A Facebook “quirk” results in many users changing privacy setting to public

ByCraig Haley

Facebook users should be aware that an individual post’s audience selector rather un-intuitively changes the user’s default public setting for all future posts.

We frequently get questions from confused Facebook users adamant that the social networking site is constantly resetting their default privacy settings to Public. Such Facebook users report that their latest posts are being automatically shared with the public, despite them previously going to their privacy settings and setting it to Friends (which we – of course – recommend.)

While we certainly cannot explain every single instance of this happening, it is quite likely that many instances are down to a misunderstanding regarding the audience selector option when you create a new post.

When a Facebook user creates a new post, there is an option available that lets a user choose the audience of that post (Friends, Public etc.) so if a user wants to, for example, a create a public post, they can set that setting to Public. See below for a screenshot of how that option now appears on Facebook’s desktop version.

What many Facebook users may not realise is that changing this option will also change your default privacy setting for all future posts.

We can see why the option may cause confusion. In our option, it is perhaps a little unintuitive. Many Facebook users understandably assume that changing the audience selector when creating a new post will only affect that particular post. This is not the case.


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So changing the audience selector when creating a new post changes the default setting for all new posts. So if you do, for example, change the option to Public when creating a one-off public post, you’ll need to change it back to Friends before posting again.

This most likely catches a lot of Facebook users out.

So… if you want to change the privacy setting of a particular post without affecting the privacy of existing/future posts, you can either…

1. Change the privacy setting once you’ve already published the post
2. Change the audience selector when posting but change it straight back as soon as you’ve made the post (which can be done either by clicking in the new post box or in your main privacy settings.)

Don’t get caught out with this privacy quirk! For more information on locking down your Facebook account, read our article here.

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