Anonymous posts protect your privacy so you can feel safe posting in Facebook groups
Product strategy
Grow Facebook's user base and revenue by increasing participation in groups.
Problem
Users are hesitant to post in groups due to anxiety about meeting new people, embarrassment about revealing sensitive information, or fear of bullying. This limits participation and exacerbates social isolation.
Hypothesis
Facebook users will be more likely to participate in groups if they can post anonymously, thus increasing overall engagement.
Goals
💬 Increase engagement
Allow members to post anonymously, thus lowering the barrier to participation.
Allow members to post anonymously, thus lowering the barrier to participation.
🛡️ Ensure safety
Require admin approval for all anonymous posts and allow group owners to turn this feature off.
Require admin approval for all anonymous posts and allow group owners to turn this feature off.
🪴 Drive adoption
Announce this feature to group members and encourage them to use it.
Announce this feature to group members and encourage them to use it.
Gathering insights
Before jumping to a solution, I worked with PMs, engineers, and researchers to learn more about our users.
Learning from prior experiments
An experiment for anonymous posting had already been released in a limited number of health and parenting groups. From this experiment, we gathered valuable insights:
✅ Members were excited to use this feature and more likely to post using it.
⛔️ Users couldn't switch modes without discarding their drafts and starting over.
⛔️ Users weren't aware that admins reviewed anonymous posts.
⛔️ Admins couldn't change the location and visibility of the button in the compose bar, conflicting with established behavior.
⛔️ Users couldn't switch modes without discarding their drafts and starting over.
⛔️ Users weren't aware that admins reviewed anonymous posts.
⛔️ Admins couldn't change the location and visibility of the button in the compose bar, conflicting with established behavior.
Scaling to a global audience
My team believed anonymous posting had great potential to increase engagement in groups, but in order to scale to a global audience, we needed to address the issues identified above.
More flexible entry point
I advocated for moving the entry point to the compose page. This provided several crucial benefits:
– Users don't need to choose a post type before starting a draft
– It can be toggled at any time without discarding the draft
– Eliminates the fixed button in the compose bar
Testing solutions
I explored various patterns for the entry point and reviewed these concepts with the design systems team to ensure consistency. I produced five solutions that complied with existing patterns.
Next, I partnered with our UX research team to test these options. We conducted 1:1 interviews with members from prominent Facebook groups, showing them various options and gauging their reactions.
Participants overwhelmingly favored option #1
"That's perfect, that's what I wanted."
"I usually start at the top of the screen. It was honestly the first thing I saw."
"It's right there when you go to create a post."
Education, privacy, and safety
To ensure users were properly informed about this feature, I designed a new informational sheet that appears every time anonymous posting is turned on.
The final copy is a collaboration between myself, the content designers, and the privacy team. The content designers and I advocated for a shorter, more succinct message, whereas the privacy team preferred a longer, more comprehensive approach. Ultimately, we met somewhere in the middle.
Final user flow
Anonymous posting works essentially the same as any other type of post.
Onboarding and growth
To educate admins and foster adoption, I worked with content designers to produce an onboarding announcement flow.
During this process, we thought providing a draft post that admins could share with the group would be very helpful, allowing them to organically drive engagement with minimal effort.
Early feedback was highly positive. Admins said the announcement was informative and useful, while members appreciated the transparency of the resulting post. Many said they would be more likely to use the feature.
"It changed my impression of anonymous posting."
"It gives the do's and don'ts. I like that approach and it's helpful to understand."
"I didn't think I would do this, but since I've been shown how easy it is, I would consider it."
Ensuring quality with engineers
Facebook upholds a very mature development process in which all key stakeholders review the UI and have the authority to approve or reject changes.
I embraced this process, working closely with my iOS, Android, and web engineering partners to ensure my designs were polished, scalable, and bug-free.
Adoption
Today, as planned, anonymous posting is enabled for all groups worldwide. Although I left Facebook before data was available, I have seen widespread adoption in many groups.
What I learned
My time at Facebook instilled in me the responsibility of designing for a global audience. Quality, scalability, translation, accessibility, and data usage are all vital factors to consider. Tens of millions of people could use a single button.
Sometime after I left, the admin approval requirement was removed. I have since experienced spam and abuse in groups I have joined. I would love to know why this decision was made—I would not have agreed with it.
I could have done better thinking about the user journey from both directions. I was fixated on anonymous posting as the endpoint and didn't consider resolving the opposite path—turning it off—until my teammates pointed this out.
