How To Manage Facebook Privacy and Friend Lists

Managing your personal social media platforms is an important thing for any young adult coming into the workplace. So I have prepared a guide on exactly how to make your Facebook profile private and manage which content you want to share with which friends, to ensure it ready to be analysed by future employers. This is very important as increasingly employers are checking potential employees Facebook pages before they make the final decision on whether they get the job.

Before I started investigating for this blog, my profile was completely public, it was available for anyone with a facebook account to see. So my first step was to change this.

To change your privacy setting you first go to the tab in the right hand corner (next to the “Home” tab) and select “Privacy Settings.”

Then in “Privacy Settings” under “Control Your Default Privacy” change from “Public” to “Friends” or you can customise your settings. 

Now your profile can only be viewed by your “Friends” or the “Close Friends” that you choose to allow.

Next we learn to manage your friends’ lists so that you can pick and choose which friends are in which groups, and can view which content.

Facebook already has three groups made for you; “Close Friends,” “Acquaintances” and “Restricted.” You may wish to create more based on what you want certain people to be able to access. For example you may create a special folder for your boss or your mum so that you can control what aspects of your life through your Facebook page you wish to show to these particular people.

To get to these lists start on the “Home” page.

On the left hand side next to the “Friends” tab click “More.”

As I said there should already be the following lists there; “Close Friends,” “Acquaintances” and “Restricted,” and whatever groups you may have created.

You can either use the groups created for you or create some of your own. You do this by clicking on the “+ Create List” button to the top of the screen. You can simply name the list now, and add members later, once you have figured out all of the groups and the amount of access of each to your profile.

Once you have figured out your groups you may then click on each of the groups and edit them accordingly.

Click on “Manage List” in the top right hand corner of the screen. From here you may edit both what updates are shown to those in the list (“Choose Update Types”) and what friends you want in the list (“Edit List”).

In the restricted group they will only see what you make public, so this is a great place to put your boss or grandmother or anyone you wish to carefully monitor which content they see and don’t see. For example it may not be a good idea to make public those photos from a wild night on the town.            

Back to the “Privacy Settings” Page. Below the “Control Your Default Privacy” section there are further options to customise who can see what on your profile.

           

First in the “How You Connect” section, you can decide who can look you up using your email address or phone number, who can send you friend requests and who can send you messages. You may choose either “Everyone,” “Friends of Friends” or only “Friends.”

You may also edit the “Timeline and Tagging” section in the same way.

And the “Ads, Apps and Websites” section.

There is an option to “Limit The Audience for Old Posts on Your Timeline.”

“Blocked People and Apps” is where you can block friends, apps and events as well as another place you can add friends to your restricted list, without blocking them, as this way they will never know.

Finally you have the option to choose who sees what you post as you post it now that you have created these groups. Simply choose from the drop down menu to the left o the “Post” button.

           

You may also go next to each post you have posted on your timeline and change the particular audience you want to see it. You do this by clicking on the image directly after the post and choosing an audience from the drop down menu.

After my day of researching the privacy settings and friends lists of Facebook I can confidently say that my profile is a lot more private. I also have a better understanding of which friends I want to see which content on my Facebook and have grouped them accordingly. And most importantly I have learnt the importance of thinking and choosing carefully which friends see what posts and trying to keep my personal and professional life separate, especially as I begin my career. 

How to navigate through the law of the online?

There are three key legal issues that need to be explored when considering an individuals online reputation:

Issues of defamation impact our online participation in two distinct ways, when acting online we have a right not to be defamed and also a responsibility not to defame others.

Ownership and property rights, including issues of copyright, are often disputed or disconsidered online and many people are unaware when they are relinquishing the rights to their own material. And inversely, we often forget that material sourced from elsewhere and then republished on social media is still subject to standard laws of copyright and intellectual property protection.

Privacy is increasingly difficult to maintain as we put more and more of our lives online, the boundaries between the private and public spheres are being blurred and issues of online control and legal literacy are making it even more difficult for people to manage their online persona.

With people using platforms like Facebook and twitter as a mechanism for connection to those closest to them, it become difficult to comprehend that social media is a form of open publication. What people would have once said in conversation over coffee to a close friend, may now be posted on their Facebook wall. We have begun to broadcast everything; from life events to photos of dinner, and from our opinion on politics to our university timetable, everything is online. This means that there is a record of everything- every photo, comment, tweet and ‘like’ is archived.

Another problem is that the laws of defamation, contempt, intellectual property, confidentiality have always been applied to journalists and those acting as part of the traditional media. However, now that everyone has access to extensive content sharing these laws that originally only applied to those in the industry of publication now apply to everyone with access to a computer or smartphone and an internet connection.

For this reason, the complex laws which have been actively considered by working editors, journalists, writers and politicians now have to be understandable to everyone.

Julie Posetti, a journalist and assistant professor at the university of Canberra was recently tangled up in a twitter explosion and on a recent Radio National law report segment outlined the problem:

“ When we have situations where people who are very new to these mediums find themselves saying something they might say in their lounge room but publishing it broadly, and it might be terribly defamatory or terribly contemptuous. They find themselves at the other end of a threat from a big corporation or a powerful individual, what is the law going to do with that? We have a need for a lot more communication about these issues and a lot more education about these issues for the general public in particular”

It is not just the connection to the internet that is creating these problems, but also the changing way that it is being used. An Australian Law Reform Commission reporton Privacy Law and Practice, identified one of the key reasons for young peoples differing attitudes to privacy compared to older Australians was as a result of the online world, particularly online social networking,

“Until recently, the internet was primarily a source of information. Today, however, it is used as a means of communication and has beome an important part of social relations”

“One concern about social networking is that it often involves participants disclosing personal information to a worldwide audience. This concern is highlighted when children and young people disclose personal information when participating in online social networking, given their more limited capacity to understand the consequences of disclosure of personal information in an online environment.”.

This limited capacity to understand the potential dangers of online sharing is one aspect which we will be addressing. It needs to be acknowledged that to adequately inform oneself of all your rights and responsibilities online using the existing resources may be too greater task for young people.

A clear, concise presentation of information needs to be created. Making legislation accessible and understandable, using case studies to show clear connections of cause and effect, and how-to guides to simplify safety measures people should undertake.