New Facebook Video Controls Let You Limit Viewing By Gender and Age

Mark Wilson writes: Videos on Facebook are big business. As well as drugged up post-dentist footage, there is also huge advertising potential. Now Facebook has announced a new set of options for video publishers — including the ability to limit who is able to see videos based on their age and gender. A social network might not be the first place you would think of to try to keep something private, but a new 'secret video' option makes it possible to restrict access to those people who have a direct link. Other new options include the ability to prevent embedding on other sites, but it is the audience restriction settings that are particularly interesting. For a long time Facebook has been about reaching out to as many people as possible in one hit — particularly in the case of pages, which are likely to be used for the promotion of businesses and services. But now the social giant provides tools to limit one's audience. It's fairly easy to understand the reasons for implementing age restrictions on video (although there is obviously scope for abuse), but the reasons for gender-based restrictions are less clear.

Comments

Drama is coming.

[ZorinLynx]

I predict that men will whine that they can't see videos set so that only women can see them.

I predict the women who posted the above videos will whine if men post videos set so only men can see them, saying it's sexist, while not realizing the hypocrisy.

I predict SJWs will whine that this somehow doesn't include transgendered people.

I predict that I will sit back with a big tub of popcorn and enjoy the hilarious drama.

Age floor only, or ceiling and floor?

[Pfhorrest]

The talk of gender-related limits made me think of teenage boys and girls in their isolated cliques wanting to share things only with other teenage boys or girls, and in light of that a possible use of age-related limits struck me: if you can set an age ceiling as well, this could be used by kids to hide things from adults, not just by adults to hide age-inappropriate things from kids.

Re:Age floor only, or ceiling and floor?

[wonkey_monkey]

Like when I send an email to just one email address, and every other email address on the planet doesn't receive it? It's censorship on a global scale!