Privacy and safety in community chats
Community chats are chats created specifically for Facebook groups. Note that they are not available to all groups (example: commerce groups) or people at this time.
A community chat is a chat created specifically for your Facebook group, designed for real-time and more public conversations with other group members.
Community chats are managed by the group admins, moderators and chat hosts. As an extension of your Facebook group, community chats are designed for more public conversations and are not subject to the same privacy guidelines as other chats on Messenger. Private conversations should be reserved for private Messenger chats. Read more about our approach to making community chats trusted spaces, including how we empower you to keep each other safe and protect your privacy.
You can access community chats from the left menu of the Messenger app and messenger.com, as well as from your Facebook group.
Unlike other chats and group chats on Messenger, community chats:
Features
- Are an extension of your Facebook group and support multiple chats and channels.
- Include automated features such as conversation starters, event creation, and more.
- Do not currently support end-to-end encryption.
- Can support a larger number of people per chat.
Management
- Are managed by Facebook group admins and moderators, by chat hosts, and by Meta. Admins, moderators and chat hosts can search for and remove content for everyone in a community chat or remove a member from a community chat. Admins and moderators can access any community chat associated with their group or delete a community chat.
Privacy
- Are not private because they can be found and seen by people not in the chat. For example, members can preview a chat in their private group, and anyone can preview a chat in a public group, and see its participants and content before joining. People can also be invited and automatically approved to join based on settings.
- Are joinable depending on your group membership. You can’t join or participate in a community chat without being part of the Facebook group, and upon leaving or being removed from the group, you will no longer be able to participate in any of its community chats.
- Will no longer show content you’ve sent in a chat after you delete your Facebook account. Note: If you deleted your account before January 2023, your content may still appear in community chats, but it will not be associated with your name or profile picture.
- May record or process information such as the content, when the chat was sent, received, or read, and other interactions with the content in order to provide, improve, and personalize the community chats product and your experience, as explained in our Privacy Policy.
- Only include your activity, such as the content you have sent, in the Download Your Information tool, as opposed to the full chat history.
Safety
- Can be reported to both group admins and Facebook.
- Can include someone you have blocked. Blocking stops the blocked profile from contacting you individually, but it does not block that profile from a community chat you are both in. If you and the profile you block are in a community chat together, you’ll be notified before you enter the chat.
- Are subject to additional review processes. When something goes against the Facebook Community Standards, Meta has content enforcement systems in place to respond. For example, we use artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and human reviewers to help us identify, review or remove content that may violate our Community Standards – often, before anyone sees it. You can also report community chats to Meta. Learn more about our content review process.
- May lead to a Facebook group being disabled. Facebook may disable a group if there are multiple admin and moderator violations, which includes if an admin creates a community chat or content in a community chat that violates our Community Standards.
- May show a notice in the chat if content shared is identical or near-identical to false information reviewed by third-party fact-checkers. Learn more about how Meta partners with third-party fact-checkers.
