Beta yourself Facebook
How to be a smarter socialite
THE BASICS ■ Find your favourites
Facebook shows what it thinks you should see in your feed. It’s often wrong. Bring back sanity by switching posts to reverse chronological order (click Most Recent under News Feed on desktop or in the hamburger menu on mobile). Fine-tune what you get by using News Feed > Edit Preferences on desktop, or News Feed Preferences on mobile.
■ Get some peace
You have various ways to deal with annoying people. From a post, use the down-facing arrow (it’s an ellipsis on IOS) and snooze that person for 30 days – or unfollow them. Beyond that, you can head to their profile and unfriend them or go nuclear by choosing Block from the ‘…’ menu.
■ Save stories for later
If a post appears on your feed that needs more investigation than you can manage when shuffling towards a Tesco checkout, select Save from the post’s menu (the down arrow or ellipsis). Posts are listed in reverse chronological order and can be accessed from the sidebar on desktop, and from the hamburger menu on mobile.
■ Jazz up your posts
When composing a new short post, draw attention to it by adding a background, on top of which Facebook will add your musings in bold text – the colour options will appear as soon as you click/tap in the text box. For longer reads, use Facebook Notes (facebook. com/notes). Here, you can view notes by friends and compose your own. When opened, these blog-like posts display a cover image and your text in an extra-clear layout.
■ Search your activity
If you post something you later want to revisit, you can spend hours trying to locate it on your timeline. A better bet is to delve into your activity log (found in the main Settings menu). Here, you can spend even more hours looking back in shame and horror over your entire Facebook history.
GROUPS ■ Find your communities
Try searching for where you live – the results will include groups dedicated to local people and causes. Similarly, groups exist for everything from collecting niche Lego to legal advice for EU citizens concerned about Brexit.
■ Enrol your own
Public over-sharing online is a problem, not least when parents post images of their kids on a daily basis. For the sake of the children’s privacy, consider instead creating and posting to a private group, to which you can invite your family and close friends.
MARKETPLACE ■ Zone in on a bargain
On mobile, use Marketplace to search for something you’d like to buy then choose your location range and centre point. But be mindful that Marketplace is more Craigslist than ebay – you get few protections and must collect from the seller.
■ Offload your junk
If you’ve got things cluttering up your home, chances are someone else will take them off you. Use Marketplace to offer the items for free, and look into whether your local area has a ‘freebay’ group on which to list everything.
PRIVATE PARTS ■ Secure your login
In Settings, go to ‘Security and login’ (it’s under Account Settings on mobile). If your password is rubbish, change it: 1Password can make it more secure. And turn on two-factor authentication, which requires a code from your phone alongside your password.
■ See who’s signed in
Still in Security and login, turn on alerts for unrecognised logins. Check where you’re logged in, and log out any devices you don’t recognise.
■ Hide your details
On your profile page, visit the About section. Pare down who can see your details by setting them to ‘Only me’. If your birthday’s public, Facebook will tell your friends, some of whom will post to your feed… but that’s also a vector for identity theft.
GET CONNECTED ■ Check your secret inbox
In Messenger, you have two inboxes. The main one’s for accounts you’ve connected with, and the other is Message Requests. This is found in the People tab on mobile, and behind the cog icon on desktop. Check it frequently, not least when selling on Marketplace.
■ View live broadcasts
Facebook Watch wants to be Netflix but is Us-only for now. Still, there are still things to gawp at on Facebook – head to facebook.com/livemap for live broadcasts, from Sky Sports to a worrying number of psychic mediums.