Facebook changed how it shares posts

Paul, if you’re looking for a scoop, I haven’t seen anyone report on this yet. Facebook has changed the way it shares posts. I run a FB page and we frequently post links to news articles with our commentary about the news article as part of the post.

Previously, if one of our followers shared our post, they would share our entire post. This means not only our commentary but the name and link to our FB page (in addition to the link to the news article).

Starting apparently yesterday, if one of our followers shares one of these posts, only the link to the news article is shared. Our commentary is stripped from the shared post. Also, the name and link to our Facebook page is stripped from the post.

This is huge to FB content authors because having our readers share our posts is a great way to build name recognition and possibly gain new followers. Now this is gone.

Yes, there is a way to override the default behavior, but realistically, nobody is going to do this. As an example, we recently posted something that has received 14 shares. Normally, that means the name of our FB page would be included in all 14 shares. But not a single user clicked the checkbox to override the default behavior. So, we lost 14 opportunities to expose the name of our FB page to new people.

Hopefully, FB is only beta-testing this. But if you run the type of FB page I do, this is a huge blow to us building a bigger audience.

Conversation 7 comments

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    20 December, 2018 - 7:37 am

    <p>Ouch. This is the type of thing that would make me wary of building a business on top of Facebook.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      20 December, 2018 - 12:48 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#384488">In reply to Chris_Kez:</a></em></blockquote><p>Anyone that builds their business to depend on another business has to be very careful. I wouldn't want to build a business on top of any social network.</p>

  • waethorn

    20 December, 2018 - 9:12 am

    <p>Facebook shares ALL OF YOUR POSTS. And it gives tech companies full read+write access to your private messages.</p><p><br></p><p>Why does this surprise anyone?</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    20 December, 2018 - 9:34 am

    <p>Okay, this is an learning moment, and it underpins one of the most important lessons in modern technology.</p><p><br></p><p>Facebook is bad.</p><p><br></p><p>Bad for you, bad for the internet, bad for the world.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      20 December, 2018 - 12:47 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#384580">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>Facebook is only as good or as bad as the people who you follow on it. I'm in some photography groups that share all sorts of valuable information. Just don't think what you post on their is private. It's about as private as this message board is here.</p>

      • jimchamplin

        Premium Member
        20 December, 2018 - 3:06 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#384701">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'm sure that there's quite a bit of wonderful things there, and it's never been a secret that it's all completely public. None of that is relevant to what I said.</p><p><br></p><p>Facebook is simply a criminal enterprise, full stop.</p>

  • simont

    Premium Member
    20 December, 2018 - 2:51 pm

    <p>This is a learning moment, build your own system, website instead of building it on Facebook, Medium, etc, it can be ripped away from you at any time and you have zero say in it.</p>

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