When thinking about your group's privacy setting, remember it’s not just about your comfort, it’s about your members' comfort.
Geriann, Group Admin
Key Tips
- Make your group public if you want it to be easily found and if you want posts in the group to be visible to non-members.
- Choose the private but visible in search setting if you want people to be able to search for and easily discover your group, but keep posts visible to members only.
- Make your group private and hidden in search if you want to have the most restrictions over group visibility and want membership to be by invitation only. You may consider this if the group covers a sensitive subject.
If you're looking to grow your group quickly and allow members to share content outside the group, a public group might be best for you.
Group privacy settings allow you to control who can see or join your group and whether it can be found through Facebook search. For details on which parts of a group are visible (and to whom) under each privacy setting, visit this article .
Admins tell us that choosing the right privacy setting for your group can depend on the type of group you have and the sensitivity of what's discussed in your group. Consider the following examples:
- A group that discusses sensitive health issues, or a support group, may not want people to see their discussions unless they are members of the group.
- A group with a broader, general interest topic such as movies or music, may want to be public and reach a large number of people.
- A family group may want to keep its discussions private and only invite immediate family members to join.
You can change the privacy settings of your group, but for groups with 5,000 members or more, you can only change the privacy of a group to a more restrictive setting.
Admins recommend notifying members of a privacy change in a post or group announcement several weeks beforehand to make sure members feel comfortable with the new privacy setting. If the privacy level of a group changes, all members of the group receive a notification of the change.
You can adjust your privacy settings by visiting settings in ">admin tools.
