Great post! I was aware of these options, but only because I dug through them as best as I could figure. The new privacy settings options have been so diluted that these settings are not readily obvious and I found them through sheer determination. Now if we could only stop the newly added friends, comments on other’s walls and photos, etc. from showing up, that would be fantastic! Frankly, I would love if they would just offer the old settings again.

thank you for this helpful post.

what about comments, likes etc.? is there any way to prevent facebook from posting those activities in feeds and profiles as well?

Thanks for these explanations, Nick. But the majority of my recent activity posts is about likes and comments. Before the recent privacy update you could define visibility settings of these posts. Has this option gone completely now or am I just not able to find the setting?

Hmmm, is it me or I cannot find “Ads and Pages”? I watched the video and I was to that place but it’s not there. That’s really strange.

Great article! Very informative and useful.

Question. If you uncheck publish to streams for photos, you mentioned that tagged photos will not publish. But what about other photo activity? I want my own uploaded photos to still show up.

Help. I don’t see “Ads and Pages” on the Application Settings page. I looked under “Allowed to Post”.

I don’t see the “Ads and Pages” either…

The new settings are horrible and confusing! When the changes first happened in December, I went into all my settings and took anything off of “everybody” and changed it “network and friends”. Just yesterday, I went into those same settings to check something, changed a few to “only friends”. When I checked the preview of what I’d done, I didn’t like it, so went to go change it back to what I’d set it to just a few weeks ago and I couldn’t!! The “network and friends” setting was completely gone, and so I had no choice but to leave it at “only friends”.

So thanks for this article. I will certainly be going thru it step by step and see what I can do. Now if only there was some way to stop everything I say being shown on Google!!

This is really helpful, thanks.

I don’t appear to have an Ads and Pages application link though, and i checked through all the drop downs. Do you know why?

Thanks, that was really helpful! Now if we can figure out how to block the add a friend, commented on a friends status and prevent our picture albums from going public to their friends stream when someone comments on them…….I will be a happy FB camper again.

Removing History doesn’t work, try

the story disappear from your wall but is still shown on your friends news…

FB did the worst privacy change last month, it broke many Privacy settings, and there are many informations meant to be private that are now visible…

check this group, it explains very well what the privacy problems are:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44310011336

If you can’t find Ads & Pages, watch the video.

From the top blue menu, click:

Settings > Application Settings > Show: Authorized (from the drop-down menu at right).

You’ll see Ads & Pages at the top of that list.

I still would like to remove from my stream every notification of added friends, which doesn’t seem possible anymore.

Edit:

I found out that you will only see “Ads and Pages” in your list of Applications if you’ve created a fan Page or created an Ad. Otherwise you won’t see it.

Go here to the application page: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6802152230

And after you create a fake Page then you’ll see the Ads And Pages option in your list of Applications and can modify the settings.

The vast majority of users who have never created an Ad or a Page won’t see this setting.

Edit 2: So I removed the setting to allow Ads and Pages to post, and joined a Fan Page and it still shows up in my recent activity.

Solution not yet found.

Nope. I don’t think this works.

I “unticked” “publish to streams” on Groups - and it still published a comment on my wall that I made in a group.

Has anyone actually tested it and seen it work yet? I see lots of people commenting but no-one saying - “Yes it works?”

Paul

Thanks Nick but it doesn’t work unfortunately. Even more annoying is the fact that comments and who we have befriended are broadcast in the news feed, and that when we write on walls the posts appear in mutual friends’ news feeds; I hope Facebook fix these issues.

You cannot completely turn off recent activity stories anymore. However, if you want to remove a particular story that currently shows up, simply click the “Remove” button that appears to the right of the story after you move your mouse over it.

@Kris Removing a story doesn’t work, try

You delete the story from your profile, but a friend can still see it in his newsfeed and it stay there for days…

It’s worth pointing out that you can hide all recent activity stories from your profile (though not from your friends’ feeds) by setting your default privacy for posts to anything other than “everyone”. This hides your wall from randoms altogether.

Nick, I read on the developers’ blog that applications were going to be stopped from publishing recent activity to profiles, and would only be able to publish full status-like stream stories; is that right?

How do I stop Facebook from publishing recent activity to my friends news feeds & my profile when I:

1. Click on “like” - on a friends status
2. Comment on a friends status
3. Write on a friends wall

(I don’t mind friends reading what I have written but I don’t want them to be prompted when I do)

I just don’t want my friends reading my current activity! Is this possible?

A big THANK YOU for this information!

this post is worthless. you’re not even answering the question that you posed for yourself!!! how do we delete recent activity such as when you write on friends walls, become friends with someone, etc. HOW???? everyone knows you can click “remove,” but how do you actually not have it show up in the first place? it’s a pain always having to check.

DOESN’T WORK ON COMMENTS, LIKES, ETC….

Mine has been unchecked since this changed launched… it does not remove the “Recent Activity”. We should not have to “simply” hit the remove button back on our wall everytime we click or comment. Yes, this step removed groups… but when I comment on a group… as sure as the sun will rise, it is plastered to my wall.

What people do not realize is by their advertising your every move on your wall it is providing a link to your comments to friends that other friends may not be friends with.

Facebook is so UNENJOYBLE now… I keep looking online for solutions to this problem. Have emailed and complained to FB a million times over. Does not matter what your privacy settings are… everything is being fed to your wall or the news feed. Very Unprivate unlike it was before they made the change.

Sure we could set our setting so no one sees our wall, but then what would be the purpose of FB…

Unfortunately, your advice did not work. I followed your suggestions, but everything I did (like, e.g. become a fan of a page) still showed up like before, as recent activities.

Facebook has become a much less attractive place to communicate with friends. Actually, the worst part of it is the feeling of betrayal. A lot of people have been using this system for a long time, in the good faith that Facebook would stand firmly behind its own privacy statement. The last weeks’ lesson is very clear: They do not. Weakening user privacy in such a fundamental way, and even actively encouraging users to lower their own privacy settings additionally, is an assault on its own users, the way I see it.

It reminds me of the shock it was to many when Deja Vu (later acquired by Google) suddenly indexed all the billions of old Usenet posts, making them available to the general public. Usenet was a very dynamic playground created long before the search engines, and had a huge number of users who never had a worry on their mind that what they posted, would some day be index and made public. Imagine their shock 10 years later, when exactly that happened.

Now, we know for sure that Facebook is not reliable in privacy matters. They change the rules whenever they want. Data previously believed to be private (like friends lists, pages associations, etc.) has suddenly become public, creating embarassment for many, and life-threatening danger to others (e.g., members of the opposition in totalitarian countries). Does Facebook care? Of course not. If they did, they would not have done this.

In addition to this comes the huge number of “friendly” applications systematically harvesting user data for unknown purposes. That is right, you do not even need security holes to access personal data. You just create an application, and harvest whatever you would like to have. With Facebook’s blessing and encouragement. Or so it seems.

I would like to thank you for an interesting blog with a lot of excellent posts. What I miss here, however, is a little more “edge”, a more critical attitude. In system terms, Facebook is not a democracy, but more like a dictatorship. With its huge user base it is like a omnipotent, but unpredictable and distant, government changing its own laws at will. I think this government might need a few strong and clever system critics who put these issues on the map, making them visible and understandable to the big audience–who already have a choice, but needs to know the difference…

Kris

my point exactly. i dont want people to know i commented or liked status/pix etc. it makes me not what to partake in facebook anymore…

vimeo has emerged as a major player in the online video market. i never would have thought this 4 years ago…

These new privacy settings are unacceptable. Why the change? Does this have something to do with Facebook trying to use our profiles, comments, etc. to become more susceptible to advertising? I say Boo..

What!? I want to stop it from showing whenever I like something or comment on something. Deleting all of these stories manually is tedious! Gah.

i think the only way we can teach facebook a lesson is by stop using i.e liking,commenting or sending wall posts all together. Ofcourse we can still use the inbox. Hopefully facebook will notice low traffic and set things right !

I didn’t have “Ads and Pages” in mine either…. If you can’t find the “ads and pages” copy/paste this link. http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?v=feed

I saw this link in his screen on his video.

Thanks for the tips.

I would like for comments that other people post on my photos to automatically post to my Profile page. Does anyone know how to change the setting to allow those comments?

Also, I am not happy that some of the gifts from people are automatically posting to my profile. Is there a way to stop this?

this sucks! it doesnt matter if i remove the story from my wall on recent activities whenever i post on someone elses wall, it still appears on my friends feed even if those friends arent in each others list. major blunder facebook!

Thanks for trying but it still doesn’t solve the main issue - that Facebook has taken away our ability to block ALL recent activity. I don’t want my friends to know what comments I’ve made on other friend’s walls, and now I have to manually delete each one. We ALL need to complain to Facebook and see if they’ll give us that feature back! And I don’t understand why they took it away!!!!!

It doesn’t solve the main issue because Facebook signed a deal with Microsoft and Google’s search engines to allow them to search our status updates:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-says-privacy-is-no-longer-a-social-norm.html

Just leave Facebook.. this ‘recent activity’ issue seems not going to be fixed in a near time…

Agree with many posters here - what I WANT to block is the recent activity postings of likes or comments on friend’s walls or status updates. Please advise! Thanks.

I think it’s bs that everytime I post something to a friends’ wall, our mutual friends can read everything on their newsfeed. We should have control over these privacy settings. Also, it’s annoying that I have to “remove” everytime I comment on someone’s status or “like” something. Why is Facebook set up so that everyone can see exactly who you communicate with down to the T? Why did Facebook change the privacy settings? It seems to be going back in time!!

I’m selling a domain name, FacebookManual.com if anyone can use it,just drop me an email with an offer!

I have been going to my wall to clean up all the recent activity tags it shoves on there. My experience has been, however, that sometimes those tags do not show up right away for me to remove. Sometimes it’s several hours before it hits, then when I forget to go back. It is really a huge problem for those of us who use this professionally, for certain business relationships to be able to see who else I may be connecting with.

And I really don’t need my boss to know that I just commented on the photo of my cousin’s new baby.

I tried this, became a fan of a page but unfortunately it didn’t work and my friends still got a notification. I manage a page for young people with depression and it would be good if people could become a fan without Facebook telling all their friends about it.

what about Friends - (recently become friends)… how do u remove that from your stream/main page …?

So damnly useful!!!
I was just wondering wth the “Ads $ Pages” is
And I have tried so hard blocking the feeds.
Very awsome, thx!!

After I finally found Ads and Pages and changed the setting I wrote on two webpages and it did NOT show up in my feed. That’s good enough for me for right now if this continues. Between having everyone see where you go and what you do (Big Brother is surely watching), and making the wall so messy… This is a start. Thanks Nick and thanks to @MariSmith for giving us a heads up on this post. I will admit I had to read the comments to find the Ads and Pages settings. I could NOT find it and I DO have a Fan Page and have written on other Fan Pages.

I take it back… I logged out and came back and the one-line posts are back again! How can that be…

I would love to be able to find the edit ads and pages settings, it is not showing in my applications. Only at the bottom of the page
Thanks

Suzie

PS great post

I’ve tried this and it never worked for me. The only sure fire way seems to be to manually clean your wall.

So far it looks like it worked for me. Thank you very much, this was very helpful.

Now, how in the world do you hide your friend list from your friends?

How to you stop FB from suggesting your friends to other friends?

These new setting are RIDICULOUS!!!

NEVERMIND…did NOT work, its still publishes who you became friends with and all your activities, total junk. FB can kiss my @$$

Mine was already unchecked and it still posts. I actually removed Ads and Pages application and the Ads and Pages still show up.

If you can’t find the application in the drop-down select Authorized instead of Recently Used.

I read every comment here, did everything suggested except create a page, and I still can’t find ads and pages.

THIS DOESN’T WORK!!!! Don’t use it!!!

Hello all,
as far as I can tell the “Ads and Pages” only shows up when you have created either an Ad or a fan Page. If you have not then it will not show.
That said, it seems like (maybe I’m wrong) if you uncheck the “Publish Recent Activies” it will stop Facebook from publishing that you have created a Page and/or Ad but it won’t stop it from telling everyone that you have become a fan of a “Page”.

As of right now there doesn’t seem to be ANY way to stop Facebook from publishing on your wall most of the information that is “public” to the group you have set it to show.

FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT FIND “Ads & Pages”

-Go into Application Settings
-Click on the drop menu beside “Show:” at the top right of the screen
-Select Allow to Post
-Breathe.

As 29/1 it isnt there.

Even if you manually delete the ‘recent activities’ from your profile, it STILL shows up in the NEWS FEED for EVERYONE to see. That is not privacy!!! I guess my only option is to stop interacting with my friends on Facebook.

There’s no ads&pages under Application Settings - Show (Allowed to Post)That’s maybe because of the fact that Facebook doesn’t allow to change this setting anymore:

“Information about Recent Activity
Whether we display a story on your profile is now controlled by the privacy of the content itself, rather than an additional setting. For example, only people who can see both your Wall, and the Wall to which you posted would be able to see a story about you writing on a friend’s Wall. You cannot completely turn off recent activity stories anymore. However, if you want to remove a particular story that currently shows up, simply click the “Remove” button that appears to the right of the story after you move your mouse over it. Learn more about privacy “

Thanks for this article - it’s very helpful. Using the Remove link on older status messages does not seem to work. So I’m assuming that you need to remove it right away or it will end up getting aggregated into the feed. After which, you can’t do anything about it. Is that correct?

FB really should have posted a page like this and tell us the repercussions of their changes BEFORE they updated the site. This is not the first time this has happened.

to “Kris - January 7th, 2010 at 7:09 pm”
topic “facebook assaults its own users”

i fully agree with you. great post.

try this.. go to Settings–>Account Settings–>click on “Facebook Ads” tab–>go down and change”Show my social actions in Facebook Ads to” to “No one”–>save changes. Problem solved~

despite the fact of changing the settings, it STILL publishes the recent activity. I seriously have had it with facebook.

I would like to have Status Updates as my default when I log into Facebook.
For some reason it is now ‘news feed’ and I don’t like it but can’t seem to get the status updates back. Please advice

Direct from facebook wall……
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=777

**Information about Recent Activity**
Whether we display a story on your profile is now controlled by the privacy of the content itself, rather than an additional setting. For example, only people who can see both your Wall, and the Wall to which you posted would be able to see a story about you writing on a friend’s Wall. You cannot completely turn off recent activity stories anymore. However, if you want to remove a particular story that currently shows up, simply click the “Remove” button that appears to the right of the story after you move your mouse over it. Provide feedback about this change here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=777#!/help/contact.php?show_form=ui_privacy

Apparently there is no way to block or hide from MY wall what everyone else is joining or becoming friends with???? I DON’T CARE WHO THEY ARE FRIENDS WITH. I don’t know most of these people except to play games with. I have to scroll through pages on end of “who’s friends with who”, to find people I care about or notices from games that I play. Is there nothing I can do other than block individuals that are taking up the most space?

GREAT article!!
thnks!

It STILL publishes the recent activity!!
it RELLY sucks!!!

yahhh boyzz

Kris on Jan 7th is right. I second whoever said is a Great post!! I think we all enjoy community, but the cost in privacy is so great that we cannot really understand the implications. This is a violation to human rights. Soon will be an app that will measure how much your toilet paper has been used…and maybe there will be a 3d view available on Google Earth to double check its status.
write to the privacy Commissioner of Canada to thank for the collaboration on screwing us up.

Kkao - February 3rd, 2010 at 10:12 am

try this.. go to Settings–>Account Settings–>click on “Facebook Ads” tab–>go down and change”Show my social actions in Facebook Ads to” to “No one”–>save changes. Problem solved~

its true … solved

Problem not solved by changing the Facebook Ad setting. This is ridiculous!

FUCK YOU FACEBOOK!

one easy word thank you very much

Here is the solution!!!!! Must have firefox as your browser:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/47397

Every time you visit your profile, you’ll see the Recent activity postings start to disappear. You have to still visit your profile.. but it elminates you having to delete them all manually. Sweet sweeet app.

God bless

What a useless article. Thanks for nothing man, you really should re-write this whole thing because we all came here to find out how to get rid of this shit and all you did was give us a solution that isn’t even a problem in the first place!

Thx a lot, but due to FBs bullsh!t policy it works only partly, you’ll need the Firefox addon (thx JZ !)

What’s going wrong if there is no “ads and pages” to be found?

Nevermind. Missed a few of those.

Still should probably re-write the article.

But how about a “hide recent activity” privacy option like there USED to be???? My wall is an irrelevant mess of “commented on so & so status/wall/photo etc” and it is a GIANT pain to remove each post individually.

Privacy options should be that - many different options for the many different privacy levels people want.

Bring back the “hide recent activity” option & let users control their privacy!!!!

This was VERY helpful thank you because when they changed it I couldn’t find it for the life of me.

Thanks again
Shaneequa

Sadly this doesn’t do what I (and many others) were hoping for.

The best thing we can do at this point is to lobby for Facebook to bring back the “hide recent activity” function.

Oh well.

so no conclusion?

So people ae not confused by these instuctions, as good ad they are for toher things they do not HELP for what most of you are looking for!

You can NOT control your recent activity in regards to when you comment, click on like, etc whether it be your friends photos, status updates, etc. Common friends or not, if the person you are commenting on has privacy settings as eveyone or friends of friends then a post will APPEAR in YOUR friends newsfeed, such as “Sue likes John Smith’s status or “Sue commented on John Smith’s photo” and that one will appear with the photo you commented on.

TO put it simply, EVEN if you DELETE your recent activity on YOUR wall it will appear in your friends newsfeed,and if not common friends, then depending on your friends privacy settings.

I cannot believe this application!!!
Every time I want to modify my settings I notice that they changed the interface.
I don’t want to publish a post whenever I approve someone as a fried!!

Where can I disable this type of post from?!?!

Using Facebook Filter version 1.3.3 For Mozilla Firefox 3.0 - 3.5 - 3.6

I’ve try … successful Remove all Recent Activity
This download link

https: / / addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/47397

hopefully can help …

Hi,

I have changed most of the settings to off. And most things have stopped publishing to peoples news feeds. However when i confirm a friend it still gets shown on my friends News Feed. Another big problem is tagged pictures appearing in friends news feeds, but more so in the news feeds of people i have blocked from seeing photos of me.

I have a “Work Colleagues” group setup and have pretty much denied them from everything. But, if i give permission to the Photos application to “post content on my wall” so my real friends can see pics i publish or pics i’m tagged in then even though my “Work Colleagues” group is denied from seeing “photos and videos of me” and are denied from seeing all my photo albums i’ve posted, the tagged or published photos of me will show up on my “Work Colleagues” news feed. If i stop the photo application from posting to my wall then none of my friends can see my pictures.

So in effect, these normal privacy settings stop people from browsing your photos, but it doesn’t stop them from seeing photo activity unless you block every one. It’s all or nothing. To me that is a breach of the privacy i’m trying to set in my facbook information sharing.

I’ve looked through every setting i can find and even created a test account to see how certain settings affect what displays in the “test account” news feed and i can’t find out how to turn it off for certain people. Any ideas how to stop tagged or published photos from appearing in a particular group or persons News Feed but show up in other peoples i want to allow?

Thanks

thank u very much..u really help me–stop publishing an application..tnx a lot..

I play a couple of the FB games and I know that a lot of my friends don’t really care to see my activity on these applications.

I changed the settings “Control who can see your activity in the Friends’ Recent Activity, Friends’ Applications and Friends’ Games sections of these pages” by going to —

PRIVACY SETTINGS -> APPLICATIONS AND WEBSITES -> ACTIVITY ON APPLICATONS AND GAMES DASHBOARDS and changed my setting from everyone to custom. I then went through and allowed only friends that play the same FB games to view these updates. This was a pretty labor intensive way to change my settings but I truly did not want family and church friends to see my posts on FarmVille. I hope this helps someone.

Hi!
Have taken a few tips from here but really wish it could be a little more straight forward for us “hopeless with computers ppl”! Really wish there was a way to stop activities such as my comments on friends statuses or photos appearing on the news feed coz u dont necessarily want everyone to see them and alos I think it makes you lokk like you are always on fb!!
xx

You are the man! It’s been irking me for months on how to remove that!

I had to go to Applications, then use the pull down menu to choose “Approved” and that’s where I found “Ads and Pages” listed. Don’t know if anyone had mentioned this before. Dont have time to read through all the comments. But.. there ya go

When requesting a new friend request,how can I stop those security words from coming up ? I’m having to enter them everytime……

Does anyone else have a problem with their privacy settings-Apps and Websites-Only me? I want it to be ‘only me’ that can see this, and it just changes back to ‘only friends’ every time I refresh the screen.

Also privacy settings-friends, tags and connections..I can’t seem to take my current location, home town, education and work, activities, interests etc off ‘everyone’. I don’t want ‘everyone’ to see these! Can anyone help?

Finally (phew!), ‘my profile’ is showing all the pages I am linked to, plus my profile picture. I only want this available to my friends. How can I do this?

Facebook has purposely made our privacy hard to protect, and this is despicable considering it has so many young users.

I am having the opposite problem. I can not see Recent Activiy on my friends or my own page. How do I undo this? Thanks!

Ads and pages is not showing up in this list. even when selecting “Allowed to post” in the view drop down, no dice. I would love to unclutter my wall from all the “recent activity” posts but I am getting no joy yet.

Is there a more up to date version of this? It seems to me there is NO way to prevent comments on friends’ posts, “likes”, joining of groups, liking of pages, basically any “recent activity” at this time. It can be manually removed, but what good is that? I really am amazed they would take their attack on privacy this far.

PLEASE HELP. I HAVE BEEN trying to figure this out forever. I can no longer see the recent activity of any of my friends! i cant even see my own recent activity on my profile. how do i fix

yea, this guide is outdated because recent activity still posts after using this method……

Mark Zuckerberg you SUCk! Now my girlfriend reads EVERY POST I commented/liked on my other female friends and she was not happy now! Mark Zuckerberg do you know what PRIVACY IS????

I don’t care if my posts or likes show up on other peoples news feeds or anything like that, i am just sick of everything i do showing up on my own wall. I already know i did that! Get that shit off my wall! So annoying! Someone please lmk if they figure out how to remove the posts and likes from the recent activity that shows up on your own wall. Right now i have to do it every single times. It’s like they are punishing the heavy users of facebook by clouding their wall so you can’t even find your friends last post! They need to make it like the iphone app where all you see are legitimate posts and not all that bullshit!!

-Dan

Please let me know if anyone figures out how to get rid of recent activity including when i write on someone’s wall, comment on a status, like someone’s status, etc without having to click REMOVE 50 times in 5 minutes. I don’t want anyone to see what I do when visiting my profile.

It’s incredibly annoying to see every comment I make on a group discussion board posted to my wall (thus also the main feed of my friends). Is there really no way to disable this??

I unchecked show stories for all my applications and settings I believe, yet my friends can still see
RECENT ACTIVITY LISTINGS on my wall for:
1- weblinks I posted on other friends pages,
2- new friends added
3- comments added to other friends walls.

If I choose “remove” beside the recent activity listing that will also remove the comment posted or links I placed on friends walls, not just the recent activity listing on my wall..

how do I prevent the 3 things above from appearing in my friends feeds or ON MY wall page??

regards

I can find NO Pages settings anymore. I hate the new profile Information pages with everything LINKED to PAGES! When I tried to re-organize this mess, all my recent actions were sent to the news feed of my friends! And when I try to remove the links(either by using the remove button or going straight to the community/fan page and press the unlike button) it doesn’t let me!! WTF? When I save the changes (after everything removed) they are back again! And what’s the best part of this: again, all my friends are getting TONS of recent activity news from me(about my “new” likings). Unbelievable! I had no choice than deactivate my account to get all that rubbish removed from my friends’s newsfeed. Funny thing is I can’t see these recent activity news on my own page so I can’t remove them there, and I had no idea about those messages before I heard about it from my friends or checked my “test account”. So FB doesn’t even let me know what I post. I used to love Facebook. Now those days are gone.

I guess Facebook forced us to publish our recent activities to the news feed, so that the friends in your network can know “somebody is still using facebook, and I shouldn’t stop yet” stuff.

But as I know, many users are annoyed by this action and they have stopped using facebook for a long time.

In fact, I’m feeling so clueless why Facebook never respects its users.

“Ads & Pages” does not exist in my profile.

I do not understand why these social networking site developers and owners KNOWINGLY do and create things that they know people wont like and will piss people off. It’s so simple to just eliminate the things you know most people would not like instead of not try to be slick and use a “privacy upgrade” to hide it as a rebuttal to all the complaints. The news feed thing was possible to control - only up to the point when facebook decided to change up their privacy settings. Yes, it may be an “upgrade” or simpler management settings, but at the same time, they were sure to remove a setting they knew people would want to change.

Since I have two pages to control privacy, I can see EXACTLY what’s going on from an outsider’s point of view! I don’t know what’s so difficult about “if you know people are not going to like it, then just don’t do it in the first place” (especially in situations where unnecessarily doing something that you know people wouldn’t like takes more effort than just not doing it in the first place). This type of thinking would not only improve or solve unnecessary problems in facebook, but many of the situations in the world today.

If I wanted everyone to know what I posted on someone’s wall or what I said in a comment as a DIRECT RESPONSE TO SOMEONE ELSE, then I would spread the news myself. We’ve really got to get something else other than facebook out there because from the beginning, I really wasn’t too fond of facebook (and this was even BEFORE the privacy issues got WORSE) but unfortunately, you’ve got to go where it’s popular if you want to promote and have people contact you. However, this does not mean that on my personal page that I also wish to update everyone who has access on every single thing I do or say with all my friends.

Anyway, still trying to detect this “ads & pages” that may be hidden somewhere in the “easier, improved” privacy settings! I think I may be close to it since I did manage to reach the “bookmarks” section… so I guess I’m getting warmer…

Found “Ads & settings” on one of my two pages - on the page without the “new profile privacy settings” update message on the top of it. I wonder if this means that will disappear eventually, or are both of my two pages somehow under two different sets of privacy controls? hmmmm…..

Go to the link - http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?v=feed

Then:
- Under the “Show:” drop-down menu select “Allowed to Post”
- Anything listed under is allowed to post to your profile (wall) and your friends’ news feeds
- To disable an applications ability to post click beside it on Edit Settings –> Additional Permissions & uncheck “Publish Content to my Wall”
- I don’t know for sure which application controls the “likes” & “commented on” posts, but I disabled permission for EVERYTHING EXCEPT PHOTOS and now nothing else shows up on my wall or newsfeed.

Try it (& let us know if you find out exactly which app is responsible for the likes & commented on posts)

Dam!
I don’t believe this. I just want cancel everything with automatic settings.

Facebook settings are subtractive and that’s the problem. They should be ADDITIVE… In other words, make the default page 100% private and let the users decide what they want to share by adding options. Currently it’s the other way around where any new member is exposed to the world and they have to spend hours going through technical BS to figure out how to protect their privacy. Facebook needs to forget the days where their members were all party-obsessed college kids, those kids are growing up taking on professions and require more discriminating options. If Facebook can’t figure this out, then another social network will come around and steal their business. It really wouldn’t be hard to do.

Grrr… I also can’t stop the recent activity on my wall! I have to delete it all the time… Facebook really sucks.

Mark Zuckerberg, please make Facebook more user-friendly… you have only made it worse. When I change my profile picture several times every now and then, I don’t want 5 or 6 stories on my “recent activity” feed on my wall that I CAN NOT erase. Seriously, is it that hard to just keep things the way they are… privacy was just as good before.

Mark Zuckerberg,

please make these privacy settings more user-friendly. When I change my profile picture several times in one sitting every once in a while, I would rather not have 5-6 “recent activity” stories on my wall that I CAN NOT erase. Seriously, it is not that hard to accomodate everyone’s privacy… it was good enough before this.

Sincerely,
Andrew

i’m having the same problem… i can see on my newsfeed when i wrote on one of my friends wall…even after i went to my profile to delete recent activity.. just to double check…i go to home page & i still see my comment…there’s no hide button.. when i go to setting to change “post by me” to “only me” i’m blocking everyone from seeing my wall…how do i fix that?

I completely agree with “ndeans”.

So I see all these posts, I am curious. I do not see any of the friends my girlfriend connects too but she sees all my new connections. I remove them from my wall but she still sees them in the news feed home page. I do not see anyones there. How come?

all of this tutorials on how to do that or twat! ar all useless!!! because EfBee nows update evry month!

EfBee changes every now and then, so we need to figure it out for our selves.

All I get is the option to bookmark it. I really do hate Facebook, it’s the complete opposite of user-friendly, especially with all the frequent updates which make it worse each time.

I could not see the “Ads and Pages” application because I had not created a Page. But even now that I have created a sample Page, although I can see the “Ads and Pages” application, when I go to its “Change Settings” I get the “Bookmark” tab but I do not get the “Additional Permissions” tab. Someone please help, it’s driving me mad! Is there something I need to do to my Page so that I can see the “Additional Permissions”?

I want to know how to disable the recent addition of ‘My activity and friends activity’ which appears under my farmville page. Every little thing that anyone does is listed and it’s really annoying to have to adjust the page every 2 seconds to allow more things being added. I can see this info on my home page and that’s enough. I don’t need it on my farmville page too.
Please let me know how to disable this new addition.
Thank you.

Read every post here as well as intently watched the tutorial. Its obviously because of the new facebook update, the question is still unanswered and more of a problem than ever, how do we do this as of July 5th, 2010??

I have only just realised that my COMMENTS on other NON-mutual friends’ posts are appearing in the newsfeeds of all my friends!!!? I had this blocked before, but I didn’t realise those settings were deleted in Dec 2009. It seems there’s no way to stop this now?? I will never leave another “comment” on FB!

PS This article is NO help, it does not answer the question of how to stop your comments from appearing on other NON-mutual friends’ pages….

This doesn’t work. I don’t see Account Settings on my homepage. Maybe I’m just an old fashioned lawyer who isn’t tech savvy, but this is too confusing.

DO NOT PUBLISH THIS WITH MY REAL NAME!

“Even more annoying is the fact that comments and who we have befriended are broadcast in the news feed, and that when we write on walls the posts appear in mutual friends’ news feeds; I hope Facebook fix these issues”

EXACTLY. Example: In every morning i check news from certain web newspaper site.
There is FB plugin installed and it shows likes from my friends concidering news _they_ have clicked.
And (sorry friends) i really don’t appreciate all of their humour, like toilet or other lowlife stuff. I don’t wanna ruin your day with example. But maybe it’s also problem of that news site if they publish crap that i don’t wanna see?

Hmm. I rather read only interesting stuff from that news site and if it could be possible to filter that recent activity from FB friends away it would be better.

I managed to get what i wanted with this settings in Opera:

- F12
- Edit site preferences
- Select display tab
- Remove “Enable inline frames”

Note, “Edit site preferences” adds that setting to current site only so that you don’t remove functionality which would be needed in other sites.

Other browsers might have similar functionality. I use most of them but i only use Opera for this news site so i am not going to spend more time on this.