Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Facebook Hidden Privacy Setting for Wall Posts by Friends

On April 7, 2010, I mentioned one of the confusing privacy settings Who can see posts made by friends? As of today, the setting was reworded a bit and honors your wish. Unfortunately, this setting is still the gatekeeper which controls who can post to your wall regardless of your specific setting.

If you go into your Privacy Settings | Customize Settings page, scroll down a bit, you will see the similar setting below.

can_see_posts_by_friends

What happens when I change the setting Can see Wall posts by friends to Only Me and leave Friend can post on my Wall unchanged, still enabled?

  • Yes, my friends will only see my posts when they visit my wall.
  • Unfortunately, their privilege to post to my wall is also taken away. The post box in my wall is no longer available to them.

It looks to me that Can see Wall posts by friends setting takes precedence. Previously, we could not use this to filter wall posts by friends. Now Facebook fixed it but it doesn't fix the wall post control. This setting still controls who can post to your wall.

If you play games at Facebook and rely on your friend Wall-to-Wall posts, be sure to set appropriate setting to this seting, Can see Wall posts by friends. Otherwise, no one can post to your wall but yourself.