- Around this time last year, Facebook experienced its first-ever drop in users.
- Still, more than 1.8 billion users flock to the site to be part of Facebook “group” communities.
- Insider spoke with people who use groups for parenting advice, fan clubs, and running businesses.
Between privacy violations, misinformation, hate speech, and more, Facebook is no stranger to bad press. The company recently saw a drop in users for the first time during the last quarter of 2021. Yet more than 1.8 billion people still use Facebook for one feature that sets it apart from other platforms: groups.
Users turn to these groups for career advice, upcycling belongings, parenting tips, and even to market their small businesses. This is not only because of Facebook’s vast diversity of groups to join, but also thanks to a wide network of volunteer moderators and admins who keep them functional.
Small and niche support groups
“Siblings Raising Siblings” is a small group started by Heather Dennis, who has been raising her two younger siblings since she was 21. As a sibling guardian, she relied on food stamps and found difficulty getting legal and financial support.
“I wanted to make a career change and be able to help other people who are in the situation I was once in,” said Dennis, who started the Facebook group as part of her master’s degree program in social work. The online community welcomes caretakers and their dependent siblings from across the world, whose parents either could not or would not fulfill their parental obligations.
Learning new things
Cassier Weiner is in more than 50 mostly hobby-based Facebook groups. Although Weiner has witnessed many people conduct themselves in bad ways on the platform, she stays out of toxic comment sections. While she doesn’t have a favorite group, she loves to learn new things through different ones. One example of a group she regularly visits is called “Home for Peculiar Artists.”
“This is a home for art that is any medium, off the mainstream,” Weiner said. “I love that group because you see so much creativity and everyone there is there to encourage one another.”
Cassier Weiner
Opportunities to connect locally
“The Buy Nothing Project” is a global network of Facebook groups that aims to help people give things away or ask for things they need without any exchange of money or bartering. In densely populated areas like Brooklyn, these groups are broken into sub-neighborhoods.
After having her baby, Sonya Reynolds turned to a Brooklyn neighborhood group of more than 2,000 members for help with items. She said she hasn’t had to buy anything new and has gotten everything she needs from neighbors, except for some perishable items like diapers.
Sonya Reynolds
“We got a crib and a stroller through the local ‘Buy Nothing Group,’ and it’s totally changed my view of consumerism,” Reynolds said.
The generosity of members seems to only breed more generosity in the neighborhood, she said. It’s also turned her into an enthusiast for giving things away and avoiding online shopping.
Doreen Maag, another neighbor in Brooklyn, said being a part of the “Buy Nothing” group has been socially beneficial, helping connect her to the community during the isolation of the pandemic.
“We’ve gotten to know more of our neighbors through this group than we have any other way,” Maag said, adding that she’s found it easier to let go of sentimental items when she knows someone nearby will be personally using it.
Strong leadership of moderators and administrators
Facebook groups aren’t all happy, though, and it takes a lot of volunteer hours to manage these communities. Some groups have seen behaviors like doxxing, where private information is posted about users. That’s led them to demonstrate their values up front, such as “The Non-Toxic Star Wars Fanbase.”
As the number of members grew from 2,000 to more than 81,000, former moderator Nick Chamberlin began seeing more toxicity in the group. That’s when the group decided to tighten up the admittance questions and rules.
Nick Chamberlin
An interview process is required to become one of the group leaders, which ensures that monitors understand how to handle bad behavior. A common chat room is used to communicate around the world, covering multiple time zones, so there’s always someone monitoring.
When there are disagreements, they discuss it in the chat and vote. Leaders regularly interact within the online community, building trust among members.
Sarah Dahan, an online community strategist, said the root of a thriving community online and offline is maintaining a consistent value system.
Sarah Dahan
“The Buy Nothing Group,” for example, maintains values of generosity, sustainability, and a focus on the environment. If someone tries to sell an item, moderators will step in with a comment that this is against the rules of the group and ask them to delete or adjust their posting. Members are also encouraged to ask for something they’ are in search of or need before buying it new.
Buy Nothing Group member Maag said she loves it when she sees “people rushing in the comments to help somebody who is asking,” and Dahan said this kind of culture of values on display is key to keeping a community from becoming toxic.
Because moderators often keep their profiles public to receive messages, it leaves them vulnerable to harassment and even death threats. Chamberlin said Facebook does its part when it comes to such threats, blocking or shutting down accounts when these users are reported.
Cliff Lampe, a professor of information at the University of Michigan and an expert in online communities, said moderators have an emotionally draining role. Lampe said they often have to deal with conflict and can experience burnout.
“Moderators should have a succession plan,” Dr. Lampe said. “Identifying volunteer members, training, and investing in them.”
Facebook doing its part
Jonathan Twombly runs a real-estate business through his Facebook group “Multifamily Investment Community,” which has about 12,000 members. He relies on a group managing service in the Philippines, some friends, and volunteers to moderate the page.
Jonathan Twombly
But in the past few years, he said he’s seen downsides with using Facebook. One issue is seeing some appropriate content flagged by the system, while inappropriate content passes through. A larger more persistent issue is Facebook changing the algorithm without warning, which can impact what a user is often seeing on the platform.
Lampe said moderators and group founders can only do so much. He thinks groups can improve with more finely grained moderation tools, like the ability to remove the use of emoji reactions, and more mechanisms for crowdsourced moderation, like Reddit’s up and down voting. Lampe also thinks moderators should have more resources than they have already, like mental health professionals specializing in online harassment.
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“Facebook themselves do have an ethical responsibility from a technology standpoint, because algorithms versus individual people is never a fair fight,” Lampe said.
Self-policing and individual responsibility
Given the way algorithms guide users to certain content, it can be hard for monitors to keep up with everything posted in their group.
Michelle Kim is one of the 560,000 members of the “Noodles and Asian Dishes” group. She said being raised around different online platforms as a member of Gen Z has given her intuition on how to avoid group toxicity.
Michelle Kim
Kim believes Facebook was intended to connect people locally, but she said she sees more people using it as if they have complete anonymity. Sometimes she responds to a mean comment once, but sets a boundary to not engage again.
Kim says she uses Instagram for friendships, TikTok “just for fun,” and stays on Facebook for the groups and because some family members are on it. She finds the groups being most useful to her as a resource to find roommates, sublets, and freelance writing opportunities.
“Facebook groups are very underutilized by people my age,” Kim said. “If you haven’t been on it since 10 years old, it’s seen as archaic. But it’s a very nice way to be involved in the hobbies that I really enjoy while also getting great insight and advice on certain things.”
Despite Facebook’s ongoing pitfalls, Lampe said groups are probably the biggest benefit for people who use the platform. At least that’s true for Cassie Weiner, who said she only uses it to her benefit.
“Facebook is as good or as bad as you let it be,” Weiner said. “I choose to let it only be good.”
