Facebook Full Review

Snapshot​

• Network scope: Facebook sits inside the wider Meta identity stack alongside Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, sharing login, messaging, and safety teams.
• Reach: Billions of monthly active users engage across more than one hundred interface languages.
• Core surfaces: Feed, Reels/Watch, Stories, Messenger, Groups, Events, Marketplace, Shops, Fundraisers, Gaming, Dating, and the Professional Dashboard.
• Revenue mixing: Advertising is still the anchor, while Marketplace fees, Shops checkout, paid events, and Stars deepen monetisation for creators and businesses.

Onboarding & identity assurance​

Sign-up still begins with name, birthday, email or phone, and password, but Meta overlays automated age assurance from the first session. Editing your birthday, opening Dating, launching a Marketplace listing, or triggering youth-safety heuristics routes you to facebook.com/confirmage to supply:

• Government-issued ID (passport, driver licence, residence card) with all corners visible and glare removed.
• An age-assurance selfie captured through partners such as Yoti or Incode, where you rotate your head on camera so biometrics match your profile photo.

Marketplace sellers, political advertisers, and payout-enabled creators must finish tax forms and business verification before payments flow. Opting into Meta Verified bundles this paperwork with impersonation monitoring and live chat support, which shortens review queues dramatically.

Draft communities circulate "hacks" like recording a video game avatar for the selfie check or registering from a second device to dodge scrutiny. In practice these shortcuts either fail outright or trigger extra holds. Stick to the official process, upload sharp documents, and retry from a desktop browser if the mobile app loops-you avoid bans and keep a clean audit trail if Support escalates your ticket.

Feed, Reels, and discovery​

Feed blends friends, Groups, Pages, and recommended creators with Reels. Llama-driven ranking leans heavily on short-form video, yet you retain granular controls: Favorites prioritises key contacts, Snooze hides noisy acquaintances, keyword mutes suppress spoilers, and the Show More/Less prompt teaches the algorithm in real time. Reels shares tooling with Instagram, so creators schedule one upload and syndicate it in both places. Watch Collections surface long-form series, live sports experiments, and premieres, while the "Why am I seeing this?" overlay explains each suggestion so you can course-correct.

Groups & community tools​

Groups remain the stickiest surface. Admin Assist automates moderation with keyword rules, pending-post filters, and applicant questionnaires, while Admin Home centralises insights, growth analytics, and monetisation toggles for subscriptions or paid access. Events default to hybrid layouts, combining map pins with Live or Rooms for remote guests. Community Chats inside Messenger work like Discord channels-great for sprint updates or volunteer coordination-and the Content Scheduler lets admins queue posts around the clock so global audiences stay engaged.

Marketplace, Shops & payouts​

Marketplace still resembles classifieds, yet shipping labels, seller ratings, and Meta Pay streamline transactions. Identity holds usually appear when you list high-value items, edit your birthdate, or switch regions-finish Marketplace - Account - Identity confirmation before appealing. Shops imports catalogues from Shopify and WooCommerce, auto-syncs inventory, and lets you tag products inside posts or Reels so viewers buy without leaving the feed. Professional Dashboard tracks Stars, fan subscriptions, paid events, and Brand Collabs Manager eligibility in one place, making it easier to understand what unlocks next.

Messaging ecosystem​

Messenger and Instagram Direct now share infrastructure with opt-in end-to-end encryption. Parity keeps improving: collaborative albums, disappearing messages, group polls, extended voice notes, payment requests, and chat themes land on both sides. Messenger Communities let Page or Group admins spin up topic channels without pushing members to Discord, while Broadcast Channels give creators lightweight, read-only alerts. Workplace (the enterprise suite) still runs as a separate SKU but rides the same identity backbone, so switching between work and personal spaces is seamless.

Safety, compliance & moderation​

Meta fields tens of thousands of human reviewers plus AI classifiers to enforce Community Standards. Youth Safety teams automatically remove accounts that fail age checks and ban repeat attempts from the same device or IP. Regulators in the UK, EU, and many U.S. states demand age assurance for certain experiences, so selfie prompts are becoming more frequent even for long-time users. Lean on two-factor authentication, Security Checkup, Off-Facebook Activity pruning, and legacy contacts to keep your identity locked down. Expect delays if support escalates your ID-Meta Verified or business concierge status still yields faster responses.

Privacy, data use & third-party risk​

Facebook draws sustained criticism for pervasive data collection, opaque ad targeting, and algorithmic amplification. Meta ships transparency reports and Ads Library disclosures, yet the sheer amount of personalisation can feel invasive. Privacy Checkup lets you reset sharing defaults, mute ad topics, and audit third-party logins, while Off-Facebook Activity shows partner data that feeds targeting. Always download and delete ID files once verification clears, and avoid free VPNs for Marketplace unless you trust their logging policy-many community-recommended services harvest traffic and create more risk than they solve.

Pros & cons​

Pros

• Massive global reach with mature tooling for communities, creators, and small businesses.
• Marketplace, Shops, and paid experiences live under one verified identity, making cross-surface growth straightforward.
• Admin Assist, Content Scheduler, and support badges reduce moderation overhead for moderators and brand managers.

Cons

• Feed can feel cluttered with ads and suggested content until you retrain the algorithm.
• Verification holds interrupt Marketplace or payout access, and support response times remain unpredictable.
• Privacy-conscious users must constantly audit settings, permissions, and third-party integrations.

Verdict​

Facebook functions more like an identity operating system than a single social feed. Keep your paperwork current, embrace the admin tooling, and fine-tune privacy controls, and you gain unmatched reach plus integrated commerce and messaging. Ignore compliance prompts or chase shortcut hacks and you risk long lockouts with little appeal leverage. Use the platform deliberately and it remains a powerful—if noisy—platform for communities, creators, and businesses.