Thanks for the correct observation!

Of course, I have a question..

You write above that “[...] you can still stop certain kinds of notifications from appearing as Recent Activity on your wall news feed. This includes notifications when you become a fan of a page [...].

I’ve unchecked the “Publish recent activity (one line stories) to my wall” in the Ads & Pages Application Settings, but those stories still publish.

From what I’ve understood friends AND fans additions can only be deleted manually from my wall AFTER I’ve added them [via the "Remove" button]. Can you confirm? or clarify?

Thanks!

Using my example from before, I have my settings set to either Friends only or Only Me. That’s it.

I know for a fact, due to seeing with my own eyes in the account of someone I am not friends with, who ALSO has their settings to Only Friends, that he was able to see the status message.

Facebook has created the facade of ‘control’, but you really need to test things out in other people’s accounts to really see what’s going on!

I have completely ceased from all activity on FB. I will not post, comment, or like ANYTHING. (This was mainly to see if I could affect their undisclosed ‘algorithm’)

The only thing I will do now is send private messages to people, as it is THE ONLY THING LEFT that is private on FB.

FOR NOW.

The reason you are seeing statuses of people who are not friends with you is either because they have their wall privacy set to Friends of Friends or Everyone, or the visibility of those specific status messages to Friends of Friends or Everyone.

Jane comments on my status and her activity is published to her wall with my name linking to my profile and “status” linking to my status.

Can Tom click on the word status and view my status, and therefore my profile? Testing it out, I didn’t find a single profile that would NOT let me view their profile and status in the past few days when I clicked on a Friend’s activity. These profiles were for people I am not friends with. I do not know their profile settings.

I do not want someone I am not friends with getting access to my status or profile because we share a mutual friend, which is why I use “Friends Only” for all privacy settings and not “Friends of Friends”.

Thanks for the articles!

My main issue is, and will remain, that they have taken away my ability to control what information gets thrown into people’s feeds. One of my issues, is that people will get sick of seeing the ‘likes this photo’, ‘commented on Michael Jackson’s status’, and ‘shared a link on Madonna’s wall’, and will instead choose to hide me altogether (and of which I would never know).

Because of their stupid ‘algorithm’, I now am thrust into the feeds of people who I am SURE do not care about what photo I liked, or what comment I wrote on someone’s wall who they don’t even know from Adam.

I think that in the long run, FB is going to see an aggregate shift, as I (and many others I know, and on here) are taking actions to try to either counteract (like not posting/being as active) their changes, or leaving FB entirely.

I myself believe that I am going to start a fan page, kick everyone out that I don’t already see in person/call on the phone/regularly e-mail, and shift all of the others over to the forthcoming fan page.

It’s not going to be an easy process, but I do know a growing number of people who are creating new profiles as to try to maintain some kind of privacy.