Viewing public Facebook pages

November2

Have Facebook changed their policy today?  I am usually able to view public Facebook pages such as shops, council pages etc without having a Facebook account.  Today I can't get past a log in page, which tells me to log in or create an account.   I've cleared cookies etc but still no good

Neil_Jones

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/ivmt5j/facebook_pages_are_no_longer_public/

twopenny

I can still read our towns Community Group. Chit-Chat and Covid pages. But they are pages I viewed before.

Working from a laptop.

I tried the Town Council (haven't done that before) and a holiday one I haven't used for ages and get what you got.

Downright silly as far a businesses are concerned. I created an account years ago and when I went back to it it wouldn't recognise  password. Couldn't even delete it. But it still has access to send messages to my business account. Creepy

I refuse to be bullied into giving my personal details so they can make more money and annoy me more.

November2

I'm using a laptop too so thought it might be the browser.   It makes no sense if they block access to shop, council, news, business' etc pages.  I don't want a Facebook account but often check out shop deals, local news items etc

MalMonroe

I have a FB account.  You don't. Your 'problem' doesn't really exist and is easily solved. 

Either join up - or cease to have access to the pages you've previously been able to see.

November2

It appears to have just been a glitch as today everything is back to normal and I can again see my local council website and Asda facebook.  

twopenny

It's also worth trying to use another search engine when odd things like this happen.

I found Google & Amazon Silk persistantly trying to stop me finding sites using a kindle unless I 'signed up' to their product but using Bing etc no problem. I've got through many such by remembering there are other ways than the major players.

Good that you're back and running though

forgotmyname

uBlock Origin and NoScript together can work wonders on some websites.

Combined can be good for websites with stupid hard or never ending CAPTCHA's, quite often all i get
is a "are you human" box to tick. No pictures to match etc.

Takmon

November2 said:

I'm using a laptop too so thought it might be the browser.   It makes no sense if they block access to shop, council, news, business' etc pages.  I don't want a Facebook account but often check out shop deals, local news items etc

Well it makes perfect sense to me that they want people to sign up who use their website considering this is how they make money. 

RumRat

This is good, it might encourage more people to disengage with Facebook. It's no wonder the next generation are abandoning it.
FB don't even understand that it's not a 'Public' page if it's restricted to 'members'
Most people I know manage perfectly well without it, those business and Councils etc. have other websites and there are better ways to communicate with family these days, so it's no great inconvenience.