Facebook redesigns privacy options

Facebook is moving to untangle its often bewildering array of privacy options as the social network struggles to contain the damage from a widening scandal over user data.

With Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg now poised to address the uproar on Capitol Hill, Facebook announced Wednesday that it’s redesigning the settings menu on mobile devices, consolidating privacy options in one place, rather than sending users to some 20 different screens.

The move, which Facebook said was in the works even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal shook the company and its stock price, is unlikely to put to rest the broader issue of user privacy. Nonetheless, it underscores a key concern of both Facebook and its investors: how to keep people from deleting their accounts over what many see as a betrayal of customers’ trust.

The new Privacy Shortcuts menu, being rolled out in the coming weeks, will let people regulate the amount of personal information the social media giant keeps on them, like political preferences and interests, and delete things they’ve already shared. It also will let people manage the information the company uses to show ads.

Facebook has come under increasing pressure from Europe and the U.S. to address revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, harvested data from about 50 million Facebook users as it built an election-consulting company that boasted it could sway voters in contests all over the world.

Facebook’s stock has fallen 18 percent since the news was first revealed, wiping out almost $100 billion of market value. Facebook is no longer among the top five most valuable companies in the world, and it delayed unveiling a new home speaker product to re-evaluate how it uses data, according to people familiar with the matter.