How To Ditch Facebook: A Guide | Part 2: Gaming the News Feed
Thanks to even more revelations about how Facebook operates, it’s becoming clearer to more people that it’s time to #AbandonFacebook. Some are deleting their accounts and not looking back, but many others feel they can’t disengage from Facebook right away due to connections with family and friends, or followers and fans.
In Part 1 of this series I talked about how to navigate Facebook without giving them money. In this article I’ll go into how to stay connected to the people you care about while thwarting the algorithm.
**Major Update: July 2021**
This post used to be a lot more useful. What’s changed? Facebook rolled out big “improvements” to their user interface several months back. When they did, they took away most of the features and functionality that I talked about in the original version of this post.
Let me say that again: Facebook removed functionality that previously existed. Now it’s much harder for users to control their feeds and reading.
Another reason to Abandon Facebook altogether.
However, if you’re still not ready to do that, there are still a few tricks that work.
Disrupt The Default News Feed Behavior
Before the big change, there were ways to avoid the News Feed and ensure you saw posts from people you cared about: Custom Friend Lists, the Close Friends List, and links to feeds that showed only posts from groups or pages or friends. Now the Friend Lists are only useful for controlling who sees your posts — the feeds showing only posts from people on a list is gone. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to look at only posts from Pages, anymore.
What you can do is use third-party browser add-ons like Social Fixer or FB Purity to:
1. Set the News Feed to Most Recent Permanently
This doesn’t mean you’ll see posts the algorithm is hiding from you, but it does break the way the algorithm tries to encourage you to keep scrolling by putting posts in a certain order.
2. Only Load a Set Number of Posts at a Time
Social Fixer has a setting that, by default, will only load 50 posts at a time. When you get to the bottom you’ll see a box asking you to click to load more. You can set the number of posts to anything, including lowering it. I’ve found that this keeps me from falling into a mindless Facebook scrolling pattern and gives me a reason to just stop and do something else.
3. Hide Crap You Don’t Need To See
Even if you switch to chronological order, you may still get trapped in a Facebook eddy because of what your friends who still use the default News Feed share. The kind of posts that make you angry or upset or otherwise get a strong reaction out of you are the ones Facebook has deemed good for engagement. By hiding them you thwart their efforts to keep you on the site longer.
Use Social Fixer or FB Purity to filter out annoying posts so you don’t see them at all. You can block posts by keyword or use a pre-created filter to block broad or narrow topics.
I started using Social Fixer to hide posts about politics back before the 2016 presidential election and it made it possible for me to scroll my feed without raising my blood pressure.
These add-ons will also hide sponsored posts in the feed plus all the ads and “Groups You Might Like” stuff on the sidebars, too.
4. Unfollow Everyone
Last year Facebook quashed a great browser extensions called Unfollow Everything which gave you the ability to unfollow all friends, Pages, and Groups at once. This didn’t remove you from Groups and didn’t unfriend any Friends. All it did was unfollow them all, resulting in one’s newsfeed being blank.
You could then go back through all your friends, Groups, and Pages and pick a few to follow. Or, keep everyone unfollowed and go to individual profiles, Pages, or Groups (tedious, but it works for some!).
Facebook got big mad about this because it disrupts their primary way of controlling you. That’s why they made the creator shut Unfollow Everything down. Of course, now there are other browser extensions that will do the same thing. Go to the Extensions or Add-On repository for your browser and search unfollow everyone Facebook and you’ll see them.
Leave The News Feed Behind (Sort Of)
New Facebook has a feature called Favorites which is similar to Custom Friend Lists while being far less useful. To find it, look on the left sidebar of the site (you might have to click See More) for Favorites. At the top, click Manage Favorites and you’ll see an option for adding People and Pages (not Groups… we’ll get to that) to your favorites. You’ll be able to see them all in a feed similar to the way Custom Friends Lists worked.
There’s a catch. (You saw that coming.) You can only add 30 friends or Pages to Favorites.
The idea behind Favorites is similar to the Close Friends list: marking something as a favorite tells FB to show you posts from them more often. Even if the person/page doesn’t post as much, even if you haven’t interacted with their posts for a while. It’s a way to ensure you can keep up with people who matter most even if they are rare posters.
It still isn’t as useful as friend lists. Because, again, Facebook has a vested interest in keeping you scrolling and keeping you enraged.
You Can Still See Groups In A Feed
The one silo they didn’t take away was the ability to see posts from all your Groups in one place. You can access this from the Groups button on the left sidebar or at the top of the page via the Groups icon.
The feed you see is sorted by recent activity, so might not show you the newest posts up front. This is still pretty useful, especially if you’ve abandoned the regular News Feed for just using Groups. This page will also give you the option to unfollow Groups while staying joined just in case they’re noisy.
What About Mobile?
As I said in Part 1, I highly suggest you delete the Facebook app as well as Messenger and only access FB through mbasic.facebook.com in your mobile browser.
There used to be a few apps that you could use to access Facebook that made some of the fixes Social Fixer and FB Purity offer on computers. Facebook sued them into oblivion. So we’re left with mbasic.
That’s not an elegant solution, I admit. If your goal is to spend less time on Facebook or to make the time you do spend there meaningful, then not using it on your phone or using it in a narrow way may help you achieve that. Plus, you’re still disrupting the way Facebook wants you to use the site.
None Of This Is Sufficient
Facebook taking away features to force users to interact with the site in ways that are bad for mental health but good for keeping you on the app so they can shove more ads in your face is the most Facebook thing.
Don’t let them get away with it.
In Part 3 I’ll talk about using Facebook Groups to avoid the News Feed altogether and still stay connected to friends or followers.
K. Tempest Bradford is a tech journalist, podcaster, media critic, and professional harsher of squee. If you appreciate these tips, drop a coin or two in the Tip Jar!
