You'll no longer be able to see strangers' payments on Venmo

Say goodbye to random strangers liking your brunch payment from two weeks ago.

Venmo is doing away with the global social feed, "making it so users can no longer see payments between people they don't know," Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Users will still have access to the friends feed, where they can see transactions their friends have opted to make public, per PayPal, owner of Venmo.

Recently, the app made it so users could alter the privacy settings of their friends list and how they showed up on that of other users', per Bloomberg. The change came after President Biden's Venmo account and "network of friends" were uncovered in "less than 10 minutes" by Buzzfeed News in May, making the president's payment profile a matter of national security.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Venmo has long faced criticism for its weak privacy controls, writes Bloomberg. The removal of the global feed comes alongside a larger redesign, which includes a refreshed look and new privacy settings, reports CNET. The company will still default to making transactions public with the option to turn them private, adds MarketWatch. Discussions around removing the global feed reportedly began "late last year." The new updates will begin rolling out to select customers on Tuesday. Read more at Bloomberg.