You can now make your private Facebook groups public
What's the story
Meta has announced a major update for Facebook Groups, allowing admins to convert their private groups into public ones without compromising the privacy of existing members. The company has assured that all past content will remain private after the conversion and member lists will be kept confidential. This new feature aims to help groups reach a wider audience without starting from scratch or exposing previous posts.
Notification system
Admins will be notified about privacy changes
Meta has also introduced a notification system for admins. When an admin changes a group's status from private to public, all other admins are informed about the change. They then have three days to review and cancel the conversion if not everyone agrees with it. This way, all admins are kept in the loop about any potential changes to their group's privacy settings.
Privacy assurance
Past content remains private after conversion
After a group is converted to public, all past content - posts, comments, reactions - will only be visible to those who were already part of the group before the change. This includes admins and moderators. The member list is also protected and only visible to admins and moderators. This way, Meta ensures that even after conversion, user privacy remains intact in public groups.
Visibility expansion
Impact on content visibility and member notifications
Members are also notified about the privacy change and reminded when they post or comment for the first time in the newly public group. After conversion, new posts, comments, and reactions will be visible to anyone, even those not on Facebook. This could potentially improve Facebook's content visibility on search engines like Google by allowing these groups to appear in search results for relevant queries.