Facebook Creeping Is About To Get Way Easier

Your Facebook creeping just got a whole lot easier now that you can search for specific Facebook posts using key words. In the old days, if you wanted to find that post one of your friends made a couple months ago, you really had no choice but to back-search their profile and wish for a whole lot of luck. Now, if you want to find that now-buried pro Rand Paul post your high school classmate wrote, all you have to do is plug in some key words like “Tea Party” or “’Murica."

That’s not the only way Facebook is upping its search game, though. Facebook is also bringing graph search to mobile — like when you would type “Brad who went to UGA who works at Starbucks” into the search bar to find the hot barista you chatted with but whose last name you didn’t know. Yeah, now you can do that more discreetly (I hope) on your phone instead of having to whip out your laptop. If this news isn’t proof that Mark Zuckerberg also Facebook creeps shamelessly, then I don’t know what is.

But when it comes to Facebook (and the Internet in general), it’s important to know that what goes around comes around. Meaning, if the new Facebook updates make it easier for you to dig up dirt on others, then the same thing applies to you. So although your privacy settings won’t automatically change, it might be a solid idea to hide or delete all those #wasted #drunkinloveeeee statuses you made at 3 a.m.

All of this sounds a little scary, and if you’re worried your awkward prom pics are only one search away from being picked up by strangers and going viral, you shouldn’t be. And that’s saying a lot coming from me — when it comes to Facebook and social media in general I’m basically like the person holed up in a cave wearing a tinfoil hat (figuratively speaking). The new search will only turn up posts by your friends or people you’ve interacted with, so odds are that complete randos aren’t going to find your bad hair day and use it to extort you (the extortion angle was something I just made up — I told you I was paranoid). Bonus: you can change the privacy of posts you can find with keywords, so now would be as good a time as any to quit ignoring those little prompts at the top of your home page and actually adjust your privacy settings.

I for one am glad our Facebook overlords have made it easier for my friends to find all the articles I shamelessly post to my timeline. Long live Zuckerberg!

Images: Giphy (3)