Warning: Facebook Privacy Settings

Many nerdy people use Facebook. Until recently, Facebook let you set the visibility of posts to “Friends” by default so only people whose friend request you had accepted could see them. This was very important for people who face stalking or harassment but wanted to keep in touch with people they knew through social media. Sometime in the past few months, Facebook changed that setting to “Friends (+)” which allows friends of friends. This roughly squares the potential audience of a post, and means that a stalker, harrasser, doxer, or identity thief just has to become Facebook friends with one of your friends to start seeing your posts! Almost anyone knows someone who accepts random Friend or Follow requests on corporate social media. If they mean “friends of friends of the people tagged” then tagging someone still doubles the number of people who can see a post. Stalkers, tabloid journalists, and other nuisances often follow their target’s contacts on social media in hopes of picking up information.

I’m not an expert on corporate social media, but the only way to limit post visibility seems to be to create a list of Friends and share with them. The option “just people whose Friend request I have accepted” seems to be gone. I can’t find any offline documentation of this change. If you use Facebook and are concerned about privacy, you should probably check your settings and think whether you want to change what you post (and especially who you tag, because tagging someone definitely makes a “Friends +” post visible to their friends). My approach to corporate social media focuses on harm reduction rather than expecting everyone to be a privacy geek. Screenshots are below the fold.

(scheduled 22 January 2023)