Joel's Pointers

So there’s this thing going around Facebook telling people to unsubscribe from your Facebook feed because you don’t want your friends to see everything you comment on. 

Firstly, the post is already outdated, I don’t have an option that’s mentioned in the post that says “Comments and Likes”, it now lists “All Updates”, “Most updates” or “Only important”.

Secondly, the point is you’re sharing this information whether or not I subscribe to it. Isn’t it a little backwards to ask people not to see what you’re sharing anyway? It’s like asking people to close their ears while you read your PIN out loud. Reading you PIN out loud is a bad idea, asking people not to listen a worse idea. 

The solution is to post things to “Friends only”. Just checked this, and am 99% sure that if you make it “friends only”, only your friends that see that post can see that you commented on something. If you then comment on something I can’t see cause I’m not a friend of the same person, I won’t see it in the ticker. You only see comments on the ticker you have a right to see…

To make that practical: Joe posts a status and Bob comments on it. Jill is a friend of Bob but not Joe. If Joe’s status is set to “Friends only”, Jill won’t see Bob’s comment in the ticker. If Joe’s status is set to “Friends of Friends”, Jill can see it, cause she can also see the original comment. Facebook is nice enough to have a little icon by each status showing the status, a world for “everyone”, two people for “Friends of Friends”, and a wheel for “Custom”, a specific subset of friends, or all your friends. 

UPDATE: Regarding the first part: apparently I’ve got a new version, talking with others has confirmed they see a different UI for the right hand dropdown box.