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Facebook's Notifications Are Out of Control. Here's How to Tame Them.

Facebook already has you hooked, but now information technology wants to keep you engaged with dozens of notifications each day. Hither'south how to get a trivial peace and quiet.

Credit... Elena Xausa

May 30, 2019

Not everyone can quit Facebook, but "non quitting" doesn't mean you want to spend all day on the site. As Facebook'southward notifications get increasingly aggressive, you have to fight dorsum even harder to repossess some peace and quiet.

With over two billion active users, it's hard for Facebook to grow much more than past adding new people. Instead, the company is focusing on engaging the users information technology already has, largely by pestering them with an endless stream of notifications. The uptick in notification spam has been well-documented. In just my own experience, I've received notifications when:

• Someone liked ane of my posts or comments.

• Someone I know posted in a grouping I'm in.

• Someone I don't know posted in a group I'm in.

• Someone is interested in an result I'm as well interested in. Nosotros can be noncommittal together.

• Someone I'yard friends with confirmed that she was going to an event I am interested in. This is curiously selective. Seventeen friends said they were going to one event, only I got notifications for merely 2 — 1 from my girlfriend and another from someone I never interact with.

• Someone I know is live-streaming.

• Someone — anyone — is streaming a video game. This appeared to exist little more than an advertising for Facebook Games, the company's competitor to the game-streaming service Twitch.

In isolation, none of these notifications are a problem. En masse, they become overwhelming. Thanks to the Digital Wellbeing service on my Android phone — which collects data about how much time you spend in apps — I tin tell that, even on a dull day, I become at least 30 mobile button notifications from Facebook. On a decorated day, that number can exceed l. That'due south two or three notifications per waking hour. And I'm non a heavy Facebook user.

However, the reality is likely even worse than that. I discovered that notifications for "likes" and other reactions are often combined in the Digital Wellbeing count, while comment notifications are counted individually. Yet both buzz my phone just the same. In other words, while my phone says I become 30 to 50 notifications per mean solar day, the real count is likely much higher.

And that's just button notifications. Facebook sometimes chooses which notifications deserve your immediate attention, leaving others for the next time you open up the app. A annotate on one of your posts might get pushed to your phone, but the 20th "like" on that post might not result in a buzz in your pocket. Yet, if you keep the site open in a tab on your figurer, or if you check the app ofttimes, these notifications tin add together to the racket.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to prune the notification spam, each progressively more than desperate.

Prune your notifications as they come in

Every time you go a notification on Facebook, whether on desktop or mobile, there's a subtle option to train Facebook to stop bothering you. In the feed of notifications — which you tin see when you click or tap the bell icon in any version of the Facebook app — there'south a iii-dot button. (Desktop users must hover over a notification with their mouse to make this button appear.)

When yous tap this push button, Facebook gives you lot a couple of options:

• "Hibernate this notification." This volition hide the individual notification in your notification feed. Information technology doesn't exercise anything to prevent further notifications, but it volition at least remove this ane.

• "Plow off notifications of this blazon/about this mail." The wording on this choice varies past mail blazon, only it allows you to unfollow a post — which ways you won't get notifications every fourth dimension someone replies just because you commented once — or to turn off notifications from sure pages or groups.

This method requires a flake more active management. By design, you'll always become at least the commencement notification, but y'all can forbid further disruptions. More than important, it requires the fewest changes in your habits. As you browse, take a 2d to tell Facebook what you'd like to see less of, and eventually your notifications should calm down a flake.

Plough off some notifications in the app settings

Facebook'southward settings are notoriously arcane, but if you lot take the fourth dimension to dig into them, you can find a lot of switches to plow off Facebook's biggest annoyances. The notification settings section is in a slightly different place from platform to platform, but here'southward how to find it:

• On the web: Click the pointer at the height-correct corner of the screen and choose "Settings." In the bar on the left side of the screen, click "Notifications."

• On Android: Tap the three-line carte du jour icon along the top of the app, scroll down and tap "Settings & Privacy," then tap "Settings." Scroll fifty-fifty further to notice "Notification Settings."

• On the iPhone and iPad: Tap the 3-line card push at the bottom of the app, curlicue down and tap "Settings & Privacy," and so tap "Notification Settings."

In one case yous discover this buried section, you lot'll observe a number of useful toggles. You can plow off notifications for specific things similar comments, tags and birthdays. There are also more nebulous categories like "More Activity Near You lot." This seems to include everything from likes and reactions on your posts and "On This Twenty-four hours" notifications to "Updates From Friends," which tells you when sure friends update their condition or share photos. Y'all don't become total control, merely you can at to the lowest degree cut off some of the more abrasive intrusions before you get them.

You lot can too customize where you get each category of notification. Facebook can transport emails, text letters or push notifications to your phone. If y'all'd adopt to go an e-mail about birthdays rather than an obnoxious fizz on your phone beginning matter in the morning time, you can change that hither.

Use the mobile site instead of the Facebook app

You may not leap straight to "Delete Facebook," simply that doesn't hateful you can't delete the Facebook app. Apps on your phone have the ability to interrupt any you're working on, fizz your phone or make noise, all of which is very confusing. The mobile site has none of these problems.

Just uninstall the Facebook app and visit Facebook.com through your phone's browser instead. Y'all tin can fifty-fifty add together a shortcut to the site from your abode screen so it's just as piece of cake equally launching the app. This way, you lot'll see Facebook notifications only when you want to, rather than getting pestered throughout the 24-hour interval. Unfortunately, you won't exist able to read Facebook messages (there's a separate app for Facebook Messenger if you demand it), but bated from that, everything else works the same.

Across preventing push notifications (which you can also plough off entirely), the mobile site has a number of advantages. It limits some of the ways Facebook can track you, it uses less battery in the background, and it takes up less infinite on your phone. If you're not quite ready to give up your Facebook business relationship, this is a good compromise.

Cut back on your Facebook time

Similar a 2-yr-old throwing a tantrum, Facebook sends you notifications to get your attention. Like responding to a toddler'due south tantrum, the best manner to discourage this behavior is to stop giving it attending. If y'all want to cut back on how much Facebook bothers you, one of the best ways is to stop letting it call back that you're interested.

Most Facebook notifications tend to be a result of your own interactions with the site. You get notifications because you comment on posts, join groups or follow pages. The less y'all practise of these things, the fewer notifications you lot'll receive. Screen time apps can help limit your Facebook time so you're less tempted to idly browse. Unfollowing pages or groups that don't serve a productive purpose can also reduce your notification clutter.

Put simply, the less time y'all spend on Facebook doing things that don't matter, the fewer notifications y'all'll become for things that don't matter. Facebook may go on looking for ways to tempt you lot dorsum, merely if yous cutting off push notifications and limit how often you open the app, and so information technology volition be a lot harder for the social media behemothic to attain you.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/smarter-living/stop-facebook-notifications.html

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