Top 6 Facebook Annoyances and How to Fix Them
Feb 6, 2012 04:50 PM EDT by 
Facebook changes features like Kim Kardashian changes husbands. Just when users get comfortable with the latest iteration of “New Facebook,” Zuckerberg and company go and change something else, drawing the ire of its millions of users. Here are six Facebook annoyances that are currently grinding our gears and ways to deal with each.
Problem #1: News Ticker Shoves TMI Updates in Your Face
Sarcastically called the “stalker feed” by some users, the News Ticker has replaced the News Feed. Right above their list of friends available to chat, users are assaulted by an ongoing barrage of inane news including everything their friends liked and what they commented on.
Solution: Users looking to ditch the News Ticker can install Facebook News Ticker Remover (Google Chrome) or the Facebook Ticker Removal (Firefox) add-on which will automatically remove the offending feature.
Problem #2: Facebook Timeline Shares Your Worst Moments With the World
There used to be a time where you could just delete that embarrassing photo from Facebook, and if you were prone to drunk posting, you could rest easy in the knowledge that soon it would disappear from your timeline never to be seen again. With the new iteration of Timeline, every bad picture and misspelled status update will be on display forever.
Solution: While you might not be able to erase all those regrettable photos and statuses of yore, you can control who gets to see them. Simply pull down the menu next to the Home button on your Facebook page and click Privacy Settings then Timeline Viewer Settings. From there, scroll down to Limit the Audience for Past Posts column and hit the Manage Past Post Visibility tab. Click OK and your timeline goes from public to friends only.
Problem #3: Your Facebook Subscribers Keep Spamming You
People looking to make part of their private Facebook pages public can open themselves up to subscribers, people who can sign up to read your updates without being approved “friends.” Users can then follow those pages and hopefully have an invigorating exchange of ideas. However, many people are complaining of inordinate amounts of spam and inappropriate content filling their news feed.
Solution: Freedom from that unwanted spam is only a few clicks away. To turn off Facebook Subscribe, click on Subscriptions in the left side menu. From there, click Edit under Subscribers and switch On to Off.
Problem #4: Gallery Photos Take Too Long to Load
Remember when you could quickly and easily scroll through all your friends’ Facebook photos without being held up by slow loading times? Facebook took all the convenience and fun of scrolling through photos and replaced it with theater-style pop-up photos. Sure the image is bigger, but some images can take longer to load than others, making photo-cruising an unnecessary exercise in patience.
Solution: Installing Revert Facebook Photo Viewer on Google Chrome or Facebook Photo Theater Killer on Firefox will display your photos in Facebook Classic style. Firefox users must have the Greasemonkey add-on installed first.
Problem #5: Facebook Apps Share Too Much Info About You
By default, apps like Spotify, Ticketmaster and Foursquare share every tiny detail of your life with all of your friends. Instead of just learning about a job promotion or a new relationship, all your contacts can now be privy to what tickets you purchased from Ticketmaster or what song you’re listening to on Spotify. It’s great for advertisers, but an overshare nightmare for everyone else.
Solution: Don’t want everyone to know you just listened to Kenny G. on Spotify? Just go to Privacy Settings, click Edit Settings next to Apps and Websites, and then hit Edit Settings by the Instant Personalizations Header.
From there, uncheck the “Enable instant personalization on all partner sites” tab.
Problem #6: Annoying App Invites
Facebook has become a haven for casual gamers who sink hours into tending their farms, building a criminal empire or creating villages for their virtual insect colonies. Unfortunately many of these misguided souls insist on inviting you to join the “fun,” sending you invite after invite to join the next big “Ville,” deluging your Facebook notifications and annoying you to no end.
Solution: Go to Privacy Settings and select Manage Blocking next to Blocked People and Apps.
Then enter the offending person’s name in the Block App Invites field and voila! It’ll be game over for all those unwanted game invites.
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March 13th, 2012 at 9:58 am
The worst annoyance I find, and one that makes me hardly use Facebook is the “Top Stories” bug. I keep having to set it over and over and over to get the “Most Recent” stories. As I find “Top Stories” to be entirely useless, I’d like to get rid of this “option” entirely and never see it again, and only get “Most Recent” stories. Do you have any idea how to make this permanent?
April 26th, 2012 at 7:26 pm
I use Social Fixer (socialfixer.com) for FaceBook. It removes several of these annoying things (photos, news ticker, top stories) and more. I really like the filtering option. Works for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and I think Opera. Does not work on IE.
May 12th, 2012 at 10:42 pm
Facebook is itself an annoyance – so much so that I deleted my account permanently. Anyone who uses it deserves everything they get: public humiliation, chances of identity theft, hundreds of emails clogging you inbox telling you EVERY SINGLE THING that someone on your friends list does on Facebook… THAT’S entertainment!
September 15th, 2012 at 12:37 am
What about POSTS to join a CAUSE that come supposedly from friends??? And then I the “hide” and “delete” functions don’t work when I click on them????
September 27th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Well, I tried number 5, but it would not let me switch off the Instant Personalisation – it was grayed out. Underneath it said
Note: instant personalisation is not yet available for you.
Any other suggestions?
November 4th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
I have a problem with a page on which I am an admin. Yesterday, on the Timeline, in the “Highlights” section, the posts in the “Now” section quit displaying. I can look at previous months, or years, and see the posts from those eras. I can even view “Posts by Page”, “Posts by Others”, and “Friend Activity”. I have checked with other admins, and they are able to view everything without a problem. Prior to the posts “disappearing”, I was looking at the drop down list where a person can select the page to “Add to Interests”. Any suggestions on what I can check for a solution?
January 10th, 2013 at 5:33 am
Hi, on my toshiba laptop on face book ticker was working normally but now i dont see ticker whereas when I login on other computer i could ticker on my facebook. Whats happenig in here. Can anyone help me out plz. its irritating. why is tat disappeared on my laptop n appearing on other laptop.? plz help me out
January 12th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
what I don’t want to see are those ads on the left side. unfortunately, FB is gaining a lot of money from those so I guess I have to live with it until I cancel my account. Gone are the days when FB was simple and bearable.
January 30th, 2013 at 8:41 pm
ive found the wonderful “Facebook Purity” browser extension to easy many of my woes with facebook, it makes the site a heck of a lot less annoying
February 4th, 2013 at 8:10 pm
if u delete a photo on facebook does that delete all related notifications?
February 12th, 2013 at 9:39 am
hi,. i have a problem with my facebook account, whenever i open it its different from the usual page, it doesnt show pictures including my timeline.. i hope you can help me regarding this.
February 15th, 2013 at 3:01 am
Good grief, some of your advice is already outdated…if it weren’t for the social media marketing potential, I’d never even consider Facebook, let alone suffer through its whims and fancies!
February 20th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
I have problem when I repost long worded Posts won’t let me be able to click on the post button, it is too far down, I can’t reach it.
March 8th, 2013 at 6:16 pm
A lot of the ID pictures of my friends are now of wrong people. How do I fix this?
March 16th, 2013 at 5:19 am
i cant even scroll down to see my new feeds ….. how do i fix that ??
March 29th, 2013 at 10:40 am
I have started getting ads on the right hand side of my page in Japanese! I only speak English on the website so how can that be right? I, like many other people do not want these ads so how do we stop them please? Any ideas would be welcomed!
April 14th, 2013 at 11:26 am
I am not getting a photo or picture one. I get the posts, but that’s it. My photo ID isn’t even on any longer. I have emailed Facebook I don’t know how many times and the replies I have gotten get back state that while all emails are being read, they might answer a few. I’m not one of them. This has been going on for a week. Can you help me please?