Facebook introduced new features at the F8 event earlier this year including a refreshed design, new tools for Groups and more. On similar lines, Facebook has now announced that they are rolling out a new simplified privacy model for Groups and bringing clarity about the privacy settings for their groups.
Facebook Groups will now have two privacy settings-public and private and is essentially renaming its confusing public group, closed group, and secret group settings. The company says that this will help make it clearer about who can find the group and see the members and posts that are part of it.
With this simplified ‘Groups’ privacy settings, the Public groups will allow anyone to see who is in the group and everything that’s shared there and private groups will only allow members to see who else is in the group and what they’ve posted. So, “secret” group will now be labeled as “private” and “hidden” group and the “closed” groups will now be labeled as “private” but “visible” groups. Groups that are “public” will remain “public” and “visible.”
Apart from this, Group Admins will be able to clearly choose whether the group can be found in search and other places and will be easier for admins to understand and manage their group privacy settings. Facebook also adds that they use AI and machine learning to “proactively detect bad content before anyone reports it” and as the content is flagged by their systems or reported by people, trained reviewers consider context and determine whether the content violates Facebook’s Community Standards.