Of Likes, Friends, and Followers...

This week’s blog post is being distributed to all my blogs as I feel that it is important information. Thank you and please enjoy it.

Yesterday in my Facebook inbox, I received what appeared at first to be a pretty nasty message from one of my Facebook friends. The person was angry of the types of things showing up within their News Feed sidebar of “People You May Know”.

Now I can understand this person’s frustration of seeing things that offend them. I have this same issue with other people as well. That part is the subject of a future posting.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely NO control of what you see in your feed. I can’t alter any of the settings to prevent you or anybody else from seeing it all. This is a sad bug to the privacy of Facebook as it allows everybody to see everything you do.

As this friend wanted to do was to unfriend me and then re-friend me to try to end this problem. Unfortunately, this would never be a solution as this will always come back.

So do I believe that I should take care of what I click on just to please others? My answer is definitely not. Realistically, people should just “man up” and accept the way Facebook operates works warts and all.

So let’s break down the 3 individual problems with the Facebook timeline.

1. Likes – As I writing this I have just a little more than 3400 liked pages. To many people, this may not be many or it may be excessive depending on their own Facebook usage. Unfortunately, my likes may never be the same as yours, but sometimes they still show up on friend’s sidebar just because I like them.

2. Friends – You don’t have to be friends with anybody else if you don’t want to. However, Facebook wants you to be friends with the friends of others. This can be bad if these others post things that may not be appropriate. As of this writing, I have about 950 friends so don’t be surprised if one or two may show up in that sidebar to be added to your friends. This to me is the biggest problem as I feel that others should not see who I friend as I don’t care who my friends decide to add as friends themselves. Hopefully, you are as confused as I am over all this.

3. Follow – This should actually be renamed “stalking” as it allows you to become friends with someone without getting their approval. While this feature needs to be enabled by the user, I feel that I would have no control over who sees what I post no matter what. I like to be in control of who are my friends and who sees what I write.

My bottom line recommendation is to do what I do: JUST IGNORE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE!! Wanting to unfriend someone just ticks them off and doesn’t really solve anything.

So how did I handle the message? I just deleted it like it never happened as the person found their own non unfriending procedure. Good for them. Hopefully, I don’t get anymore complaints, but I expect it at some point down the line.

Special Notice: I have decided to reopen my Twitter account to everyone without getting approval. My hope is that I can get more followers as my follow numbers have been stagnant for months. I also feel that by reopening my Twitter account, I can get my messages out there much easier. However, if any harassment comes along, I will put a protection back on the account. I am hoping that I won’t have to do this again. You can follow me safely at @louisbrown.