I don’t know about you, but my Facebook feed has been pretty ugly since, well, hard to actually pinpoint an exact date, but I’d say for about a year now at least. I do think congratulations are in order for Facebook though. So congrats Facebook, you’re now exactly like YouTube. The funny thing about YouTube is that the comments turn into smear campaigns on a regular basis. Sure, there are some pretty funny comments, and the comments are sometimes more entertaining than the video itself, but more often than not it’s someone insulting another person just to be a douche. And that seems to be what Facebook has become too, so it’s now time to declutter Facebook.

But how exactly do you declutter Facebook? Well, there are a few ways. Let’s start with those pesky ads.

Hide Ad & Why am I seeing This?

The way Facebook works is that ads are tossed into your feed based on your interests, previous likes/clicks and shares, pages you like, your location, gender, age, who your friends are, and more important – the websites you’ve visited (this is tracked with what’s called a Facebook pixel and is some pretty powerful targeting). All of it is pretty detailed stuff, so for those wanting to run a targeted Facebook ad, they drill down on certain aspects of the above on top of what sites you’ve hit on their page. Sometimes you hit a certain landing page and you become part of their target, other times it’s the fact that you like the Desperate Housewives Facebook Page (why people watch and follow that stuff I don’t know, but I don’t judge…okay maybe I judge a little). But that’s just what companies selling stuff do. They target you, and their ad comes into your feed.

 

In the ad above, the company targeted me because I was looking at a specific product on their website, so they threw that product in my Facebook feed to entice me further. Genius isn’t it. But fear not, I didn’t bite.

How do you declutter Facebook from these ads? You have a few options, you can:

1. Choose to Hide Ad
2. Select Why am I seeing this (which leads to your preferences) or…
3. Go to Settings > Ads and fart around with your preferences
4. Basically quit Facebook, because let’s face it, changing all your settings and whatnot is still unlikely to completely remove ads!

And then there are your friends and groups you belong to. There are really only two options nowadays (aside from “Unfriending” someone, but I’m not getting into that coldness). So here’s how to declutter Facebook when it comes to your friends:

Hide Post

I’m not very political. Sometimes I lean left, sometimes I lean right – it often depends on the issue and whether or not I’m affected by said issue. Lately, there is a lot of stuff in my Facebook feed about politricks that I don’t care to see, be it from the left, the right, or somewhere in between. So I click that little arrow and choose “Hide Post”.

And I’m not very religious either, but that’s never been something I’ve really had to declutter Facebook of in my stream. But if I do get that overly-preachy post, or those posts that tell me to “copy and post this on your Facebook page”, well, let’s just say “Hide Post”.

During our travels we made numerous friends, both locals, business owners, retired expats, travellers, and fellow bloggers. At some point many travellers stop travelling and you see their life from a different perspective – maybe they post too much for me about politricks, so once again…”Hide Post”.

Unfollow

Next we have all those childhood and high school friends. I’m on FB every day scrolling through my feed. Why? I don’t know! There are so many better things I could and SHOULD be doing, but I do like to see what the peeps I grew up with are up to these days. I’ve liked many of their posts over the years and receive many likes in return, but there are some people that never return the ‘like’. This happens to everyone, and this may sound like a silly way of looking at things, but if I show interest in your life but you never show interest in mine, well, I can take a hint. I’m not hurt, we aren’t real friends, just people who lived in the same geographic location at one point in our lives but have since gone in different directions, figuratively and literally. Unfollow.

There are also others who I’ve befriended somewhere along the way that post about polictricks…A LOT. I don’t mind people having an opinion, but when you degrade or belittle others and think your political POV is the only POV and everyone else is a stupid-head, well, eventually I’m going to get tired of it…Unfollow.

And maybe it’s not politricks for you, maybe it’s sports, music, or a friend who posts nothing but cat videos. Everyone has their breaking point with stuff they don’t want to see in their Facebook feed.

So if you want to declutter Facebook, or Twitter, Instagram or Linkedin for that matter, it takes a bit of time, but also the ability to let go. It’s like the line in the New Year’s song Auld Lang Syne; Should old acquaintance be forgot…Or maybe that line should be updated to Should old acquaintance be unfollowed!

Now go sell all your stuff and declutter Facebook!