Facebook is still one of the most popular social media platforms, allowing you to view and enjoy the content posted by your friends and family, and even share anything you particularly like to your own page, in order to allow a larger audience to interact with it.
However, this option might not always be available. You might have noticed that the Share option doesn’t appear on all Facebook posts you come across. So, why is that, and why aren’t you allowed to share all Facebook posts?
Why can’t you share certain Facebook posts?
Facebook has recently decided that posts on the website can only be shared freely if the sharing settings have specifically been set to ‘Public’ by the original poster. Whether the post you wish to share comes from a private account or a group, the privacy settings on the post in question need to be configured to ‘Public’ in order for anyone else to be able to share it across Facebook.
This means that if any post on Facebook has its privacy settings configured to ‘Friends’ (or specific friends), you will only be able to interact with the post in the form of liking and commenting (unless this option is turned off as well) but you won’t have the option to share it.
The reason for this action taken by Facebook is most likely the fact that they want to protect the privacy of their users, allowing them to choose exactly how other people can interact with their posts, instead of being free to do as they wish.
Can you share Facebook posts that aren’t public?
The short answer is no. If you don’t see the ‘Share’ button, you can’t share the post in question.
However, some people have been sharing other users’ posts by copying the content and pasting it onto their own posts. Keep in mind that this could be considered theft of intellectual property, which goes against Facebook’s guidelines, and could even be illegal in most countries.
What you can always do instead is simply ask the original poster if they wish to change their setting to ‘Public’, allowing you to share their post. In most cases, people will be glad to do so.
Evidently, Facebook posts can only be shared freely if the original poster has specifically allowed it. In all other cases, you simply won’t be able to share private posts, and there’s not much you can do about this situation, due to privacy concerns.
