why, Facebook, why?

[kindkit]

I'm trying again to use Facebook to keep in touch with people. Which is to say, I'm trying to make my affection for the people overpower my hatred for the cluttered, unintuitive, inconvenient interface.

But please tell me, o knowledgeable Facebook users: is there really no way to limit your news feed to posts by your friends, instead of getting a post ever damn time a friend "likes" something or comments on something? I only have about 30 Facebook friends and already the signal-to-noise ratio on my news feed is pretty terrible. I know about using friends lists, but I still don't want, say, a baby announcement from a grad school friend's cousin turning up on my feed because my friend comments on it. I don't know how people with hundreds of friends wade through the sea of posts to find anything of real interest.

Second question: is there a way to not see someone's posts without actually unfriending them? I have an old boss friended, but O.B. posts a ton, and a lot of it's Christian stuff or cryptic but probably pro-Trump election stuff, and I don't want to see it but I don't want to offend O.B. either.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

You can unfollow people while remaining friends with them, and they can't tell you have done so.

[kindkit]

Thank you!!!!

*shakes head sadly* If Facebook made any sense at all, I could have figured out how to do that. But no, there's no FAQ and the help topics are limited, to put it mildly.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's a rotten platform. Unfortunately it's the best way to keep in touch with a lot of my acquaintance...

[st_aurafina]

You can tell it not to show you stuff from that other person, which is a hassle but eventually you build up a bit of a filter. I have a ton of people actually blocked so they can't see me at all. Also, I dilute the bullshit with feeds I like, and try to console myself that when I see their bullshit, they're also seeing me like LGBT stuff and fat acceptance and sci-fi.

It's a necessary evil for me, so I try to dilute it as much as possible. It's so crap.

[vilakins]

Yep, F.B. Purity (http://www.fbpurity.com/)!

You can customise it in all sorts of ways. I've hidden friends' likes, comments, a whole lot of other stuff, and any posts with certain words in them. FB is now nice and clean and easy to read.