Some Facebook users report hidden friends still seeing their Stories

Facebook’s privacy settings might not be working as intended for some users who’ve carefully curated their Story viewers list. Several people are noticing that friends they’ve specifically hidden from viewing their Stories are somehow still able to see, like, and even reply to content meant to be off-limits.

Reddit user myalomeraki posted about the confusing behavior on their locked profile. Despite having 68 people on their hidden list, several of those same users were popping up in story viewer lists with a “Hidden from them” label right beside their names.

What made it worse was that two of these supposedly hidden friends actually replied to stories they shouldn’t have been able to access at all.

Facebook’s official privacy settings clearly state that users can hide stories from specific people while still keeping them as friends. The feature is supposed to let you share moments with most of your circle while keeping certain individuals out of the loop. But when you’ve got family members, coworkers, or other connections you’d rather not share your daily updates with, a glitchy privacy setting becomes a real problem.

Another user described the situation as genuinely affecting them because they maintain a specific list of friends who shouldn’t see “what type of person I am daily.” Multiple commenters across both threads confirmed they’re experiencing the same thing, with some mentioning the issue has persisted for weeks or even a month.

The reports aren’t exactly widespread yet, but enough people have chimed in to suggest this isn’t just a one-off glitch. Users in the threads have tried the usual fixes like clearing cache, reinstalling the app, and manually resetting their privacy settings, but nothing seems to stick. Some have switched from using the “hide from” exclusion method to manually selecting only specific friends who can view stories, though it’s unclear if that actually solves the problem.

Interestingly, this isn’t entirely new territory. If the glitch feels familiar, it might remind you of the recent Instagram bug that let “close friends” view private Notes even when they weren’t supposed to, something we covered in detail just a couple of weeks ago.

One theory floating around involves Facebook Notes possibly interfering with story privacy settings, though that hasn’t been confirmed. For now, users dealing with this bug might want to be extra cautious about what they post until Facebook addresses the apparent privacy leak.