What the Tech: How to Stop People from Getting Mad at You on Facebook
Even if you believe you truly love every Facebook friend you have, you can still disagree with them to the point you never want to hear from them again.
Prime examples: posts about the COVID-19 conspiracy theories, masks, anti-vaxxers and Black Lives Matter. Chances are, you’ve noticed some friends getting into it with other friends in the newsfeed or even in the comments on your posts.
I’ve watched people I’ve known all my life calling other Facebook friends horrible names. You may want to know there’s a way to prevent this from happening on your posts.
Facebook Friends Lists allow you to set up an unlimited number of lists so you can share certain posts with certain friends. Or share them publicly with the exception of your most angry Facebook friends.
On a computer, go to your Facebook newsfeed and look to the left sidebar. Under “Explore More” you’ll find “Friends Lists”. This is often populated by Facebook with “Close Friends” and “Family. Though you may have created one for high school friends, family, college friends etc.
To create a list you simply click the add button. Give it a name and start adding friends.
For example, you might create a list of “Pro-mask” friends. Or maybe an “anti-mask” list of friends. When you create a post, click on the “audience” tab where you normally would make posts public or shared with friends or friends of friends.
Then just set the audience for mask folks and anti-mask folks. Only friends on that list will see the post.
If you have hundreds or thousands of Facebook friends this can take some time and you can only create the list on a computer.
Another option is to create a list of friends who are particularly opinionated and who’ve started arguments and fights with their posts. I have a list named “Jerks”. We all have jerks for friends right?
When I post something that might get them going and illicit angry words and name-calling from those friends, I can set the audience as public with the exception of people on that list.
Every now and then I add someone else to the list to avoid drama from one of my posts.
You can certainly un-friend people who’ve cluttered up your timeline with insufferable comments or even block them. But someday all of this coronavirus/mask wearing/election year drama will be over.
If you want to keep those friends as Facebook friends, this is one way to share your feelings without starting a fight or losing friends in real life.
