How to see who follows you on Facebook

While Facebook can be both fun and useful, it also has its security challenges, ranging from the risk of having your account cloned to experiencing online harassment and more. In particular, not everyone friends or follows you for good reasons. People seeking to rob your house, investigate your movements, or disqualify you for a job might sneak their way onto your friends list or follow your page. Fortunately, it isn’t hard to find this information, and we can show you how to see who follows you on Facebook.

How to see who follows you on Facebook on desktop

1. Launch your browser of choice.
2. Go to Facebook.com. Log in if needed.
3. Click on your profile icon, in the top-right corner.
4. Click on your name. This takes you to your profile page.
5. Go into the Friends tab.
6. Under your Friends list, select Followers.

Here, you will see all the people who are following your profile page but aren’t in your Friends list.

How to see who follows you on Facebook on mobile

1. Launch the Facebook app.
2. Tap on your profile icon, in the top-right corner.
3. Select your name. This takes you to your profile page.
4. Under details, tap on See your About info.
5. Scroll all the way to the bottom. You will see a section labeled as Followers. Select See all, next to it.

All your followers will be listed. That’s all there is to it.

How to allow followers on Facebook

If you can’t find a section with Followers using the instructions above, this could be because you are not allowing people to follow you unless they are actual Facebook friends of yours. This may be a good thing, if you want to stay more private. Or maybe you want to give others the chance to follow you. Whatever the case, here’s how you can allow or disallow people to follow you.

1. Launch the Facebook app, or go to Facebook.com.
2. Click on your profile icon, in the top-right corner.
3. Go into Settings & privacy.
4. Select Settings.
5. Go into Followers and public content.
6. The first option will be Who can follow me. Select it.
7. Pick Public if you want everyone to be able to follow you, or Friends to allow only Facebook friends to follow you.
8. Hit Save.

What’s the difference between Facebook friends and followers?

Facebook says following is intended as a way to gain a wider audience for your posts, whereas friending is for people you actually know. One of the most important differences between following and friending is that there is no permission needed for someone to follow you. If you have allowed followers, anyone can click on your profile and follow you. A follower has to send a message request before sending you a message. A friend can DM you any time.

What does it do?

Following someone on Facebook means their public posts (the ones they do not restrict to friends or groups) will show up on your timeline. Your posts will not show up on their timeline unless they follow you as well. When you become friends with someone on Facebook, you automatically start following each other, and you will see Friends Only posts as well as public ones from each other. A handy Facebook feature is that you can unfollow a friend without unfriending them, allowing you to limit your exposure to their feed. Each post you make on Facebook can be set to be seen only by friends or by anyone by setting it to Public. (You can even filter your friends list to restrict access to sensitive posts.)

You can choose to allow followers to merely see your posts, or to allow them to comment as well. Also, you can get notifications when a follower shares, likes, or comments on one of your posts, or restrict notifications to when friends interact with your timeline. These choices are also in the Settings menu.

You can follow a person on Facebook, but you can also follow a brand, a town, or a sports team. When you like the page of, say, a sneaker manufacturer, you automatically begin to follow that page as well, but that you can adjust this later.

An example

A good example to describe the difference between friends and followers would be a popular novelist. She has a Facebook account with friends, family, and those who read her books. The friends and family, obviously enough, would be Facebook friends with the novelist. Her readers would be followers. She would tailor each of her posts to be available to everyone or only her friends. This would allow her to use the same Facebook account for both personal and professional purposes.

FAQs