I had a long-standing rule that I would not friend “adults” - I’m 33 but that meant anyone in the generation before mine. Basically no aunts, uncles, my parents’ cousins or my brother’s in-laws. This rule came about pretty much due to the fact that I have two aunts I hate.
Kind of sad but one of the aunts died and the other divorced my uncle (the blood relative) so I relaxed the rule and let my mom and aunt friend me.
I had a couple people bring it up to me in person but I explained why the rule was in place and they were cool with it. I also said I didn’t want to have to censor myself on their behalf. Also cool.
As for friends with whackadoo views, I just de-friend them. By “friends” I mean “people I went to school with and that’s it.” If I see them making weirdo posts I just de-friend. If they call me on it I say “I want to remember you fondly as I remember you from school, not clouded by your wildly differeng political beliefs.”
This year I happened to run in to two girls that I’d de-friended because of politics, and while both of them were cold to me/ignored me, there was no nasty fall out.
I have right-wing friends and sometimes they say stuff that makes me a little upset but not enough/not often enough to de-friend them.
I have had to block the posts of left-wingers because they just post too much shit in one day.
I try not to say anything at all. Unless it’s about school levies, then I get a little riled up.
I start discussions with them. If they tell me to stop or things get too heated, then I stop. Same as real life.
I really hate the idea of defriending someone on facebook as some sort of punishment. Sure, there are family members who have pissed me off in the past, but I only see the point of unfriending if I’m actually ending that relationship, which I won’t do over something silly like that.
Personally, I have no issue with people who have differing political opinions, what bothers me is when people make a dozen posts a day about their political opinions, and it bothers me just as much if I disagree with them too. In fact, I don’t like it when anyone makes a dozen posts a day. I make a point of trying to only post things that are important to me and I really want to share. If you feel the need to make a bunch of posts, you either need to reconsider the social media your’e using, perhaps something like Twitter would be better for that, or at least consider the audience and post it to a group dedicated to that, or at least narrow the audience to friends that would care.
So, for family that have insisted on doing that sort of them, I asked them to stop and made that suggestion, to post it to a group or whatever. If they keep doing it, I just block their feed. That way, if I want to see what’s going on, I can always go check their timeline, but I don’t get other stuff I care about being force off the front page by a bunch of nonsense. It’s unfortunate that I then miss some important posts from those people with their feeds blocked, but that’s just how it goes.
Really, some people just need to have a better understanding of how social networking is supposed to work. If you want to make a few important small posts or share things, Facebook is perfect. If you want to post a whole lot of small updates, use Twitter. If you want to write a whole bunch of long posts or something, maybe you just need a blog. Why is this concept so difficult?