If you’ve been unfortunate enough to end a relationship after the dawning of the consumer high-tech era in the 2000s, you know it’s nearly impossible to escape your ex. Whether you’re seeing their posts, hearing mutual friends talk about them online or even having the stalk you, breaking up in this day and age is never a pretty picture. Now, at least one outlet of awkward post-breakup love notes is looking to help you close the gap permanently. Facebook has announced an initiative aimed at helping to alleviate former partners’ woes by no longer forcing them to choose between seeing each other online all the time, not using Facebook, or deleting each other from their friend lists.
The new tools come up as a prompt when you change your relationship status to indicate you’re no longer taken. The tool to limit your exposure to your ex, first off, allows you to no longer be prompted with your former lover’s name when composing a message or a post, should you happen to type letters that are in their name. They also will be taken off your list of suggestions to tag in photos. Their posts also won’t show in your news feed, but you’ll still see it if they tag you or a friend tags both of you. The inverse can also be done from this menu, allowing you to hide most of your posts from them. They’ll only see what you tag them in, post publicly or post to mutual friends’ timelines. You can also hide past posts featuring you and your once-beau, as well as untag people and allow people to untag themselves.
These new optional tools are being rolled out in the United States first, allowing for user feedback that will help shape the services, add extra options and eventually roll the new services out to wider markets. With Facebook being an integral tool for so many people, often the sole way users keep up with long-distance pals, it’s refreshing to see more options rolling out for unique and sensitive situations like this. The new initiatives don’t have a launch date for other markets announced, but it wouldn’t take much to get them going, so they could show up soon if they’re a success in the States.