I just found an awesome plugin called “FB Purity” which stands for “Fluff Busting Purity”.
Before I get into what this plugin does, think back to the earlier days of Facebook. Find your family and friends, see what they are up to in their life, keep in touch. Social media was simple and direct. Facebook is so commercialized now that the built-in tools just don’t care about this experience that brought everyone in to begin with.
I don’t use the social media site that much because it has become a terrible deluge of constant unfiltered noise with people liking and sharing crap most of the world doesn’t care about. Just opening the page and trying to find genuine original content and thoughts by family and friends without stuff that isn’t liked or shared is a chore.
If you “share” things you didn’t create at a rate of more than one item per 10 years, I am probably talking about your “interests” that you spam to everyone else. I am pretty sure most of us don’t care what games you play, what music you listen to, what movie you are watching, where you checked in, what comment of a comment of a comment you commented on. This year being a presidential election year amplifies the useless junk online by a factor of 1000.
Basically, this plugin allows you to filter out what you don’t want to see on Facebook. I have setup the filters to get rid of:
- Trending
- Likes
- Shares
- Games and Apps
- Watching/Listening to
- Who friended who
- Commented on photo/video/share
After using this plugin, what I am left with is a much less diluted Facebook experience where all I see are the genuine self-created posts and pictures shared by people I know. If you joined Facebook before it became Facebook Unabridged, this plugin will easily help you return to that classic feel of the social media site. I care more about what you all have to genuinely say and share in your real lives than the distractions that you like and share in your online lives.
Just now I opened Facebook, and I currently have 105 things hidden from my view before scrolling down. The plugin gives you a count of what it hides and lets you easily show it if you want it. It took me 5 pages down to to even find a politician reference on my Facebook page! Before, it took me 5 pages of useless junk before I found an original post by someone I knew. I give this plugin two thumbs up!
You may not want to filter out as much noise as I do, but perhaps this will help me return to being more social online. It has been hard to socialize in “cyberspace” lately and I much prefer a face to face conversation. Simple and direct makes life so much easier!