Turn Off Facebook Recent Activity?!
Thursday, January 07, 2010 | 20:48
I’m a guy. I don’t ask for directions. So it took me 20 minutes flipping through the new Facebook privacy settings looking for some way to turn off the infinitely annoying “Recent Activity” updates before I finally looked for help.
That’s when I found this.
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.
So how do you turn off recent activity on Facebook? You cannot completely disable recent activity stories anymore. This leaves you three options.
1. Constantly Monitor Your Wall to Remove Activity
Well shoot, you spend approximately 47% of your work hours on Facebook anyhow. But I’m guessing you MIGHT have something better do.
2. Neuter Your Facebook
Turn off your wall. It’s not a horrible idea and, in fact, you may find yourself mainly interacting with people you actually care to interact with. Hell, you might even e-mail them, pick up the phone, or *GASP* meet up with them to see how they’re doing. But let’s face it. The whole point of Facebook is mutual stalking (damn, you’re creepy). This option just plain sucks.
3. Bitch and Moan
Now we’re talking. The most amusing part of the excerpt above is the last line. Facebook already knows you hate not being able to turn off your recent activity. So go to The Privacy Suggestion Page and tell them you want to be able to turn your recent activity off. They won’t be surprised.
content rss
January 8th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Omg. I spent forever trying to figure this out.
January 9th, 2010 at 12:27 am
LET’S START A FB GROUP. i agree with the op 110%
January 9th, 2010 at 1:24 am
i did find this FB page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Allow-Users-to-Turn-Off-the-Posting-of-Recent-Activity/199363021902
we are not alone!
January 11th, 2010 at 7:24 am
This is WHY we are unable to turn off recent activity. Facebook has signed a deal with Microsoft and Google’s search engines to be able 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
January 11th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
great link, wendy. thanks.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:59 am
completely agree, this is bullshit. facebook keeps pissing me off, i’m going to have to leave the site. they should do this: make any changes they want behind the scenes but change nothing on my profile without my permission.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:22 pm
agreed. suckerberg pretty much gave us all the middle finger, though.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:23 am
FUCK THE NEW FACEBOOK.
facebook really fucked up with their latest “update”. They got rid of the whole “news feed and wall” settings. There is no fucking privacy anymore. If you leave a comment on someone’s wall, the whole conversation is freaking broadcasted to the retarded “news feed” for everyone to see. And who the fuck uses the “news feed”? The “live feed” was better and people used the workaround to put that on the top, but now they removed that completely . FUCK THE NEW FACEBOOK.