(Image Source: Gawker)

BY DANNY MATTESON

ANCHOR EMILY SPAIN

You're watching multisource tech news analysis from Newsy.

Sick of self-censoring on social networks? Facebook makes your life a little easier by allowing some changes to your friend lists. Inside Facebook explains.

“Facebook today officially launchesseveral improvements to its Friend Lists feature that can be used to define privacy settings and filter the news feed … users now have automatically created, populated and updated Smart Lists of their family, co-workers, classmates, and local friends.”

So where did Facebook get the inspiration for the recent tweaks? Writers at ElectricPig say -- take a wild guess.

“Sounds a bit like Google+ Circles, you say? That’s because it is. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same.”

Although writers at KNTV are pleased with the progress, they believe Facebook is a little late to the party.

“Facebook may have been the first social network to scale up, but it's become wonderful at implementing features that everyone else already has.”

But despite the timing, some are applauding the changes, going so far as to say they could make your virtual relationships seem -- more human. According to Gawker...

“It's a great feature, turning Facebook relationships from binary, weirdly robotic Friend vs Not Friend associations into something more nuanced and more reflective of the gray areas of real world social interaction.”

And writers at Venture Beat think allowing users to share information without the possibility of their online nosy neighbors sneaking a peek might be a game changer.   

“Treating restricted user permission lists as separate is a key detail with these new updates, because it lets people create and interact with groups on Facebook without fear that they are sharing something with the wrong people. In my opinion this detail will have a huge effect on customized news feeds.”

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