Benjamin Bloodworth's Blog

Alright, so you’re an Internet superstar. You’ve managed to friend thousands of people on Facebook, and now your Facebook home page is filled with so many posts from people you don’t know, that posts from people you actually care about are lost in the scroll. Fortunately this is pretty easy to fix.

Create a List

From your Facebook home page, click the +Create link.

Facebook Create List

You can name this list anything you want. This list will contain people whose posts you actually want to see. I named my list, People I Know.

1. Type a name for the list in the box where it has highlighted Enter a Name. I named this list People I Know. Feel free to make up your own name that makes more sense to you.
2. Now either click the photo of each person whose posts you want to see, or type their name in the search box. If you accidentally click the wrong person, click their photo again to remove them from the list.
3. After you’ve added everyone who belongs on the list, click the Create List button.

Here’s a screen shot for reference. I’ve intentionally blurred out the photos and names of my friends for their own protection.

Facebook Create List Dialog

Now you can simply click this list from your home screen to filter the news feed down to just the people you care about seeing. It’s kind of a pain to click this button every time you log in to Facebook. This is easily resolved by clicking and dragging the list you just created to the first position. Now when you log in to Facebook, you will see posts from only the people on your list. If you want to see everyone’s posts, you can click the News Feed list.

You can change the list order in Facebook

Drawbacks

Currently you can’t add Pages to a list in Facebook. This means posts from any Page that you’ve become a fan of won’t show up unless you click the News Feed list.

Hiding Applications or Friends

Most games on Facebook like to advertise themselves, A LOT. Even though you’ve now filtered your friends list down to just the people whose posts you want to see, you’re still getting flooded with notifications from all of the applications that your friends play. You can hide notifications from individual applications.

1. Put your mouse cursor over the post you want to hide.
2. On the far right of the post, you’ll see a little menu that says Hide.
3. Clicking the menu will give you two options.
1. Choosing Hide [Person's Name] will remove all posts from this person from your News Feed regardless of any lists to which they belong. We’ve already added them to a list of people whose posts we want to see, so don’t choose this option.
2. Choosing Hide [Application Name] will remove all posts from that application. This is the option you should choose. This will hide those spammy applications from your News Feed, yet still let you see your friends’ status updates and photos they’ve posted.

Here’s a sample image. I’ve intentionally blurred the names and photos.

Facebook Menu to Hide Application Notifications

Showing Applications or Friends

If you accidentally hide an application, you can show it again by scrolling to the bottom of your News Feed and clicking the Edit Options link.

Facebook News Feed Edit Options Link

You’ll get a dialog box that displays all of the applications you’ve hidden. Click the Add to News Feed button for each application that you want to add back to your News Feed stream.

Facebook Hidden From News Feed Dialog Window

This window may look slightly different if you’ve hidden some friends. If you want to add a friend back into your News Feed, click the Add to News Feed button for that friend. You will need to click the Applications link to get to a list of Applications you’ve hidden. Here’s a screen shot if you’ve hidden friends and applications.

Facebook Hidden From News Feed Friends And Applications

By following these steps, you can eliminate the majority of unwanted posts from your News Feed.

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