On Thursday 1st September we had another look at Facebook and how we can make it work for us and feel in control.
We first looked at the menu options in Facebook Lite on a Samsung Galaxy phone
We discovered that some tablets and iPhones did not have quite the same list of options in this menu.
Not everyone was keen on the idea of sharing their location but it can be seen that at times this would be useful, so worth knowing how to share for a short period when needed and then turn off again. Use your phone settings to set location sharing. On the Samsung it was under the heading ‘Location’ but it might also be under ‘Privacy’ on other phones.
Saving posts in Facebook is found in the three dot menu at the top right corner of the post. You can even set up a collection of saved posts under a title of your choice for items in the same category e.g. recipes, clothes etc.
Next we looked at Settings and Privacy
As can be seen there are a multitude of settings. Margaret recommended that it was worth looking at each one to see what options there were. If anyone had any specific questions about any particular item then make a note and this could be covered individually at a future session. Each member will have their own preferences for which settings they wanted so it was not possible to give a blanket answer that covered everyone.
The key point is whether you want anyone to see things you post on your profile or just your ‘friends’ or a wider circle of ‘friends’. Always bearing in mind that Facebook ‘friends’ are not always ‘actual friends’ in the true sense of the word as we understand it.
It was noted that there are people with Facebook accounts that display no information about themselves at all because they only have a Facebook account so they can interact in groups for their specific interests. They don’t ever post anything of a personal nature on their profile but may make many posts in the groups they belong to.
We looked at Groups on Facebook. JCC has a private group for members, which we encourage everyone to join, there is also one for the U3A Javea, which many of us also belong to. These private groups are just that – anything posted on them is only for the members to see and cannot be shared outside of the group. Javea Connect is also a private group but it has 26 thousand members – so not very private!
Finally we talked about etiquette and rules of conduct on Facebook – the bottom line is that it is a limited medium for communication where misunderstanding or misinterpretation is very easy. In groups there will be specific rules to adhere to and on Facebook generally there is a stated Code of Conduct. Breaches of any of these can lead to being removed from groups or Facebook entirely.