I don’t know about y’all, but after day two of the “new” Facebook – more specifically, the ticker reel/feed/thingy – I realized the company’s ultimate, evil goal.
Facebook wants me to hate all my friends.
Nate listened to Katy Perry’s “TGIF” 14 times. Kerry commented on six photos. Emily liked four new pages and 12 people’s status updates. Adam read three articles on The Washington Post website – and thanks to the automatic share function, I can name each one.
So, I had to go to Nate’s page and unsubscribe from his “Music and Videos.” I unsubscribed from Kerry and Emily’s “Comments and Likes” – but only because I’m not that close to them, so I won’t miss anything by hiding that information. I didn’t alter any settings for Adam, because we have similar interests and I tend to enjoy the articles he reads.
Trust me – I’m *this* close to climbing into my status bar and shouting, “Please go to my page and unsubscribe! I don’t want you to hate me.” I do a lot of things on Facebook, and I’m sure I’m clogging up the ticker…it’s not that I want to, but that’s how baseball go. Expect “auto share” to become synonymous with “auto hate.” Facebook is sugar coating it by calling them “gestures” – you no longer like an article, you read it. You no longer like a video, you watch it. You get it. Facebook assumes your “friends” actually want to know all of this junk. What’s sad is, I can immediately start ticking off the names of those who actually think we want to know all that junk.
So, let’s briefly talk about how we can prevent some of this hatred, and perhaps even some embarrassment (*ahem*, Nate).
First of all, so you know:
Your main privacy setting (public, friends or custom) only applies to new posts. Old posts will remain private (if they were not shared publicly before), but if you’ve altered your setting from a more public setting to a more private one, the posts that were created when you used the more public setting are still public.
Clear as mud?
To restrict the visibility of your entire Timeline, there is a separate setting that you must enable. Go to your privacy setting page and select “Limit the Audience for Past Posts.” (**see below)
Here is what you’ll see on your settings page – think of it as the Table of Contents for your privacy settings.
New and/or important here:
How You Connect: Who can look up your timeline by name or contact info? Who can post on your timeline? Who can see posts by others on your timeline?
How Tags Work: Timeline Review of posts friends tag you in before they go on your timeline; Tag Review of tags that friends want to add to your posts; Maximum Timeline Visibility of posts you’re tagged in once they’re on your timeline.
Apps and Websites: we’ll get to this, stay with me.
**Limit the Audience for Past Posts:** content on your timeline you’ve shared with more than your friends (ex: Public posts) will change to Friends. Remember: people who are tagged and their friends may see those posts as well.
Now, before you go off and start clicking everything like a psycho, please note: you also have the option to individually change the audience of your posts.
Okay – stop here, and go here. Right now. While you’re there, if you’re so inclined, watch the lady (whom I’m sure is lovely) tell you about some of these features whilst she creepily smiles.
There are two things we should discuss.
First – changing individual posts on your Timeline. This could be in lieu of opting for the “Limit the Audience for Past Posts,” or in addition to. I personally have never posted anything publicly (*pats back*), so I did not choose to use that feature.
Here’s the deal on this: when you are on your page, looking at your Timeline sprawled before you, you can only tell it if you want something on your Timeline or not, or if you want to delete it (see Item A below). In order to select all the juicy sharing details, you need to click on “individual stories” (if that option presents itself, see Item B below), or head to your Activity Log.
Item A: 
Item B: 
Ultimately, you can go to each event (via either avenue above) and select if you want to allow it on your Timeline, if you want it featured (see the star there?) on your Timeline (in which case the item just becomes more prominent), or if you want it gone.
For the following items, you have even more sharing/privacy options:
- check-ins
- link posts
- status updates
- photos
- video
- notes
- certain applications
On some of them, like photos, you can even hop in a time machine and change the date of occurrence (those high school cheerleading pictures aren’t going to post themselves). But these more detailed options are available for the above listed items only.
Since I’m insane, I decided I wanted to take this puppy post by post. I did this through my Activity Log.
Again – you can also do this on the actual Timeline, but by doing so, you’ll inevitably end up going back and forth between it and the Activity Log.
The Activity Log is completely private. Swear.
Once you’re in there, you can go by year–>month. I then went by activity. So, to reiterate – you’re choosing the year, then the month, then what activity you want to walk through. Breaking it down like this was easiest for me.
Here’s what your options of activities may look like (see Item C below). I selected to go through my photos, so it took me here (see Item D below):
Item C: click to enlarge Item D: click to enlarge
Second (yep, we’ve still been on “first” this whole time) – app settings. When you see what songs your friends are listening to and what articles they’re reading, that’s because the settings of that app are directing it to inform the feed. If Nate had gone in and modified Spotify’s sharing setting to where no one could see it, I wouldn’t be pointing at the screen and laughing because I now know he listened to The Cranberries all morning. See where I’m going with this? You need to direct the settings in each individual app you use, the first time you use it. Walk with me.
Apps no longer have to ask for permission to post content to Facebook each time. Instead, a new Facebook permissions screen explains exactly what type of stories will be shared the first time you give an app permission to post to your Facebook. After that, it will no longer have to ask for permission.
Study these, my minions: (click to enlarge)
After the fact, the easiest way to control who can see updates from individual apps is the app setting page. For example, if I wanted to set/change/review my settings for my Spotify app, it would look like this:
Here, it tells me what powers this app has – posting to my timeline, accessing data, etc. Some “powers” are required in order to use the app. In such case, don’t fret – see the “App activity privacy”? Just select “Only Me” from that bad boy, and no one will have to know that you’ve been browsing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit page (what? Girls look, too.).
I’ve pretty much set all my apps to “Only Me.” People find me way less annoying that way.
I cross-my-heart promise that if you just spend some time on these pages, you’ll figure it out. I mentioned above that I went post-by-post. I got through two years in one night. But, like I said, I’m insane. It’s not so much I’m hiding a bunch of stuff…more like tidying up my place for guests.
Because – don’t forget – don’t post it if you’d be mortified it ever got out. Y’all are smarter than that.
Happy gesturing!
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