Facebook: how to stop sharing activity and mutual friends list?

February 17, 2025 8:03 AM

A relative just "confronted" me about staying friends with someone they'd had a falling out with, and liking that person's posts. I have no intention of justifying my Facebook activity to anyone, but is there a way I can stop sharing this kind of information with mutual connections?

I'm embarrassed to be asking this question for two reasons, not least because it seems like extremely juvenile behaviour for people in their fifties, but also because I can't figure it out. I can find the settings that will let me stop seeing notifications from others, but is there a way to stop them getting a notice when I react to something? I don't care if they see what I've liked if they actually visit a post, since I'm not seeking to hide or justify my 800+ connections, I just don't like the idea of being monitored and getting a "talking to" for clicking the thumb's up on a random beach photo that passes through my feed.

posted by rpfields to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Sadly, no. You could hide your friends list from other people but you can't stop someone else's notifications of your activity. They would have to change their settings to stop seeing notifications.
posted by cooker girl at 8:10 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

If your relative isn't friends with this friend of yours, the only way they would be able to see your activity on this person's posts is if your friend's posts are public. Somehow persuading your friend to set their posts to private should solve the problem - how you'd go about doing that is less clear to me...
posted by altolinguistic at 8:25 AM on February 17 [4 favorites]

Back in the much earlier days of Fb, there was the option to add some friends to a 'limited activitiy' or maybe it was called 'limited profile' view. Essentially it was for casual aquantancies who you didn't want seeing all your activity, but still wanted to connect directly on there.

It meant that you could restrict what was seen by certain groups. ie: close friends only > limited profile friends > friends of friends > anyone/public.

When I was trying to backup/export my data from them a month or so ago, I still had that showing as a list option somewhere in the settings. I'm sorry I have no idea if it still works though, or how you'd activate it or utilise it now.
posted by many-things at 10:03 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everybody! It seems that I will need to stick to my current method of dealing with this, which involves telling this relative that they are free to unfriend or unfollow me if they don't want to be "upset" by my other interactions. I had zero time for this kind of crap when I was in junior high, and am certainly not going to play into it now.
posted by rpfields at 12:37 PM on February 17 [6 favorites]

Set "who can see my Friends list" to "only me"

And/or put the relative on "limited profile"

And/or tell the other friend that the relative is still keeping tabs on them, and that they should block the relative (for now, at least)
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:42 PM on February 17 [3 favorites]