My Public Facebook Posts Aren’t An Invitation For Your Bullshit

Virtually all my Facebook updates are public. When I have a specific reason to limit the audience, I do; the rest of the time, anyone can see my posts. Using the site like that has helped me find an audience, and I’ve made a lot of good connections as a result. Unlike a lot of people, I actually like Facebook: as a writer, it’s often where I hammer out ideas, and I enjoy reading what my friends post. Threads on my page tend to be lively and entertaining, and they often produce good discussions. The reason that’s the case is that people know how to engage there.

I like having a busy public page, and I put time and thought into curating it. I’m a pretty light-touch moderator: I like letting threads meander and seeing where the discussion ends up, and I’m mostly happy to let others argue amongst themselves. When someone’s comments grate, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, and most people I ban have refused to change their behaviour when asked to—but if a thread is being sabotaged, or if someone there can’t respect boundaries, I have no compunction about blocking. My threads are public, but they aren’t a free-for-all.

Now and again, a stranger barges in and acts in a way I ask them not to, then tells me I don’t get to make demands; that by making it possible for anyone to comment on my page, I’ve forfeited any say in how they can behave there. Here are some comments those people have left.

‘Make your profile private if you don’t want public opinion.’

‘This sort of thing shows up on my feed, I react. Don’t post in public if you don’t want replies from the public.’

‘If you don’t want to have these kind of interactions with strangers then you should choose different settings.’

You might be reading this because you just left a comment like that.

If you’re a rando who turned up under a post of mine; if I asked you to behave differently—to be less rude or less condescending or just to leave—and that was your reply, I probably just linked you to this piece. According to you, I can’t post publicly and expect to manage my own page, and whatever I’ve asked you not to do, I was asking for it by posting something you could see. You might have dared me to block you, and I’m probably about to—but just so you know, here’s why what you’re saying is bullshit.

To begin with, there’s a difference between venues that are publicly owned and ones that are open to the public. Galleries, churches and restaurants are owned by people who’ve chosen to admit visitors, and it’s generally understood that going there means behaving how they expect, and that you can be asked to leave at the discretion of the management. The reason Facebook allows me to ban people and delete their comments is that my page isn’t a public square. It’s a forum owned and managed by me, and that doesn’t change because anyone can see my posts or comment there.

More to the point: if you’ve found your way to one of my posts and proceeded to insult people or derail the thread, you’re not doing so because the post was visible to you—you’re doing that because you decided to. Most strangers I meet on Facebook aren’t arseholes who appear on my page to cause trouble, and no one is required to act that way on every post they see, or even to comment at all. If you really don’t have a choice in the matter—if that’s the only way you’re able to behave, and the only way to stop you is to make posts private—that has nothing to do with the public. That’s you.