel broken at times," Richter added in a company blog yesterday. "For example, people told us that they found it confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn't find them in search results, or when two people were in a Facebook Group and then couldn't find each other through search."
Facebook announced last year it was ending this feature for new users, but allowed a transition for a "small percentage" of users who had that feature enabled.
Richter said the change should not have an impact on overall privacy.
"Whether you've been using the setting or not, the best way to control what people can find about you on Facebook is to choose who can see the individual things you share," he said.
Facebook, which has been under scrutiny by privacy advocates, recently revamped its search functions to include so-called "graph search" that allows users to search through a wide range of posts on the world's biggest social network.