What Counts as a Public Post (and What a Scan Can Actually See)

"Public" is one of those words everyone uses and no two apps mean quite the same way. On one network your posts are open to the entire internet the moment you hit send. On another, most of what you share sits behind a wall only your approved contacts can get past. And on at least one, the setting lives on each post, so the same person can be wide open and locked down in the same afternoon.

That distinction is not trivia. Any honest tool that reads social media - ours included - can only see what is genuinely public. So the line between public and private is not a technicality to skim past. It is the exact edge of what anyone at all, a stranger, a recruiter, a scan, can find without asking your permission first.

Public and private are not the same everywhere

Start with the one idea that carries the whole thing: a post is public when someone who is not on your approved list can read it. What that list is, and how far outside it a post travels, is where the networks split apart. On some, "public" reaches the entire web, logged in or not, indexed by search engines. On others, it stops at the edge of that platform - visible to any member, invisible to the outside. Same word, very different blast radius.

The practical upshot is simple. If you are trying to read someone before you trust them, you are limited to the public slice of their activity. And if you are worried about your own posts, the public slice is exactly the part a stranger can already see. Knowing which of your accounts sit on which side of that line is worth five minutes of anyone's time.

What counts as a public post, network by network

The five networks a scan can read - X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn - each draw the public line in their own place. The details shift as the apps update their settings, so treat this as the shape of things rather than a fixed rulebook.

• X. On a standard, unprotected account, posts are about as public as it gets - readable by anyone on the web, logged in or not, and often turning up in search. Switch the account to "protected" and only approved followers see the posts from then on.
• TikTok. Videos on a public account play for anyone. Flip the account to private and only approved followers can watch, and younger users start with tighter defaults. The account-level switch is the thing that decides it.
• Instagram. The cleanest split of the five. A public account shows its posts, reels and highlights to anyone; a private account limits all of it to approved followers. It is mostly one setting for the whole profile.
• Facebook. The messiest, and the one people misjudge most. The audience lives on each post, so a single profile can hold public posts, friends-only posts and custom-audience posts side by side. One public photo does not mean the whole account is open.
• LinkedIn. A lot of a profile is visible to anyone, though some activity depends on being signed in or connected. It leans public by nature, since the point of the network is to be found professionally.

How to check whether an account is public

You do not need a tool to tell whether a profile is open. You just need to look at it the way a stranger would.

1. Open the profile while logged out or in a private browser window - if you can still see the posts, they are public to anyone.
2. Look for a lock icon or a 'this account is private' notice, which means the posts are limited to approved followers.
3. Check a few posts, not just the newest - on some networks each post can carry its own audience, so one profile can mix public and private.
4. Note how much they actually post in public; a wall of public posts tells you far more than a profile with three photos from years ago.
5. Remember that settings change - public today is not a promise of public tomorrow, and the reverse is true too.

What a scan can and cannot see

Here is the honest boundary. ACCOUNTability! reads thousands of a person's public posts across X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and flags extremist content, hate speech, transphobia and conspiracy material, putting the actual post in front of you so the judgement stays yours. What it cannot do is reach past the public line. Locked accounts, friends-only posts, direct messages, already-deleted posts - all of it is invisible to a scan, the same way it is invisible to you.

That limit is baked into how the result reads. A clean scan means nothing in someone's public posts stood out - not that the person is safe, and not that there is nothing they have chosen to keep private. It is a read of what is already visible to anyone who looks, and it is a personal check of public posts, not a background check or consumer report. On a quiet account it has little to work with; on an active one it does real work. And because it is AI flagging content with the receipts attached, context can trip it - reclaimed language or flat sarcasm can get marked when nothing was meant, which is exactly why it hands you the post to judge rather than a verdict to take on faith.

None of that makes reading public posts less useful. It makes it honest. You are looking at the part of a person they have already put in front of the world, deciding for yourself what it tells you, and staying clear about where the light stops.