Facebook is testing giving customers the flexibility to create as much as 5 profiles on the platform, a serious change to its longstanding coverage that solely permits folks to have a single account and id on the service. The upcoming take a look at was Bloomberg, which notes that it’s Facebook’s newest ploy to stave off declining engagement, notably amongst youthful customers.

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the take a look at. “To help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships, we’re testing a way for people to have more than one profile tied to a single Facebook account,” the spokesperson stated. “Anyone who uses Facebook must continue to follow our rules.”

It’s not clear how massive the preliminary take a look at shall be, or if Facebook plans to finally make it obtainable extra extensively. If it does, it might considerably alter the dynamics of how folks work together on the social community. For one, it will make it simpler for folks to keep up totally different personas on the platform, or create separate pages focused for various pal teams or pursuits. It’s additionally a serious shift from Facebook’s longtime coverage of requiring “real names.” 

Unlike Instagram, which permits customers to create a number of accounts and doesn’t require them to make use of their actual names, Facebook has had strict — and sometimes controversial — guidelines about customers’ identities, usually suspending customers it catches utilizing a number of accounts. In some instances, the service will even ask customers to confirm the identify on their profile by offering a duplicate of an official I.D.

But customers who’ve entry to a number of profiles will now solely want to make use of their actual identify on their most important profile. Additional profiles will be capable of use nicknames or different identities so long as they don’t break different guidelines, like these barring impersonation.

That the corporate is now altering its strategy to customers’ names and identities is an indication of simply how essential it’s for Facebook to reverse current declines in engagement. Mark Zuckerberg had stated the platform itself to be extra interesting to youthful customers in an effort to higher compete with TikTookay and different rivals. The app can be planning a that can emphasize suggestions greater than posts from pals.