Morning Conference: turn those damn comments off (now that you can)

I hate writing about Facebook. It squats obscenely at the heart of so much online communications like a digital Jabba the Hutt, slobbering and growing fat on the misery of others.

Sadly, though, as long as it remains important in gathering traffic and attention, we're going to have to keep an eye on it. And, occasionally, it does something useful. For example:

Now, you can control your commenting audience for a given public post by choosing from a menu of options ranging from anyone who can see the post to only the people and Pages you tag.

The ability to control who can leave comments — if anyone — is critical to any kind of community management strategy. Facebook has been notably lacking in this area for years, probably because comments drive engagement, and that's all that matters to them. Groups posters and admins have had the ability to turn off comments, and this effectively extends that ability to people's own profiles.

And it works fine: