Whether the things you share appear in your friends' News Feeds hinges on two factors:

1. The setting for each post that you share. To control whether or not specific friends have the option to view your stories, you can change the settings for each piece of content you post.
   
2. Your friends’ News Feed preferences. Your friends may request to view more content you share, or to hide content that you share.

You might see posts in your News Feed from people you're not friends with if your friends liked or interact with that post. Note that we only show you someone's posts if they are set to Public (anyone) or Friends of Friends.

Stories from open groups may appear in your News Feed since open groups are public.

When a friend posts on your Wall (timeline), your mutual friends will see a story in their News Feeds.

For example, if Dave is friends with both John and Julia, he will see a story in his News Feed when John writes on Julia's Wall (timeline).

When you send a friend request to a person, public stories about them (stories that have the privacy set to "Everyone" may appear in your News Feed. This way you don’t have wait for them to respond to your friend request to see their public updates. Please note that News Feed will never show stories that a non-friend wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see. People who have yet to accept your friend requests will also appear on the Friends page. Here, you can add them to Friend Lists.

If you don’t want to see stories from a person who has yet to accept your friend requests, you can hide them from your News Feed by placing your cursor to the right of a story about them and clicking the "Hide" link that appears. Alternatively, you can remove them as a friend by clicking the "X" next to their name on the Friends page.

When someone sends you a friend request, public stories about you (i.e., stories that have the privacy set to "Everyone") may appear in their News Feed. If you decline a friend request from this person, stories about you will not appear in their News Feed anymore.

News Feed will never show stories that a non-friend wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see. For example, if you posted a video and set the privacy to "Friends," a person who is waiting for you to approve their friend request would not see that in their News Feed. If you had set the video to be visible to Everyone, that person would see it.

You can always change your privacy settings by selecting "Privacy Settings" under the Settings drop-down menu and clicking the appropriate section.

When you become friends with someone on Facebook shortly after an event you both said you attended, the event may be mentioned as part of the friendship story that displays on your profile (timeline) and in News Feed. You’ll be able to see how you met this friend when you view your friendship page in the future.

If you do not want the event to display as part of the story, you or your friend can remove it by going to the friendship page. You can access this page using the "See Friendship" link on your friend’s profile (timeline). Clicking the "x" next to "Met after (event)" at the top of the page will remove this information from both the friendship page and Feed stories.

Keep in mind that you can also delete the full friendship story and any other Feed story by clicking the "x" next to the story.

Before you post, look at the audience selector. Use the dropdown menu to choose who you want to share a post with.

 Public (Maximum audience for adults)

 Friends of Friends (Maximum audience for minors)

 Friends (+ friends of anyone tagged)

 Custom (Includes specific groups, friend lists or people you’ve specified to include or exclude)

You'll see this tool wherever you share content, whether it’s a status update or information on your profile (timeline).

The tool remembers the audience you shared with the last time you posted something and uses the same audience when you share again unless you change it. For example, if you choose Public for a post, your next post will also be Public unless you change this audience when you post.

If you want to change who you’re sharing with, open the dropdown menu and choose a different audience. Remember: anyone you tag in a post, along with their friends, may see the post.

To make it clear who you’re sharing with at all times, the audience you select appears along with whatever you are saying, every time you share. You can also use the audience selector to change who you are sharing with after you post something.

Yes, you can use the audience selector to change who can see any post you make after you publish it. Remember: people you share with can always share your information with others. So, if you change the audience after you publish something this can’t prevent someone who already saw it from sharing it. Also, remember that unless your post is set to Only Me, then anyone tagged (and potentially their friends) may see it, too.

The Custom privacy setting lets you specify who is able and not able to view the content you share. When you choose Custom a pop-up box will appear. From the box, you can choose to share with or exclude specific networks, friends, and Friend Lists.

 When you share or publish content to "Everyone," that means anyone on the internet is able to view it. This includes people who are not your friends on Facebook, and people who are not in your school or work networks. You should use this setting to publish things that you are comfortable making open to anyone.

If someone can see something you published to "Everyone," this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be able to view all information on your profile. What people can see when they go to your profile is determined by what your different profile privacy settings allow.

When you share or publish content as Public, it will visible to anyone on the internet. People may be able to find your content through public links, or through their friends sharing content with them. When you publish content as Public, you should be comfortable with it being open to anyone.