Facebook’s privacy settings allow you to control what you share and who can see it. You can adjust settings for individual posts, limit the audience for your profile, customize privacy for different friend lists, and more. While you can’t dictate what others do, you can influence what appears in their feeds and better protect your own privacy.
How Facebook’s News Feed Works
When you post something on Facebook, it may appear in your friends’ News Feeds – the constantly updating list of stories in the middle of their home screens. The News Feed shows selected updates from friends, Pages, groups, and more.
Facebook uses complex algorithms to determine what to show each person based on things like:
- How often you interact with certain friends
- The number of likes, comments, and shares posts get
- How much you have interacted with a friend’s posts in the past
So your posts aren’t necessarily seen by all your friends automatically. The more interesting and relevant Facebook considers it for a particular friend, the higher up it will appear in their feed.
Adjusting Privacy Settings
Facebook has a few different privacy settings to restrict who can see your future posts:
Public
By default, posts are public. This means they can be seen by all of your friends as well as anyone else who visits your profile. Public is the broadest audience and gives your posts the most visibility.
Friends
Limiting an audience to friends means only people on your friends list can see the post. Friends of friends or other visitors won’t have access. This prevents broader sharing while still allowing your core friend group to view updates.
Specific friend lists
You can create lists of select friends, like “Close Friends” or “Family.” When posting, you can choose to show a post to just one of these lists instead of all friends. This lets you share certain updates with only certain people.
Only me
Selecting “Only me” hides a post from everyone except you. You can still go back and edit the audience later if you change your mind. This lets you draft posts you might not want to share publicly yet.
Limiting Who Can See Your Profile and Tags
In addition to post privacy settings, you can control who gets to see key profile info at any time:
- Cover photo
- Profile photo
- About info
- Future posts
- Friends list
Facebook allows you to exclude certain people from seeing your profile completely, if you wish. You can also review tags people add of you before they appear on your profile.
Unfollowing Friends
Rather than fully blocking or unfriending someone, you can simply unfollow them. This makes their posts stop appearing in your News Feed without removing them from your friends list or notifying them. Any tags of you by that friend would still be visible to mutual friends, however.
Activity Log
Facebook’s Activity Log lets you see a history of your posts and other interactions. You can search, filter, and delete things here if you change your mind later. The log also shows you a list of whose profiles and pages you’ve visited.
What Friends Can Control
While you can influence what appears in your friends’ feeds and adjust privacy settings, you ultimately can’t force them to do anything. They control their own privacy settings, News Feed preferences, shares, tags, and more.
Some things to remember:
- Friends can screenshot your posts and share the images
- Privacy doesn’t apply after something is shared – a friend could show others a post you meant to be private
- Tags by friends could expose info you don’t necessarily want out there
- Deleted posts can still show up in search engines if indexed earlier
Being thoughtful about what you share and who you connect with is important on social media. While you can’t control everything, tweaking your privacy settings, staying vigilant about tags, and being selective in what you post can go a long way.
Other Facebook Privacy Tips
Here are some other ways to protect your privacy on Facebook:
Manage old posts
Periodically reviewing and removing outdated posts, pics, info, etc. can help curate the impression you want to portray now.
Check tag notifications
Get notified when you’re tagged to quickly untag yourself from anything you don’t want publicized.
Limit ad targeting
Opt out of allowing your profile data to be used by advertisers to customize the ads you see.
Disable location services
Don’t let Facebook automatically detect and add your location to posts.
Log out of third party apps
Be careful connecting your Facebook account to outside apps and services to prevent inadvertent sharing.
Enable Login Approvals
Require a code in addition to your password when logging in from an unrecognized device for added security.
Check alternate profiles
People can create profiles pretending to be you. Search yourself and report impersonators.
Conclusion
Facebook gives you many options for controlling what you share and with whom. While you can’t dictate what others do, you can influence privacy by:
- Adjusting audience settings for posts
- Using friend lists to target sharing
- Limiting profile visibility
- Reviewing tags before they appear
- Unfollowing friends
- Deleting old posts and info
Staying vigilant, thinking before posting, and customizing your privacy settings can help maximize your comfort level on social media. But ultimately, the information you put out there can spread beyond your control. When in doubt, it’s smart to air on the side of caution and share less rather than more publicly.