I was browsing FB this morning, and I got irritated by this guy on my friends list. He’s always posting interesting-looking headlines of a political nature that I’d be interested in reading more about. Thing is, he’s always linking them via THREADS. I don’t do THREADS, so these posts are opaque to me (beyond the headline), and that’s frustrating and irritating. So, I decided to make one of my rare “What’s on your mind, Michael?”-type posts. It read: I already don’t do Twitter. I have no plans to ever look at Threads. Then I went to post it.
Up pops a screen to ask me if I want to post it as myself or as the page I set up a few years ago (I Can Do Without Any Ads At All, TYVM). Of course, I’m gonna post it as myself. But then, under my name, I spotted a rubric which read “74 Followers.”
Since when do I have followers? Since when does FB even DO followers? Am I a “follower” to anyone? How do I find out? And if I am, who made the decision that I was going to be their “follower?” 'Cos I sure don’t remember ever clicking on a “Follow this person on Facebook” button.
When you go to a Facebook profile, you have two choices. You can Add someone as a friend, or you can, Follow them. The former works the way we all know: it asks the other person if they want to be friends, and only adds your posts to their feed if you say yes. Following, on the other hand, just adds your public posts to someone’s feed, without asking.
That word public is important: it will not show any posts you made only to Friends or Friends of Friends. It will only show them the same stuff they could already see if they visited your profile page, even if they were logged out. Friending someone also additional information that you have added to Facebook.
You can see what a follower has access to by looking at your profile while being logged out.
As for why you have that many followers? That I don’t know. I know some people try to follow people to get them to follow back. And, since you have a group you started, it’s possible people have noticed you from there, or any other group you are publicly a part of. And, finally, someone could follow you based on seeing your posts on other people’s comments.
If you are logged in using your iPhone, I’m pretty sure you can look up the password under settings-passwords. The password will show up as dots, but tap on the dots and it will show the password.
Your Facebook profile has a “View as” setting, which means “View your page as if you’re a stranger,” to allow you to check what the public can and can’t see. Access it from that three-dot button toward the upper right of your profile page.