Facebook has bowed to pressure from users and tightened up its privacy controls, ensuring that posts from new users are set to only be visible to friends.

In a blog post today the company said the default audience for new users’ initial posts on Facebook will be set to their friends only, instead of the current setting which makes them public. The social network will also check with users who are posting publicly that they are sharing their updates with the correct audience.

“While some people want to post to everyone, others have told us that they are more comfortable sharing with a smaller group, like just their friends. We recognise that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse,” Facebook said.

“We want to do all we can to put power and control in people’s hands. This new tool is designed to help people make sure they are sharing with just the audience they want. Everything about how privacy works on Facebook remains the same.”

The company has been the centre of controversy in the past for its policies on sharing content, with critics arguing that privacy controls were too complex for users.

Facebook has more than 1.2 billion users worldwide, but with speculation that its dominance could be threatened by a failure to win over younger users, the company has been making some changes and adding new features. That includes the recent anonymous login for apps, which reduces the amount of information apps can access on users, introduced a few weeks ago.

Facebook also unveiled a new feature that allows users to identify and post about music, TV shows or movies they are listening to or watching as they write status updates, using their phone’s microphone. The feature, which will be available on Android and iOS in the next few weeks, will initially be rolled out to US users. It is optional, and can be turned off at any time.