social media | 2 Dogs and the Cat

Facebook’s Lists feature is one of the best privacy features on the site. In today’s Social Sunday, I’ll be showing how to use Lists for privacy, and how to have better control over who views posts.

Lists can be found on the left hand side of the screen under Friends:

When a mouse hovers over Friends, the word “More’ will appear. Click on that, and the “Create List” button at the top. I already have several lists made.

To give an idea – Belgreen contains friends from my hometown, church is everyone I’ve met through church, Family1 is all of my family members, and so forth. I also have a list for co-workers, and friends I’ve met online.

When a status is posted, options are available at the bottom of the status box.

Click on the down arrow, and a “Custom” option appears.

Type the title of the list under “Don’t share this with.” This means any person on those lists will not be able to view the status – it’s hidden from them entirely.

Like a lot of Facebook features, the use of Lists on mobile is extremely limited. On the iOS app, it appears the Custom feature can only be used with a pre-made “hide from” list users had when they downloaded the app. It can’t be changed. For example, at one time I had posts hidden from friends I meant on the Internet. If I want to use the Custom feature on mobile, I only have the option of “Hide this from” Internet; nothing else. Facebook’s Lists is unfortunately, a mostly browser-only feature.

Facebook has also developed Smart Lists, and Lists that can be subscribed to – look for a post on this and more in an upcoming Social Sunday.

Social Sunday is a new feature I’m trying out here at 2 Dogs and the Cat. Every Sunday, I’ll share a social tip or discovery I’ve found.

Today’s Social Sunday is geared for anyone who manages a Facebook business or fan page. I’ll be showing how to “hide” a post or comment from your page, and an important thing to remember when doing so.

A couple of weeks ago, a heated discussion broke out on a page I manage. It wasn’t anything vulgar; rather it just didn’t fit the spirit of the page. I had two options – I could delete the comments, resulting in the person knowing I had deleted, or use Facebook’s “hide” feature. Since it wasn’t anything terrible (no threats, no foul language, etc), I chose to hide.

(Below isn’t the comment I hid; just an example).

Facebook’s Hide Feature

Simply place your mouse over the right corner of the comment. An X will appear with the word “hide.” According to Facebook, once a post is hidden, it will only be visible to the person who wrote it, and their friends. This is useful to avoid “why did you delete my comment?” type posts.

Now – here’s the thing to know about hiding a post: It doesn’t work on mobile. Meaning, even though I “hid” the post via my desktop, it was still entirely visible to everyone on mobile. I discovered this while browsing the page on my phone later. To be sure it wasn’t an admin override, I checked from my husband’s phone as well – the comments were still entirely visible. The only option on the Facebook iOS app is to “delete” the comment entirely.

As always, the best step is to use common sense when deleting or hiding comments. Ask, is it something vulgar, or does it just not fit? Can it be seen by others?

How do you deal with hiding or deleting on a Facebook page? Leave your comments below.