The other day, a friend posted this question on my Facebook Business Page:
Can you please weigh in on this. My friend posted this and I was wondering what is your take. I can never keep up on what is public and what is private on Facebook, and how to hold the line. Thanks
“To all my FB friends, may I request you to please do something for me: I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. However, with the recent changes in FB, the public can now see activities in any wall. This happens when our friend hits “like” or “comment”, automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way. So I need your help. Only you can do this for me. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (do not click), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “COMMENTS & LIKE” by clicking on it. By doing this, my activity amongst my friends and my family will no longer become public. Many thanks! Paste this on your wall so your contacts would follow suit too, that is, if you care about your privacy.”
Here was my reply:
Hmmm – I not sure that this will achieve what she wants. Those settings control what YOU see in your newsfeed. A Like or Comment has the privacy settings of the original post. To make sure that no one sees her like or comment, the original post would have to go to only her (you can do that when you post by setting the privacy using the drop down to the lower right.) Note that your ‘audience selector’ as it is called, defaults to the last setting so you may have to re-set it.
Note: The audience selector is next to each post you make; it’s not on a separate settings page. The tool remembers the audience you shared with the last time you posted something and uses the same audience when you share again unless you change it. You can go back and change the audience for any post you made by clicking the menu to pull down your options.
Another option is to create a group of just her and a few family members she trusts/allows and post to that group. Her likes and comments would theoretically only be visible to them. I say theoretically because honestly, I truly believe that if you want REAL privacy, as in no one seeing what you say or do, you should stick to private messages on FB or email. And if you are serious about your privacy, meet face-to-face in your kitchen as all online activity leaves footprints!
