Studies have shown there are only three kinds of people who like Facebook: 1. first-time parents with lots of pictures of their amazing child to share; 2. grandparents of those
amazing children who want to see every one of those pictures; 3. people with a burning need to share quotes by Gandhi, Oprah and Martin Luther King (in that order).
For the rest of us, Facebook is an evil necessity. We're there because everyone else is there, and unless you want to be a social exile in modern times, Facebook is the default location to be on the Internet. Indeed for many people, Facebook is the Internet, which is exactly what Facebook wants. It's also exactly what I don't want. For me Facebook is another service among a set of online services that I use for particular needs. I want to use it when I need it, and when I don't need it, I don't want it to bug me. The problem is that Facebook is designed to be in my face.
Facebook has virtues. It's free and it's useful. Opening up the main Facebook page on my browser, I can see at a glance that among my friends Bruce is taking more great photos, Tara is complaining about haggis and Dhyana climbed a mountain. Facebook allows me to keep tabs on what my friends are doing and what interests them. From there, unfortunately, it's a steep cliff.
Moving to the left side of the page, I'm presented with new notifications on the groups I belong to, various friendship circles I've created and events I utterly don't care about such as games friends are playing and pages they want me to like. On the far right, is a notification about Facebook activity of various friends.
Little of that information is important, but at least it's contained on the web page and not spilling into the rest of my digital life. To make sure it stays there, there are a few steps to take. First, go to the Settings menu and find Notifications. Starting at the top, unless you want a noisy computer, turn off notification sounds. Then go to the emails section and decide whether you want to restrict email notifications to security, privacy and account notices (not a bad idea) or go into the list of 63 (!) different events Facebook wants to send you an email about and decide which you absolutely must be informed about. (I've turned all of them off and I don't miss them.) Moving down the Notifications list, you'll discover that you can't turn off notifications about events that involve you, but you can turn off "Close Friends Activity."
Do it.
Your "close friends" won't know or care. Then you'll decide if you want to be notified about being tagged in photos, activity in groups you belong to, and which of your apps can send you information.
You will also need to go into any Facebook apps you have on other devices and set your level of notifications there. Facebook's Android app seems to boil down your choices to one toggle under Notifications in Settings. The Windows 8 Facebook app, under Settings, has about 20 events to toggle on or off.
Choose off more than on or your otherwise cool Facebook tile will be cluttered with unnecessary information.
If while browsing the web, you've discovered that suddenly you're seeing ads for the same product showing up on every second website you visit, you might want to take a look at Amazon if you have an account there and shop on its site.
By default, Amazon tracks your searches on its site and injects ads based on those searches into your web browser. For example, if while on Amazon, you looked at a Sony camera, you'll likely see Amazon ads for Sony cameras show up in other websites you visit. I find that incredibly invasive. It's like going to Best Buy, looking at Sony cameras, and then having a Best Buy sales person follow
you home or to work while asking you repeatedly, "Hey, you want to buy a Sony camera?" Fortunately, there's a fix. Go to the top right of the main Amazon page and select Your Account. Scroll down to Personalizations, Personalized Content, Your Advertising Preferences. Click on that and choose "Do Not Personalize Ads from Amazon for this Internet Browser."
You will have to do the same for every browser that you use to access your Amazon account.
There you go. Your digital life just got a bit more tolerable.
Barry Link is the editor at the Vancouver Courier. Contact him at [email protected].
