Editor's note 3/14/24: Since publishing this story, we've gotten additional questions about whether using the @highlight features will tell you about your account's security or win you prizes from Facebook. Both of these claims are false - read below for what the feature actually does. The story as originally published appears below.
A VERIFY reader recently texted us a screenshot of a meme they saw on Facebook claiming typing @highlight into a comment exposes who is monitoring your profile.
“Type @ in the comments and then click highlight to see who’s always checking your profile. If it turns blue you got page watchers,” the meme says.
One Facebook post with the meme has 20,000 comments – many of which are people responding with “@highlight”.
THE QUESTION
Does typing @highlight into a Facebook comment reveal the identity of people checking your profile?
THE SOURCES
- Analysis of @highlight function conducted by VERIFY
- Facebook Help Center
- June 2023 article from technology website MakeUseOf
THE ANSWER
No, typing @highlight into a Facebook comment won’t reveal the identity of people checking your profile.
WHAT WE FOUND
The @highlight tag in a comment doesn’t show you who has been watching your Facebook page, but instead notifies your friends of a post you found interesting or wanted to amplify.
Facebook says it’s not possible for the @highlight feature or any other feature to show you who has viewed your Facebook profile.
“Facebook doesn't let people track who views their profile. Third-party apps also can't provide this functionality. If you come across an app that claims to offer this ability, please report the app,” Facebook’s Help Center says.
We tested out the @highlight feature ourselves by typing @highlight into the comments of one of VERIFY’s Facebook posts. Using my personal Facebook account, I typed in @highlight and before officially posting the comment, under the word @highlight was the text that said “Some friends might receive notifications.”
After commenting on VERIFY’s Facebook post, I asked my Facebook friends to share if they received a notification and what the notification said. Twelve people shared screenshots with different variations of what the notification said:
- Kelly Jones highlighted a comment for you to check out
- Kelly Jones highlighted a comment
- Kelly Jones mentioned you and other friends in a comment
More than 10 other people commented on my post and said they received the same message.
Using the @highlight feature didn’t show me who had viewed my profile. Instead, it directed some of my friends to the comment on the VERIFY Facebook post.
MORE FROM VERIFY: Facebook does not have a lottery promotion. This is a common scam.
The @highlight tag and notification is very similar to @followers tags some businesses or pages use, or the @everyone tag that is sometimes used in Facebook groups to notify all group members.
Several other organizations have debunked the meme.
According to a June 2023 article from technology website MakeUseOf, the type of notification someone receives after a mass mention is called a “batch notification.”
People can opt out of batch notifications – like @highlight, @followers or @everyone – by adjusting their notification settings on Facebook. Here are the steps:
- Go to “Settings & Privacy” on your Facebook account
- Click on “Notification settings”
- Scroll to the “Tags”
- Keep scrolling down to the section that says “Receive notifications for”
- Turn off “Batch mentions” by toggling the button from blue to gray
VERIFY reached out to Facebook with questions about the meme that was texted to us, and also how the social media network chooses which friends receive notifications, but did not hear back at the time of publication.
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