(Originally published 2013, updated November 2019).
A relative of mine asked me, “What can I do if I don’t want to see someone’s updates on Facebook, but I’d rather not unfriend or block them?”
Here’s how to make it seem like you have unfriended a person. It’s a two-step process. First, you will prevent their updates from showing up on your news feed (the page you see when you first log into Facebook). Then, you can prevent them from seeing your updates.
There are two ways to accomplish this:
Of course you could always go ahead and un-friend someone – they will not be notified. But it could create an awkward situation, depending on the person and your relationship. So it’s nice to have this option.
Desktop:
1. Go to your friend’s timeline page by clicking on their name. The “Following” button will be checked, as shown, meaning that you currently follow the person (i.e. you see their updates on your News Feed). Click the “Unfollow” option to unfollow them.
2. The button will change to the word “Follow”.
Mobile:
1. In the Facebook app, first go to the friend’s timeline. Click the small “Friends” button and you’ll see the following choices – Following, Block, and Friends. Click “Friends”.
2. You’ll now have the choices to Unfriend, Take a Break, Unfollow, or Edit Friends list. Click “Unfollow”.
You should no longer see this friend’s updates on your News Feed.
You can still see their updates if you visit their profile/timeline page.
Now that you have limited what you’ll see about this person, go ahead and limit what they’ll see about you.
Facebook provides a few built-in “Lists” for categorizing your friends. You can use these lists to control who you share with. One of the lists is called “Restricted”. When you add someone to your “Restricted” list they will only be able to see your “Public” content or posts of yours that you tag them in”. It works like this:
Desktop:
1.
Hover over the Friends button again and this time choose “Add to another list”.
2. Select “Restricted”.
3. If this person was in another list, select that list to un-check and remove them from the list.
Mobile:
1. Click on the “Friends” button again. Choose Friends, and then “Edit Friend Lists” (you might not see this, in which case just continue).
2. You’ll see some possible lists – I have a few custom lists, your screen might look a bit different. Scroll down and select “Restricted”.
3. If this person was in another list, select that list to un-check and remove them from the list.
Is this fool-proof?
No. There are a few other settings that could expose some of your information to the friend you are trying to ditch.
For example, if you have a mutual friend in common, and that mutual friend tags you both, then your friend might see that you’ve been tagged.
Or, if you and your “frenemy” both follow a public page on Facebook like…uh…good example here….okay let’s say you both follow that Star Trek guy George Takei, and you click “Like” on George’s funny picture, then your friend could potentially see that you’ve liked it. That’s because she is also a fan of George and George’s post are available to “Everyone”.
So while there is no guarantee of total erasure of this person from your Facebook life, this is about as close as you can come to unfriending or blocking a person.
[Please note – I have closed comments on this article; unfortunately this page is receiving a large number of spam comments. And I am not able to personally troubleshoot each and every situation! Please take a look at the existing comments and replies to date, as your question might be answered here. You can also take a look at other Facebook tips, or search the Facebook help page.]
by Fox Van Allen on March 18, 2013
in Facebook, News, Computers and Software, Blog, Privacy, Social Networking :: 10 comments
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It’s the moment every Facebook user dreads: Getting a friend request from your boss or a client or your mother-in-law. You can’t deny the request, because … well, it’s your boss or client or mother-in-law. But at the same time, you don’t want someone who can get you in trouble at work or on the home front looking through your party photos or updates.
All is not lost, however! Just because you use Facebook doesn't mean you need to surrender your privacy – the social networking site gives you all the tools you need to keep prying eyes out. With just a few simple clicks, you can keep snoops out of any or all posts you make without going through the social hassle of denying a friend request (or worse yet, later unfriending).
The easiest way to deal with a snoop is to limit their access to your profile, posts, and albums. Doing so takes only a minute.
First, click the cogwheel in the top right hand corner of the page.
Choose “Privacy Settings” in the menu that opens up. This opens up a new page where you can manage who sees your past posts and who can see your future ones. Find the section that says “Who can see your future posts?” and click the “edit” link.
From here, you can click the audience selector button and then “custom” from the menu that appears. This brings up a new box where you can use the “Don’t share this with” option to keep your boss in the dark for as long as you want. Just type their name into the box. Click the “save changes” button when you’re done, and this setting will become your new default for all future posts.
Okay, so maybe the person isn’t nosy enough that you need to block access completely – you’d just prefer him or her to not see one specific post about playing hooky, for instance. No problem. Just click the button immediately to the left of the blue “Post” button when typing a status update. Just like using the Privacy Settings page, you can choose to block individual people from seeing the post using the “custom” option.
Think of it as giving your boss a brief social timeout.
Sometimes it's not your posts that are the problem, it's what your friends are posting. To limit the person's access to what others post on your timeline, got to the Privacy Settings page and select Timeline and Tagging. There you can choose "Who can see what others post on your timeline." You can also limit "Who can see posts you've been tagged in on your timeline."
Any one of these methods can help you control what any Facebook friend can see or not see. Know that you can always undo any of these blocks at any time as well. And remember, when in doubt about posting something sensitive on Facebook, the best policy is not to do so.
Correction:
Maybe you’re a little more trusting of the person, allowing full access to your profile. But after a few awkward comments on family photos, you’re itching to block your him or her from seeing the snapshots you post.
When you mouse-over a name on Facebook, you’ll see a business card like display of the person’s name, job, number of mutual friends, and your friend status with them (i.
e., “Friends”). Clicking the button on the card that says “Friends” will bring up a menu. Choose “Settings …” in this menu, and you’ll be given the option to let this person see all updates, most updates, or only the important ones – that is, only the posts your friends like and comment on the most. You can also limit what types of updates that person sees, such as life events, status updates, photos, and more. [ We removed this section on 3/19/2013 because it doesn't prevent people from seeing your posts. It limits the posts you see from other people.]
to Mohamed Ahmed
Facebook Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms and has really changed the way we think about social media in our generation. Although we already had an online messaging system where we could chat with friends and share our likes and dislikes, we have never had a communication system as fast and improved as this one, full of messages and lots of shared media from all over the world.
Facebook provides an easy way to connect with friends and associations. To further break the ice among complete strangers, Facebook has allowed people to send messages to complete strangers from their Facebook profile. This feature is useful to us in many ways, and such connections always lead to strong bonds between two people.
However, since each feature has its own list of advantages and disadvantages, this feature is no exception. Here, many Facebook users often complain about receiving message requests from too many people who are considered complete strangers to them. This is not something we would like to enjoy for a long time. This is why people sometimes get so upset about the flood of messages from strangers on Facebook and want to get rid of them!
Not all messages you receive are on your chat list or message request list.
Who can message us on Facebook? Are you interested in the same? Then, first, let's start with all the people who can send you a message, which will be received directly in your chat list.
Who can send you a private message on Facebook?
Now, if you look at all the messages in the message requests, this is easy to see. Anyone you haven't interacted with on Facebook can also send you messages, but their messages will appear in the Message Requests section. Moreover, these people cannot contact you if you do not reply to their messages.
If you want to improve the people you want to receive message requests from Facebook, you can do so by following a few simple steps. You can easily decide if you want to receive message requests from:
You can also choose whether message requests sent to you go to the chat list or the message requests folder in settings.
Now if you also control message requests and decide where they will send them. You can do this by simply changing your Messenger settings. Here's how to do it:
Get more messaging options by adding your Instagram and Facebook accounts to your Account Center. You can't go to group chat because it's now disabled between the two apps.
Simple ways to improve your posts!
Facebook posts can be advertised as a private form of communication on the social media web application, so there are no restrictions on posts. So anyone with a Facebook account can easily send you a message, as long as they know your account. This is regardless of whether he is on your friends list or not. However, if you're getting a lot of spam from people who aren't your friends, you can simply change your privacy settings. This ensures that you no longer receive messages from people who are not your friends.
Only people on your verified friends list will be able to send you messages. However, if you want to prevent someone from your current friends list from texting you, the only way to do this is to unfriend them.
If someone is so annoying that you decide to block him/her as an appropriate response to them, don't worry because you can easily do that same thing.
Here you will get two different options in which you can:
Final note:
We hope the above steps are simple and effective to get rid of any message requests from strangers on Facebook and also block them if necessary! So, continue chatting seamlessly with the person you know on Facebook and forget about everything else that bothers you! Good luck and God bless you!
If you are a Facebook lover, you can share your daily life, personal opinions, etc.
on Facebook, you may enjoy chatting with your friends using Facebook Messenger. No matter what you pursue, Facebook enriches your life. But there are still some issues, especially when Facebook changed its privacy policy. So sending messages to anyone is easier than before. So anxious!
In the past, Facebook had a feature to disable "Messages", but that feature is now gone. So many people want to find a way to block and deactivate Facebook messages from someone. Here we will show you 2 ways to block and deactivate Facebook messages that you don't want to receive and see.
If you want to block and deactivate Facebook messages, one way is to send them to your Others folder using Strict Filtering.
But in this way, you will still receive unwanted messages, but they will not appear in your mailbox.
Step 1.
Go to the Facebook website and log in to your Facebook account through a browser.
Step 2.
Find the "Privacy" icon in the upper right corner of the screen and click "Who can contact me" > "Strict filtering" in the drop-down list.
Strict Filtering helps you block messages from anyone other than your friends by allowing messages to go to Others instead of Inbox.
If "Strict Filtering" deactivates so many Facebook messages, you can try "Basic Filtering" to send most messages to your inbox.
Step 3.
If you want to block messages from your friends this way, just cancel them. And you need to delete all previous messages with your friends.
If you think "Strict filtering" cannot meet your requirements and you never want to receive messages from anyone, even if they are in the "Others" folder.
Or you think you can't let your lovers, friends find messages forever, maybe you should try to block someone.
This way makes people can't send you Facebook messages, can't see your profile, can't even add you as a friend. But you cannot block them at the same time. Follow the steps below to block and deactivate Facebook messages by blocking someone.
Step 1.
First, find the person's profile. You can use the "Search" function.
Step 2.
Block the person you want to deactivate or block his/her messages.
Open his/her profile, find the button with three bots next to the "Message" button, click "Block" from the drop down list. Currently he/she can't send you a Facebook message, you can't send him/her either.
If you want to unblock someone, just go to Settings > Blocking and you will see the people you have blocked. You can click "Unblock" to unlock them. But at the same time, Facebook will let you send them a friend request.
If you don't want to receive Facebook messages or other messages from anyone, then you should read this part to block all messages or conversations from anyone on Facebook.
