I like Facebook. I like to see what my friends are up to. I love that when I see someone in person it can sometimes feel as if it hasn’t been months or even years since I’ve seen them because I have been able to see what is going on in their lives through Facebook. In many cases I have been able to communicate with them through Facebook. I have made a lot of people on Facebook who do Nia. That is cool. Facebook is incredible for a lot of reasons. I also think Facebook is awful for a lot of reasons. One thing that really bugs me is that I can be added to a group. I don’t like that. I know that all I have to do is leave the group, but I really don’t think Facebook should allow friends to just add you to the group. If I wanted to be a part of the group don’t you think I would join it myself? I don’t like to be in a lot of groups because some groups are public. Did you know that there are different privacy settings for groups? There are.
I didn’t know there were different privacy settings for groups until one day — I don’t know what I was thinking — I volunteered to create a group for a group of people I was in. So — people I meet with face-to-face — wanted a group so that we could, post things and whatnot. But I didn’t know how to create the group (that is what I meant when I said, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” I volunteered to do something I didn’t know how to do.), I just figured I had more time than most of the people in the group so I volunteered. Which meant I needed to find out how to create the group. That is when I learned that there are three different types of groups.
One wonderful thing Facebook did is they have a handy-dandy table to help people understand the differences in the privacy settings for each group. Made my job of figuring out how to create a group so much easier . . .well, it made my job in figuring out which type of group to create easier. Facebook still has some funny stuff when it comes to creating a group and inviting people into it.
Sometimes looking this stuff up is not difficult, in fact here is the link to the page of FB, it could just be that by the time you have a moment to do the research you forget. So I am posting it here in case you are interesting.
You can also easily look at the groups you are joined to and hover over the name and it will show whether it is Public, Closed, or Secret. Now mind you I am doing this on an actually computer. That might be completly irrelevant to many users because not many people use computers any longer.
Anyway, when you are creating a group or joining a group, if you care about who can see what, this chart might be something you are interested in checking. According to the chart ANYONE can see everything in a public group. Anyone can join, anyone can see the group’s name, anyone can see who is in the group, anyone can see posts, etc. Anyone, including people just searching on Facebook.
A closed group has a little more privacy, in that only members can see posts and searches on Facebook.
The secret group is a lot more private. Now, I know one might ask why anyone would post something on the internet, especially Facebook and think that it can really be a secret. Well, for me and my groups’ purpose it is not so much that it is a secret, as in people can know about it, it is more about us wanting to have group discussions. Sometimes when you have other people who have not been part of the in-person meetings trying to participate in the online stuff it takes away from the conversation. So while, in our case, we have a “secret” group, it is not as in TOP secret and things that one wouldn’t want on the internet. So there could be many reasons a group is “secret” even though it is on the internet.
Some people might not even care about this type of stuff, but here it is for those that do. And it is on Facebook, too.
Did you know about the different privacy settings of Facebook Groups?
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