Gone are the days when Facebook was simple tool for finding old friends and playing terrible games to pass the time. The social network giant is now an integral part of most peoples lives, with the service offering an unmatched numbers of users and communication tools.
Facebook Messenger has always had a feature where you could share your location but the implementation is notoriously poor. As an opt-in service, you essentially have no choice but to broadcast your location every time you want to post. Opting out does the exact opposite, meaning you can’t share the location at all.
It’s a feature that has been annoying users for quite some time because of the implications surrounding privacy and our feeble, forgetful human brains. If you forget to turn the service off, or you’re not particularly tech savvy and don’t understand its premise, you could be blasting your whereabouts to hundreds of people.
Thankfully, Facebook is rolling out a simpler method that should help to make location sharing a little bit easier and less like big brother. The addition of a new pin icon at the bottom of the screen allows users to actively pick when they want to broadcast their location, leaving the choice down us and not the system. If you click the icon, a small mini-map will appear in the body of the message with a rough estimation of your position.
This should help your gran to be a little more aware when inviting you out for lunch and accidentally telling others that her house will be empty for the next three hours.
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