The little Facebook Secrets that will make you happy

Over at Facebook there is a lot of anger. There are those who are angry for being tagged on every picture particular Facebook friends post, others are angry for being inboxed by the wrong people, then there are those who tell their Facebook friends to not send them friend request if they do not fall in particular groups of the society. Yesterday I also saw a post by a lady who was angry for not being able to silently ignore a stalker. Other than people, sometimes Facebook will make you angry just because it autoplays videos. To avoid these unnecessary angers, I have decided to give you a dose of little Facebook Secrets that will make you happy this happy new year.

Foremost, let us deal with tagging. Just like the other aspects of Facebook that make Facebook users angry, tagging complains are nothing but a sign of laziness; laziness to discover. As I normally tell my friends, every time you get a new gadget, access a new website, or join a new social media platform, it is always important to press every button, browse through every link, so that you can know how to take full control of the gadget/platform you have just acquired or joined. In the case of Facebook, it is very important for you to click on the Settings Link in order to take control of General, Privacy, and Security Settings that will allow you to be happy in Facebook.

Generally those who complain of being tagged are those who have allowed anyone to tag them and for the tagged posts to show on their timelines before approval. However, a simple little Facebook Secret says that if you go to Settings then to Timeline and tagging, you will be able to enable review of posts you are tagged in before the posts appear on your Timeline. If you enable both reviews (Review posts that you’re tagged in before the posts appear on your timeline and, Review tags that people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook), then you will have control on what you are tagged in.

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Secondly on the tagging part of Facebook Secrets, enabling the reviews will force those accustomed to tagging you into thinking twice before they tag you next time, as they will not be seeing their posts in which they tagged you in on your timeline – so they will know that tagging you is a waste of time. This I am stating from experience. Actually people give up after you have hidden their first tag.

Facebook Secrets

The second important part of Facebook Secrets is how to silently ignore a stalker. For example, and this normally happens to ladies, there is this dude who messages you every so often, but you do not want to read his messages as Facebook will send to him a read notification, alerting him that you have ‘blueticked’ him. However, Facebook has provided this ignore messages tool that you can access either by long pressing a message from a person you want to ignore on Facebook Messenger, or by clicking the gear icon on the top right corner of a message box on Facebook Chat on the web. When you click on the gear icon then to Ignore messages, this is what you get:

Facebook Secrets

Lastly on Facebook Secrets and this is for mobile devices, it is important to turn off video autoplay on Facebook. Not only will video autoplay irritate you for playing videos that are really annoying, especially in places where you would rather have total silence, but will also consume your data which in Kenya costs an arm and a leg. To do this, click those three horizontal lines that represent settings menu at the top right of your Facebook App, Go to App Settings, scroll down to Autoplay, press on it, then select Never Autoplay Videos.

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The nuisance of videos autoplaying is also experienced in Instagram which is another Facebook owned App but Instagram doesn’t have the option of stopping the video Autoplay. On IG the best you can do is to select “Use Less Data” under Settings. Something tells me that since IG is a Facebook owned App, and since by default Facebook sets videos to autoplay, in a near future update Facebook might remove the “Never Autoplay Videos” option from the main Facebook App. This is because Facebook is in top gear to compete with YouTube for video on demand ads.

 

On that issue of some people writing on their Timeline targeting those who aren’t their friends yet, I would say two things: first those who aren’t your friends on Facebook either can’t or won’t read your Facebook posts, whether or not you have set your Facebook posts to public. Here using common sense will make you happier.

Odipo Riaga
Managing Editor at KachTech Media
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