If you are chronically online you may have seen the trend of things you hear in the local Facebook group.
"Anyone else here that bang, around 9pm?"
"Hi guys looking for work for my fifteen-year-old son"
"If anyone is interested, I just started a lawn mowing company"
"whose dog is this, found in my yard"
Facebook community pages have long been a running joke amongst friends. People laugh at the absurdity of many posts, but there is something to say about the community building these online pages actually create.
Last year the Queensland Police and Neighbourhood Watch Queensland commissioned the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) to conduct a research study. The study's main focus was to better understand how people contribute to digital community safety, manage misinformation and interact with formal policing structures.
The methodology focused on Facebook groups rather than social media as a whole. This was mainly due to the architecture of the platform and its group pages, where there is visible membership, post approval and admin hierarchies.
Facebook has over 3 billion users and the average person joins around 5 groups. Facebook groups that are geographically based can have between 10,000–20,000 members.
"That wields a lot of power," Keith Heggart, UTS researcher says.
On average these groups had 4–5 posts or conversations a day.
Being a moderator of a Facebook page is like a full-time job, and the research team at UTS wanted to know why people would voluntarily take that responsibility on.
One moderator told the research team they started a positive group because they didn't want people to think that was what living in their suburb was like.
Civic pride. Many moderators just wanted to give back to their community.
These pages run like little online townships; people get on first thing in the morning and wish everyone a good day. "It'd be like they're bumping into each other at the store," Heggart says.
Daily posts vary but the humorous anecdotes from earlier still ring true — posts of sunsets, job applications, and general community updates make up a majority of daily content, but when you look at it through the civic community lens, somehow the joke starts to feel beside the point.
Moderating a Facebook community group is no easy feat. Facebook offers a range of tools and information for group admins, but much of this is focused on how a community group can grow into an enterprise.
"These people aren't interested in that. They want to be able to minimize conflict, they want to make sure everyone knows what's going on, and they want to make sure that no one's being a goose on Facebook," Heggart says.
Community page moderators are acting as informal digital first responders and community communicators, but they are often operating without the tools, authority, or backing needed to do this work effectively.
UTS's research paper recommended a co-designed training model to better equip community page admins in their role as digital first responders. The pilot program saw 20 moderators receive training. The Queensland Police and Neighbourhood Watch Queensland have begun rolling out the training to 200 more moderators after the success of the pilot training. Keith Heggart says they've also received interest from WA and NSW about the program. Perhaps Facebook moderator training is about to go national.
Facebook community pages have become modern day notice boards. Beyond the air fryers and the lost dogs, these pages have become critical information sources in moments of crisis.
In January, Victoria was plagued with bushfires that destroyed between 400,000 and 410,000 hectares during the January 2026 fire season. In Harcourt and the surrounding areas, a Facebook page became a critical source of information. Paul Mizzi, a Harcourt resident and charity CEO had set up Facebook pages in the past, but when a community meeting was held three to four days after the bushfires ripped through the area, an existing Facebook page, the Harcourt Progress Association, became the central hub for recovery information.
This page became "the source of truth," Paul Mizzi says.
To monitor posts during crisis to ensure accurate and timely information was posted was a feat in-and-of its own. Paul says the page has a long history of consistent admins who monitor the page and credibility of posts. However, during the aftermath of the fires, they had two instances where false information was published. Paul says the team disabled anonymous posting.
"This changed behaviour... the person who posted the false information tried to deny responsibility... [they] did not realise that admin can see their identity," he says.
The page has now amassed over 3,300 members despite Harcourt's population being just over 1000. The HPA page has seen "a community now far more connected in a community which had been disconnected by highways and freeways," Paul Mizzi says.
Even though Facebook groups can feel gimmicky and geared towards your retired uncle and time-rich neighbour, there's something to say for how they build community in a world where knowing your neighbours is slowly becoming a thing of the past.
So tonight scroll on your local Facebook page, and yes laugh because these posts can be funny, but also look for those moments that show you, as Keith puts it, "maybe it's not the end of humanity after all."