I don’t know if this is a new feature or I just didn’t notice it before, but just now I saw in my News Feed a thread that one of my Facebook friends commented on (something one of his friends posted who is not my friend). It also had a bunch of other comments from various people that I often engage with on this friend’s own threads. It was an interesting topic, and after reading a few comments I started noticing it would not allow me to “like” any of them, and I couldn’t add my own thoughts. What the hell is the point of this? If I can’t comment or even “like” anything, why let me see it at all? This seems like a really stupid, annoying half measure.
The poster who’s wall this was on hasn’t granted you permission to make comments or like those posts, but has granted you permission to see them. They’re just using the controls that FB has made available. I often see things that my FB friends are included in without being given the right to comment on it. It’s still of interest to me even though I can’t “like” it.
Strongly disagree.
Really? Why do you want to see stuff you can’t interact with? If your friend said something that really surprised or even bothered you, would you PM them about it or what?
Your friend commented on someone else’s post. You have no relationship to that person, and they’ve set up their controls so Friends of Friends can’t comment or like things. I’m still interested in what my friend commented on even though I can’t join the conversation.
And yes, I have friends that don’t allow people to post on their walls and the only way to communicate to them via FB is by PM. I use PM in those cases. If they posted something elsewhere that really surprised me and I couldn’t comment on it I would either send them a PM, send an email, or talk to them in person.
I am interested in what my friends are doing, or if they’re tagged in someone else’s photos, or their opinions on things. I can be interested even though I can’t like or comment on it. Why should that make a difference?
I guess it depends on your personality. This was a thread with a type of topic (political, but with a funny twist) I enjoy participating in. There were four or five people in the conversation, and all of them were people I have near-daily discussions with on my friend’s posts–except for the person who actually posted the OP.
I should at least be able to click some setting to tell FB not to show me stuff like that, unless I can interact with it. (I kinda thought the point of FB was interactivity, which is another reason I find this strange.) And I’d also like to know what sort of privacy setting someone would use to make their posts appear like that. I’m assuming if you set them for “Friends of Friends”, a FoF could actually comment/like, right? (All my content is set either for “Friends”, or in the case of political stuff or photos of my kids and other personal items, “Friends Except Acquaintances”.)