In Brief

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 existing members. The company said that past content will remain private after the conversion, and member lists will remain protected.

Often, admins start their groups as private, thinking they will remain small, but then realize they could reach a much broader 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 exposing their members’ past posts.

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

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

Members are also notified about the change and will be reminded again when they post or comment for the first time in the newly public group.

After the conversion to 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 could also help Facebook’s content be more easily indexed by search engines like Google, which can then surface these groups in their search results for related queries.

If the admins decide that being a public group isn’t the right call, they can revert the group to private again.

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