Facebook groups can now go public without revealing members’ private posts

Meta on Monday announced an update to Facebook Groups that will allow admins to make their previously private groups public, without compromising the privacy of their current members. The company said previous content will remain private after the conversion, and member lists will remain protected.

Often times, administrators start their groups as private groups, thinking they will stay small, but then realize they could reach a much wider audience if they were easier to find. This update will allow Facebook groups to expand their reach without having to start a public group from scratch or reveal past posts of its members.

According to Meta, the change to group privacy can be made from the settings page on Facebook. When an admin changes a group’s private status to public, all other admins are notified of the change and have a three-day period to review the conversion and cancel it if everyone doesn’t agree.

After the update, all previous group content — including posts, comments, and reactions — will only be visible to members who were in the group before the conversion, as well as admins and moderators. Member lists are also protected and are only visible to administrators and moderators.

Members are also notified of the change, and will be reminded again when they first post or comment in the new public group.

After turning public, new posts, comments, and reactions will be visible to anyone, including those who aren’t on Facebook, as with any other public group. This may also help Facebook content be indexed more easily by search engines like Google, which can then display these collections in their search results for related queries.

If admins decide that making the group public isn’t the right decision, they can turn the group back to private.