When you follow someone on Facebook, they are generally not directly notified that you followed them, but they can still see you in certain places and under some conditions.

Quick Scoop

  • No pop-up or push notification goes to the person saying “X just followed you.”
  • They can see your name if they look at their follower list (when followers are visible on their profile or Page).
  • “Friending” and “following” are different: friend requests do send a notification; simple follows do not.

Following a personal profile

For personal accounts that allow followers:

  • The person does not get a specific “new follower” alert in their notifications tab.
  • They can notice you:
    • By checking their follower count and seeing it increase.
* By viewing followers (if they actively look at that section).

So it is not a secret in an absolute sense, but it is also not broadcast loudly to them.

Following a Facebook Page

For Pages (brands, creators, businesses):

  • Page owners do not get an individual notification for each new follower; they mostly see total follower numbers and analytics.
  • You can customize notifications you receive from Pages via “Follow settings” → choose Standard/Highlights under Notifications.

This means you can quietly follow a Page without worrying that the admin is pinged with your name every time.

Re‑following someone you unfollowed

If you unfollowed someone and later follow them again:

  • There is still no normal, direct “X followed you” notification for that change.
  • As before, they could only notice indirectly (e.g., by scrutinizing follower lists or engagement).

Key difference: Follow vs Friend

Here is the core difference in how Facebook treats these actions.

Action type What it does Does it notify them?
Follow Subscribe to public posts without mutual connection. No direct notification; only visible if they check followers or stats.
Friend request Ask for a mutual connection; if accepted, you see each other’s posts (per settings). Yes, they see a clear friend request notification.

SEO bits (for your post)

  • Main focus keyword “when you follow someone on facebook are they notified” is best answered clearly: they are usually not directly notified, but can see followers if they look. Use that exact phrase in your intro and one subheading for search friendliness.
  • You can safely mention this as “latest news” in the sense that Facebook’s follow behavior in 2024–2025 continues to work this way, especially for public/follower-style profiles and Pages.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.