Thursday, April 9, 2015

Tweak Your Facebook News Feed

Everyone can probably name the one or two friends on Facebook who are constantly filling their news feed with game notices, survey results, and other unimportant items.  Most of us have probably just learned to scroll past their posts, but if you want to take action, here are a few ways to stop them from filling your news feed:

Unfollow Them - Facebook announced the ability to "follow" people who are not your friends (you can still only see their public posts), but at the same time they also added the ability to "unfollow" people who are your friends.  This will keep you on their friends list, but you won't see any of their posts.  To unfollow someone, go to their profile page.  At the bottom of the cover photo will be a box that says "Following".  Click that box to unfollow the person.

Make Them an Acquaintance - Facebook has a built-in acquaintance list that you can use to add people who you don't want to receive updates from very often.  If you don't want to completely unfollow someone (so that you can still see their occasional important post), you can try adding that person to the acquaintance list.

Block Pages - Perhaps your problem isn't with a specific person, but with a specific page or Facebook app.  If you keep seeing the same page's posts in your feed, you can block that page.  Click on the arrow in the upper-right corner of the post, and then select "Unfollow [Page Name]".  This will stop that page's posts from appearing in your feed, no matter who decided to share it.

Tell Facebook - On the same menu where you can block pages is another option:  "I don't want to see this".  While you cannot control what appears in your newsfeed, at least you can tell Facebook the types of posts you don't want there.  Click this button enough times and Facebook will start to get an idea of what you don't want to see.

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