Category Archives: Facebook page likes

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook page likes, Hide Game Updates, Hide Likes from Timeline

Deleting Posts from your Facebook Timeline

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There are several ways to hide your page likes from showing up in your Facebook news feed or on your timeline. We’ve shown you how to hide individual likes in previous posts. This time, we want to show you how to hide groups of things from your timeline.

All of this is done from your own Facebook timeline so head there now.  Depending on your settings, you’ll probably see big boxes with titles such as Activity, Friends, Photos, Likes, etc. These big boxes match up with the little boxes with the same names, the ones just below and to the right of your name.

First, lets figure out what boxes we want to share with our friends. Click the small down arrow just to the right of the number of boxes you have in that section. This person has six. This is the box we are looking for:

Photo of Cleaning up your Facebook Timeline 1
Click the little box with the number in it. You can’t edit your Favorite boxes until you do.

 

Once you click on that box, you can edit and shift the various boxes around. Each main box on the second row has an editable icon on the top right, just hover your cursor there. Two boxes do not have edit icons: Friends and Photos. You can hide your full friend list elsewhere but clicking this box will show either your full friend list or mutual friends that you have with whoever is looking at your timeline. Your photo box can’t be hidden or changed but you can, of course, limit your audience to any photo that you post yourself. Any of the other boxes can be swapped with anything else or you can remove that box from your Favorites. (All of these boxes are named Favorites.) Here is a menu of what you can do with the boxes:

Photo of Cleaning up you Facebook Timeline 2
Arrange your boxes or remove a box completely. You can add it back later.

 

If you have removed a box from your Favorite boxes, you can add it back. Hover your cursor on the top right of any blank box on the top row and choose which box you want to add back. Here is the menu you see when you click the edit icon:

Photo of Cleaning up you Facebook Timeline 3
Pick a box name and add it back.

 

Just for fun, here is a glitch that we discovered in this section of the timeline. It looks like a menu where you can type in your own name but, unfortunately, it doesn’t work. This is what we saw:

Photo of Cleaning up you Facebook Timeline 4
It would be nice to make up your own name for a Favorite box, wouldn’t it?

Move down the page and find the post that shows that you’ve recently added a friend.  Click on the edit button on the top right of that box and you’ll get to hide that whole activity, not just the one single post.

Photo of Cleaning up you Facebook Timeline 5
Hide all friending activity  with the click of a mouse.

 

Facebook apps love to post every damn thing you do when you’re playing games. You can hide all posts by any game but, unfortunately, you have to do this game by game. Here’s one of the game menus which allows you to stop them from cluttering your timeline:

Photo of Cleaning up you Facebook Timeline 6
Remove all actions. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

 

Work your way down your own timeline and see what you can hide and what you can’t. Each time you do this sort of exercise, you will become more comfortable with maintaining your privacy on Facebook. By nature, Facebook is all about sharing but we think that you should be in control of what you share. We’ll help you all we can to figure it out.

 

Thanks for reading! Comments, questions, problems are all welcome. Follow us on Facebook to get the latest updates. Here the link:  Computers Made Simple 

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook page likes, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks

Facebook Changes Its Like Privacy – get the details here.

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As of November 7, 2012, Facebook has completely changed its privacy settings for pages that you like. Pages include artists pages, tech pages, etc. Here is what we’ve found so far:

1. Your activity log is one place to start. Get to this page by clicking on Activity Log from your Facebook timeline. The first page that comes up is your own posts and posts from whatever apps (games) you have used recently. What’s new here is the Start Tour button. That should clue you in to the fact that something has changed.

Photo of Facebook Likes 1
Click on your Activity Log under your cover photo on your timeline.

 

2. Click on the Start Tour button and this pops up. The settings described here affect only the things that you have posted. 

Photo of Facebook Likes 2
This is the ‘friends only’ icon.

 

 

3. Once you click Okay, another message pops up. This one is key to the new Facebook privacy…or lack of it. It’s worth emphasizing, we think: Hidden posts may appear in other places on Facebook.  It seems now that there is no privacy on Facebook at all, right?

Photo of Facebook Likes 3
Read these words carefully. ‘Hidden posts may appear in other places on Facebook.’

 

4. Click Okay once this has settled in. The next box says that you can sort out your activities by clicking on the box up at the top.

Photo of Facebook Likes 4
Sort through your activities by clicking on the box near the top.

 

5. Here is the list of your possible activities.  Finally, your Likes appear.

Photo of Facebook Likes 5
Click on Likes.

 

6. The page that comes up when you click Likes isn’t your page likes. These are your photo likes and comment likes. Nothing has changed with these likes. The photo below shows that this user, Emily Cheng, has set her photos to ‘Public’.  Anyone who gets to her profile can see her photos, not a setting we would recommend.

Photo of Facebook Likes 6
Don’t set your photos to Public, that’s our advice.

Remember that the settings shown here are completely out of your control. We think that this is shown in order to warn you about who can see that you liked the photo. In this case, it’s possible that everyone on Facebook could potentially see that you liked it, not just this person’s friends.

 

7. Next, we want to show you what your options are when you like someone’s photo. There is only one. The first, shown below, seems to suggest that you can keep this like from your timeline.

Photo of Facebook Likes 7
If it’s ‘Allowed on Timeline’, you’d think there was a ‘Not allowed on Timeline’ choice. There isn’t.

 

8. The only thing you can do to hide your like from your timeline is to, you guessed it, ‘unlike’ the photo. That is the only choice you have.  When you click the circle to the right, this is what you see:

Photo of Facebook Likes 8
Unlike is the only choice you have to keep this like off of your Timeline.

 

9. When it comes to liking a page, you have one more option.

Photo of Facebook Likes 14
You can hide this like from your Timeline.

Hiding this like from your timeline may or may not keep it hidden from your friends. Let’s head over to another area of Facebook to see if we can keep this ‘like’ away from your news feed.

 

10. On the same page that you are on now, your Activity Log, look up on the top left. You’ll see this:

Photo of Facebook Likes 15
Click on the words Activity log, then on Likes.

11. Once you click the word Likes, this page will pop up. It looks like you can’t do anything here but hover your mouse up on the top right. You’ll see the word Edit appear.

Photo of Facebook Likes 12
Hover your cursor on the top right and Edit will appear. Click it.

 

12. This next page is quite empty and it looks as if there is no way to edit anything. Hover your cursor over the name of any like here and this is the menu that pops up:

Photo of Facebook Likes 13
Here are your choices for these Likes.

 

13. Three choices are available. Show in News Feed, unchecked Show in News Feed meaning ‘not Show in News Feed’, and Unlike. You can also create a new list. More on that next time.

That’s it. Once you have unchecked the ‘Show in News Feed’ box, make sure that you click Done Editing to save your changes.

 

OK, so far so good right? Well, not really. We suspect that this whole thing is in a state of flux. As you saw before, Facebook is telling you that things you hide may be visible elsewhere on Facebook. That kind of sums up our feelings about all of this hiding from your news feed or timeline. These items may or may not be hidden at all. Yesterday, for example, we played around with hiding the fact that we liked the Mashable site. Even though it was a hidden activity, hidden from our timeline and hidden from our news feed, there it was in plain sight when we checked from another profile on two different browsers, even after we refreshed the page again and again. Nothing was hidden. Today, it isn’t there but yesterday it was. Go figure!

We love to hear from you. Keep your comments and suggestions coming. If you have problems, let us know. We’re here to help.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Facebook, Facebook page likes, Hide Likes from Timeline

Hide Facebook Page Likes – A new twist

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Recently, a couple of our readers asked questions about hiding Facebook page likes. We’ve written about this before but we think we need to clarify this whole topic. You have to remember that we have readers from across the globe, many of whom may not be proficient in English. We’ve found it useful to explain things in several different ways, hoping that one explanation will finally make sense to a portion of our audience. Here we go:

1. We all know what a ‘page like’ is, right? If you go to a company’s page or a singer’s page on Facebook, you will see a large ‘Like’ button. It looks like this:

Photo of Like button
We’ve all seen it, right?

 

2. If you click that like button, you will receive updates from that page on your news feed. Unlike adding a friend, liking a page sets up a one-way communication link between the page and you, not between you and the page. Sure, you can comment on the page or on anything the page owner posts but they will not receive your updates or posts. It’s one-way only.

 

3. If you have hidden your page likes, as described here: Hide Page Likes, none of your friends will be able to see which pages you have clicked ‘like’ on. (There is an exception which we will describe below). If you’ve already hidden your page likes, this article isn’t for you…except for the glitch that we will explain later.

 

4. Let’s say you haven’t hidden your page likes but you don’t want to broadcast the fact that you like a page. Here’s how to do that. We’ll be using the Psych page as an example. This is what it looks like before you click the like button:

Photo of Psych Facebook Page
Facebook Psych Page

 

5. Click the Like button and you’ll see this menu pop down:

Photo of Facebook Like menu
Here is your chance to hide this particular like from your news feed.

 

6. Let’s uncheck the ‘Show in News Feed’:

Photo of News Feed Unselected
This page like will not show up on your news feed to your friends.

 

7. OK, here’s the explanation: If you’ve hidden your page likes, this won’t show up on your news feed or in your likes box. If you haven’t hidden your page likes but you unchecked the ‘Show in News Feed’ section, this won’t show up but it will be in your page likes section. Got it? There are some exceptions to all of this. Read on:

Facebook Page Like Glitch – this is the exception to the rule

Remember those like boxes, the ones on your timeline that have titles such as TV shows or Movies, etc? Believe it or not, some page likes fall into two categories. Take our Psych example. Yes, it is a Facebook page and, yes, we have liked it. Since our Page Likes are hidden, it would make sense that anything to do with our liking that Psych page would be hidden, wouldn’t it? Well, it isn’t.

Since that Psych page is a TV page, the fact that we liked it is visible in our Favorites under Television. Yes, the page like is hidden but the Psych page is still listed in our Likes/Favorites/Television section. Curious, right?

What should you do? We suggest that you completely hide all of your favorites. Maybe you don’t like a singing star’s music but you do like the photos on that person’s page. If you don’t hide your Music Favorites, that page will show up there. Any page that intersects with a favorite, could be music, TV, games, athletes, etc., will show up in two places on your Facebook Timeline page. If there is any question about whether you want your friends to know what pages/stars/movies/singers/sport/whatever you like, then hide them all.

 

Tip: Many employers use your Facebook profile to check you out before they hire you. Whether or not you agree with this, they do it. Let’s say you like the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘Weeds’. Some conservative employers might just assume that you’re more interested in drugs than you should be, at least if you want to work with them. Do you see the ramifications here? Mull that over while you hide all of your likes.

Tip: Remember that you can hide any of your likes except photos and mutual friends. You can hide your friends but you can’t hide your mutual friends. Keep that in mind.

 

Thanks for reading. We’re going to to a whole post on that glitch, just to highlight it. Comments and questions are welcome!

 

Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook page likes, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Facebook Likes – The Ultimate Guide – Part Four

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This post is strictly for your Likes, the ones that your Like box is linked to. Go to your Facebook timeline and click on the Like box. This is that page that will pop up:

Photo of Like editing page
See the word Edit up on the top right? Click it.

The next page, after you click the Edit button, looks like this:

 

Photo of Editing your Likes 2
This is where you choose what to show and what to hide.

This is a long page, starting with your Favorites. (The photo reads Favourites because we’re in Canada and use the British spelling.) Your page of Likes is made up of both your favorites as well as the pages you like. The pages are all at the bottom.  Right now, let’s look at the Music box. You can do two things with each favorite. You can show it or hide it. If you decide to show it, you can choose who you want to see it or who you want to hide it from, the same as if you post a photo on Facebook.

Once you decide who you want to share this favorite box with, you’re left with showing them every type of music you like. You can’t break up this box into pieces, say Techno being one piece that you don’t mind showing and Andy Williams being another piece that you don’t want to show. If you show your music to anyone, they see all of the music you like. If you want to hide old Andy, you have to hit the X beside their name to delete it.

The same applies to all of the topics that Facebook thinks should be listed as Favorites, whether they be books, TV, movies or whatever. If you want to hide your Favorites from someone or only show them to a group of friends, click on the icon on the right. That will bring up this menu:

Photo of Favorite share menu
Sort out this menu as best you can. This applies to the particular favorite you are working on, not every single one of them.

You can see from the photo above that you can hide a particular favorite from some people but you can’t hide only one of those individual items unless you hide the whole group of favorites. Get it? If you like Madonna in your Music favorites and you show your Music favorites to your friends, you can’t hide the fact that Madonna is in that group.

Useless Favorites Tip:  These favorites are really useless in the whole scheme of things to share on Facebook. The only reason they are even on your timeline is to open yourself up a bit to your friends. You may have an acquaintance who knows a bit about you but they didn’t know that you like Bladerunner (a movie). Once they find out that you like something, they have a fuller picture of you as a person and, possibly, might feel better about chatting with you about similar interests. Having a favorite in this group doesn’t mean that you’ll get inundated with offers or emails or updates on anything. These favorites are just there in order for people to get to  know you better.  Hide them, show them, it doesn’t matter.

 

Let’s move on to items that actually get updated every now and then, Facebook pages. As you know, Facebook pages are full of information, updates as well as photos and links, all pertaining to the person or company that created the page. Virtually every star, celebrity or company has a Facebook page. If they don’t, they’re missing the boat.

Facebook Page Likes – Options Available

As far as Facebook page likes go, you can hide them or show them as a group. Yes, you can show or hide them all to whatever group of friends you choose but you cannot hide one of the pages and show the others. This is the same as your other favorites, it’s all or nothing. All means every page you like will be shown to whoever you show any page you like. You can’t pick and choose what to show.

If you like a page, only you will see the updates and information that this page feeds out. No one else will see anything that a page feeds out to you unless they follow the same page.

TIP: There is no reason to show anyone what pages you like. Why not hide all of the pages you like? That way you won’t slip up. Close friends, relatives, employers and employees don’t have to know what pages you follow, do they? Instead of tripping up at some point as you try to keep track of who can see what, why not just shut out everyone? Makes sense to us. Once you lock your page likes from everyone, you are free to be yourself. We advise you to set your Page Likes to this setting:

Photo of perfect privacy setting
Set this page to ‘Only me’ and feel free to ‘like’ any page you bloody well want to! Yay freedom!

 

We’re done. Over the last few posts we’ve tried to sort out everything about Facebook like boxes, Facebook likes and, finally, Facebook page likes. We hope things are a bit clearer now for you. Questions, comments, all are welcome. Good luck!

Thanks for reading!