Time for Social Media Spring Cleaning! (Part 2)

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Want to see how I reclaimed my Instagram feed? Click here to read the first part of this series!

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I have a tumultuous relationship with Facebook. On 2014, I did my first major social media detox when I deleted my Facebook account and quit the social media for three months. Eventually, I made a new one prior to my departure to the Netherlands as a medium to get in touch with best friends and close family members in Indonesia.

Fast forward to 2017-2018, I realized that I had been following and liking too many irrelevant topics. Hence, my Facebook algorithm fucked up. Just like what happened with my Instagram, I made quite a similar social media objective for my Facebook.

The quest to reclaim my Facebook feed finally begun.

The Time When I Got Friendly With Privacy Settings

Most people don’t give a shit about their privacy on Facebook, but I do. I realize that it is important to protect your Facebook account to avoid strangers’ eyes and to really connect with people who matter.

Simply go to “Settings” on your Facebook page and feel free to play around with their sub-menus. I like to check my Privacy, Timeline and Tagging Settings, and Face Recognition settings to see how my profile looks like to strangers and to check pending posts.

The Time When I Categorized My Friends to Boxes

After I made a new Facebook in 2015, I decided to filter my friend requests. My mantra is: “Do I want this person to see my online activity?”. No wonder I only have less than 200 friends on Facebook. But I’m happy with this number because these are the people I want to connect with.

After filtering whom I want to be friends with, I put my Facebook List to action. Facebook List is an optional way to organize your friends, hence controlling whose posts you see on your News Feed. Facebook have made three ready-made lists for you:

• Close Friends, for people who should show up more on your News Feed;
• Acquaintances, for people who should show up less on your News Feed;
• Restricted; for friends who can only see your posts that are set to public.

You can also limit the audience of your posts by setting them to ‘Friends, except Acquaintances’ by following these steps:

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The Time When I Take Control of My Ads

This is an ongoing process. I must admit that up until now, my ad preference is often unrelated to my interests because I keep on clicking unrelated things just because of my curiosity.

Have you wondered why Facebook often offer you ads that is so tempting? Just like Instagram, they work with algorithm. They will see what kind of pages you interact with, and carefully curated ads to match your interest.

With that being said, if you got an ad that doesn’t match your preference, just click on the three little dots on the corner right of the ad and click “Why Am I Seeing This?” Facebook will show you this:

Now, if you really want to take over your Ads Preferences, you can click on the “Manage Your Ad Preferences” button. Facebook will show your liked pages and the ads you previously interacted with, which is how they learn to influence the ads that you see. Play around in that section to stop liking posts that are irrelevant to you or to see your ad insights. If you do these often, Facebook will re-learn your interests and start showing ads that is recommended to you.

The Time When I Did Miscellaneous Things

This step is also a work in progress. Due to my previous jobs, I had to do a lot of Facebook research, which included joining groups and clicking on ads that were not relevant to my interests. After leaving my previous company, I decided to leave all groups that I used for work and start to curate my Facebook more for my personal experience.

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With that being said, this is the end of the 2-part series on how I reclaim my social media. Just like keeping up with SEO, reclaiming your social media is a nonstop process. I suggest you start doing these things for a safer and more curated experience online and maintain these things as your social media habits. Good luck!