Clearing up a Facebook misconception

Facebook seems to be one of those Marmite things that you either love or hate. For all its faults (and there are many) it serves a useful purpose, but there is still strong resistance to it in some quarters, especially among the older generation who may not fully understand the world of social media. One particular misconception is especially prevalent among those who don't use it: there is a widespread belief that Facebook is one of those platforms that is completely invisible and unusable unless you have an account, which is not the case at all and there is a great deal of content that can be viewed without a Facebook account being necessary. Read on to find out how so much of the world of Facebook is available to you even if you don't have an account.


So many times, someone will share a link elsewhere to something they have put on Facebook and the response is always the same: somebody will complain "I don't use Facebook so I can't see that. Why don't you put it somewhere else where people not on Facebook can see it?". These people obviously just see the word 'Facebook' and assume they can't view the linked content without even trying, as if they did they would realise that public content can be viewed like any other public webpage and no account is required. This has happened to me on several occasions: my model bus fleet has a Facebook page that many fellow Model Bus Federation members claim not to be able to view as they're not on Facebook, but I tell them just to try it and they seem utterly amazed that they can see my public page without a Facebook account, like it's some kind of magic that circumvents the restrictions they had convinced themselves existed.

What a lot of people don't seem to know is that anything you specify with the 'Public' privacy setting is visible not only to all other Facebook users but also to everyone else outside of Facebook (in fact there is no privacy option that restricts visibility only to Facebook members and the next most restrictive setting is your friends only). I know this to be true as I have a friend who doesn't have a Facebook account, but when we talk in person or by email he will often mention something that I put on my public Facebook profile and nowhere else, so this is the only place he could have seen it. 

Profiles, pages and public posts

For the benefit of the uninitiated, there are two basic types of content on Facebook that can be viewed by non-members. Each user has their own personal profile, known in the early days of Facebook as their 'wall' and sometimes referred to as their timeline, where they can create and share personalised content and interact with their friends. They can control the visibility of each individual piece of content by setting its privacy level to public or friends, and as a non-member you will only see that which has been marked public. The amount of information you can see will therefore vary between individuals depending how much public content they have; some people choose to make everything public, whereas others have no public content so all you can see is their basic information.

Another related misconception is that if you have a Facebook profile it is somehow expected that you have to share every detail of your life there. Just because many users choose to do that (and sometimes go overboard with mundane and unnecessary posts) doesn't mean it is compulsory and you can share as much or as little as you like. It's entirely up to you and you alone what you put on your profile and who you allow to see it, and if you don't feel comfortable sharing something on Facebook then you don't have to as there is no obligation. Indeed, I know of some people who very rarely put any content on their profiles and use Facebook only for contributing to groups and pages, and/or using the chat system to have private conversations with their friends. That may not be entirely what the creators of Facebook had in mind but is a perfectly valid and permissible way of using it if that's the way you want to, and there are very few rules to say what you must include on your profile beyond your name.

The other type of content visible to non-members is the page, which can be used for promoting businesses, hobbies and the like. Any user can set up one or more pages in addition to their personal profile, and all pages are public so all content on them can be viewed by non-members. I think this may be where the confusion arises as those who don't use Facebook are unaware of the differences between profiles and pages and assume the latter are subject to the same restrictions. Virtually all businesses and many hobby activities now have Facebook pages; the name 'page' is actually a misnomer as they aren't just a single page but can have multiple sections that include news stories, photos, videos, competitions and anything else that might attract customers, much like a normal website. The fact they are hosted on Facebook is largely irrelevant to the end user and they behave in much the same way as a website hosted elsewhere.

Non-members are a little more restricted than Facebook users as they effectively get a read-only view and can't interact with users or pages. It isn't possible to like, comment and send friend requests or messages without an account, but they can still view the content so it isn't completely out of their reach as many think. If you want to go a stage further and interact with pages and groups but aren't interested in the whole 'friends' side of Facebook, there is a solution. Set your account settings to only allow friend requests from users with mutual friends, then don't send any friend requests; this way you will have no friends so no one will have mutual friends and be able to send friend requests. You can then join groups and comment on pages without being bothered by the whole social side that some people consider inane, and I know of several members of the older generation who use Facebook in this way.

So to those of you who choose not to use it for whatever reason, next time someone shares a link to something on Facebook don't just dismiss it and complain it isn't available to you. Try clicking the link and chances are you will be able to see this content after all - there is a whole world of interesting and useful public content out there on Facebook that you don't need an account to see, and despite what you may have believed it isn't one of those sites that is exclusive to its members and cannot be viewed at all by outsiders. I hope I've opened your eyes and helped to clear up this particularly persistent misconception.