Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of 2022. With so many people using Facebook to connect and share updates, photos, videos, and more, there is a vast amount of public content available on the platform at any given time.
Viewing public posts on your News Feed
When you log into your Facebook account, the first thing you see is your News Feed. This is a constantly updating list of posts from your friends, family, groups you’ve joined, and public pages you follow. Unless a user has configured their post settings to be visible to just friends or a custom audience, their posts will be public.
So by simply scrolling through your News Feed, you can view a large sample of public posts on Facebook. However, this only shows you posts from connections and pages you already follow. To see more public content from all Facebook users, you need to utilize other features.
Searching on Facebook
Facebook’s search bar allows you to search for specific keywords, people, pages, groups, and more across the entire platform. When you perform a search, Facebook shows you a mix of top results related to your search terms, including public posts.
For example, searching for “cats” will display a selection of public posts about cats from various accounts you don’t follow. You can scroll through these search results to see public posts on the topic you searched for.
Advanced Search
For more control over searching public Facebook posts, you can use Facebook’s Advanced Search option. To access this:
- Click the search bar at the top of your Facebook window.
- Click on the “See More” link under the search bar.
- Select “Posts” from the dropdown menu.
This will open up an advanced search page specifically for posts. Here you can narrow your search by keywords, date posted, language, account type, and more.
Boolean Search
You can also use Boolean search operators like “AND” “OR” and “NOT” to refine your search. For example, searching for “dog AND cat NOT puppy” would show public posts about dogs and cats, excluding those about puppies. This gives you more control over the types of public posts displayed.
Exploring hashtags
Clicking on a hashtag on Facebook reveals a feed of all public posts using that same hashtag. For popular hashtags, this allows you to scroll through thousands of posts from a mix of accounts on a particular topic. It’s a great way to surface public conversations around specific themes like #funny, #food, #travel and much more.
Following public pages
Public figures, businesses, organizations and content creators often maintain public pages on Facebook. By following their pages, you can receive updates whenever they make new posts. So liking and following a selection of public pages can help populate your News Feed with even more public content to read through.
Checking out Trending topics
Facebook’s Trending sidebar shows you topics and hashtags that are gaining the most traction across public posts at the moment. Tapping into trending topics is a quick way to find public Facebook discussions around breaking news, pop culture, current events and viral content.
Looking at posts from friends of friends
When viewing one of your friend’s profiles, you can click on the Friends tab to browse through posts from their own friends and connections. Since these are people outside of your own network, this exposes you to even more public posts on Facebook.
Visiting public Groups
Facebook Groups centered around common interests like sports teams, parenting, fashion, cooking and more often have publicly accessible posts. If you’re able to join a public group, you can read through posts from all group members who you don’t necessarily follow.
Checking out public Community spaces
The Facebook Community tab features public discussions around entertainment, news, sports and other topics. Here you can browse posts from regular Facebook users weighing in based on their interests and expertise.
Using a third-party service
There are a number of third-party services and tools that aggregate public Facebook posts by keywords, hashtags, location, and more. For example:
- Social Searcher – Finds public posts based on keyword search.
- Snapbird – Displays public posts from specific locations.
- Wallflux – Tracks the popularity of hashtags.
However, be aware that these types of services are not officially affiliated with or endorsed by Facebook.
Factors that limit access to all public posts
While the above methods allow you to access a significant amount of public content, there are certain limitations around seeing every single public post on Facebook in real time:
- Posts from private accounts or restricted audiences will not be accessible.
- Facebook’s algorithms control what appears in feeds, search, etc based on relevance and interest.
- There are time delays between when posts are made and when they may surface via search.
- Some public posts receive less engagement, so may be harder to discover.
- Facebook restricts third-party services from providing unfettered access to public data.
Tips for exploring public posts
Here are some tips to help you efficiently find and evaluate public posts on Facebook:
- Use descriptive keywords in searches to generate more targeted results.
- Try searches at different times of day to surface new discussions.
- Sort public page feeds by Recent Posts instead of the default Top Posts.
- Click “Latest” instead of “Top” on hashtags to view newest content.
- Browse through all comments on public posts, not just the original post.
- Use Boolean operators like AND, OR and NOT to refine searches.
- Double-check settings on third-party tools to ensure you comply with Facebook’s policies.
Ethical considerations around public posts
It’s important to keep in mind some ethical considerations when accessing public posts on Facebook:
- Avoid resharing content in a different context that could misrepresent someone.
- Be aware that public figures and businesses curate their public posts and profiles.
- Using third-party services may violate Facebook’s terms around data scraping.
- Consider the privacy expectations of everyday users posting publicly.
- Facebook prohibits scraping public data in their Terms of Service.
- Comply with takedown requests from users who may not have understood the extent of public settings.
Conclusion
Facebook hosts a vast amount of public content that you can access by leveraging News Feed, search, hashtags, pages, groups, and third-party tools. However, technical barriers and ethical considerations prevent the ability to view every single public post in real time. By using a mix of Facebook’s official features and being mindful of privacy expectations, you can responsibly explore a large cross-section of public conversations happening on the platform.