Facebook's Search FYI makes all public user posts available
Facebook announced the launch of Search FYI yesterday, an update to the social network's traditional search tool that lets users search Facebook's complete index of posts. According to Facebook, it has indexed more than 2 trillion posts by its users which all become searchable after the update.
Everything that Facebook users have posted publicly is now available via search, and while users should be aware that public posts they make on Facebook are publicly accessible, it seems that many are still careless about what they post on the site.
Facebook notes that users of the site run more than 1.5 billion searches a day, and that search is one of the most important parts of the site.
Search FYI ships with a bunch of new features including better search suggestions while you are still typing. These suggestions are personalized based on your activities on Facebook, recent events and the friends you have on the site.
Search delivers the most relevant public posts along with posts that friends have made, there is a new "happening now" tag, and a new sort order for results starting with top posts at the top, and friends and groups results below that.
Another new feature that is part of the update is to quickly look up information about links that you stumble upon allowing you to join the conversation or find out more about it.
Search FYI is rolling out as we speak for mobile devices and the desktop. It is initially only available in US English.
Manage your public posts on Facebook
You have two options to manage public posts that you have made in the past. The first option is to vet them one by one either from the Privacy Settings and Tools page, or by visiting your page on Facebook directly and going through the posts manually you made there.
The second option, which you find on the Privacy Settings and Tools page as well, allows you to change the audience of all past posts you made.
You find it under "who can see my stuff" on the page. There you need to click on the "Limit Past Posts" link and then on the limit button that is displayed afterwards.
Doing so will limit all past posts that you have made on Facebook to "Friends". This means that the visibility of any "public" or "friends of friends" posts will be changed to "friends".
It offers a quick and easy way to limit the visibility of past posts which is especially useful if you are active on Facebook or were active in the past on the site.
Closing Words
Facebook Search FYI improves the accessibility and visibility of all user posted contents on the site that have been marked as public by Facebook users.
Now You: I don't really use search on Facebook, other than the occasional look-up of a long lost friend. What about you?
Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.