I’m still pretty new to Facebook, just a few months in. When I “join” a public event I have discovered that it sometimes shows up in the newsfeeds of friends. Is there any way to avoid this? I don’t particularly want my Long Island aunties asking me about some of the events I join. (“What kind of show is"Apocalesque” dear?")
I’ve been pretty good about customizing my posts and photos but can’t figure out how to do this. I suspect from reading Facebook help there isn’t a way, but asking the Dope for help almost always works for me.
Come on you social media mavens, tell me how it’s done!
you will soon find a lot of similar items on facebook are purely there to trap new users into annoying the ever loving bejesus out of their friends.
do yourself a favor and don’t “join” anything, or like random things like “food” or “staying awake all night”, as you’ll get weird crap in your feed, and others.
You can filter all that crap out of your feed.
Sometimes they post useful things, depending on the organization. For example, if you like NewEgg, you’ll be given links to sales and promo codes every now and then.
When it comes to events, if you’re concerned about your privacy, just delete them. You can tell the hose you’re coming through a different method if they care so much about keeping track of attendance.
Is there a beginner’s primer or tutorial out there somewhere on how to use Facebook?
I’ve had an account for about a year. I’ve spent probably a grand total of maybe 3 hours poking around there in all that time. For a rank n00b, it strikes me as horribly UN-obvious how to do much of anything, it seems extremely difficult to figure out how to navigate around, and not “discoverable” to figure out how it works. Nothing about it encourages me to keep coming back and spending more time there to figure it out.
To be sure, I have a rather low interest in Facebook to begin with. On a scale of 0 to 100, maybe 0.001 if that. But nothing I’ve been able to figure out in my puny 3 hours has served to increase my interest to 0.002 yet.
I can’t even figure out what to click on, to see a list of my friends. If I happen to see a post from one of my friends when I’m on my own page, I can click on the friends name to see that person’s page. Okay, I figured that out. But if I don’t happen to see a post from, say friend “Mark” today, I don’t know how to see a list of my friends so “Mark” will show up for me to click on. Things like that.
I’ve got way too much time logged on that site and I agree, it’s complete shit.
As far as I’ve been able to figure out, it’s a two-step process to even view your own friends. You go to your own timeline and click friends or click on “friends” on the left of the main feed, then click something else that says “view all friends” or some other stupidity.
God I wish my friends would pick up Google+ already. Fuck Facebook.
According to Facebook Help here:
Sucks 
This is precisely why I am not on Facebook. Even if you do figure out how to keep something private, it is only private today. Tomorrow, you may regret it.
The programmers at Facebook may change the default settings, or add a new function, or move a menu, or change a single click to a double, or do anything they damn well decide to do.And eventually, you’re going to make a mistake.
I always assume that every single word I have ever typed on a web page, every single picture I have ever posted, every email I have ever sent, will remain visible to the entire world forever.
(and I honestly have nothing to hide ).
It puts a real damper on my on-line life. But it’s too easy to create embarrassing situations that I’ll regret later.
I agree with this. I mean, it’s the same as any other Internet thing - be careful what you put on there - but I’ve been journaling on LJ for years and years and never felt any worry that they may change the default settings tomorrow.
I basically left FB for many reasons, chief among them that the creator and I had radically different notions of what “privacy” meant. It just wasn’t for me.
aw man, it’s not just that I can’t figure out how.
Thanks for the advice. I shall henceforth “join” no events and let the hosts know some other way.