The Problem with Facebook: "It's Keeping Things From You"

The Problem with Facebook: “It’s Keeping Things From You” is a post from: Open Culture. Watch it here or go to the YouTube site to watch it. I have a solution that I use that I will describe below the video, so if you go to the YouTube site, remember to come back here to check out my way to get around Facebooks's throttling of my choice to view posts, and how I took control of my Facebook.




OK, I hope you enjoyed that video, and learned something by it.
I am a regular YouTube watcher so I see his point, and since the videos I watch I either click on in a post, or watch embedded in an article or blog as it is here in my blog, or as a choice I searched for or it's related videos while at the YouTube site.
I am a regular Facebook visitor, mostly to keep in touch with my friends and family, especially since I moved from Pa to SC.

I may not get to see every post in YouTube, but I can subscribe to a channel and be able to see the posts they have added to the site. I am subscribed to about 30 or 40 different video producers and sharers, and I get regular emails when one of the people and groups I subscribe to makes a post. When I go to my own YouTube Home Page, I have a list of everyone that I've followed this way, with the number of videos they have posted since I last was on YouTube to visit their page. A couple of them are interests or groups, so I may get a compilation of multiple sources in one list.

I have found you can do a similar action in Facebook. You already have a couple of friend groups, as in close friends, family, and you can add others, like I added my school, and my home town, I have one for South Carolina members I am friends with. When I add a friend I makes sure I connect to one of these groups, so I can click this group and get the posts made by all those who are part of the group.
I then go to your Home Page, at the top of the page on the right you see the 3 notification icons, then it says Home then your name then the security and settings icons. If you click on Home, you are taken to your main Facebook timeline. On the left side is a column with areas like favorites, groups, friends, apps, and interests. By hovering over each of these headings of each section you see the word more. If you click it a page with the list of every group, including ones you,ve created and ones you've joined. By each of them is a pencil icon, if you click that pencil you get a small menu of choices with one being add to favorites, this anchors it to the top section of the links on the left of the page. Using the more button at the bottom of this list you can re-arrange them as you like.

Now on to pages you have Liked. When you click on the Like button of a page, there is a drop down menu, you can choose whether you want their posts in your timeline, whether you went them listed in your notifications, and if you want the listed in other interest lists. The interests works just like the groups with your friends, and once you set up an interest you can actually add a page without liking it if you want to follow it.
I have an interest of sports with the Philadelphia teams, plus sports radio and tv pages, and sports web sites. I have an interest with movies I've watched and want to watch. I have an interest of the tv shows I enjoy. I have an interest of Spartanburg Restaurants, so I can keep track of any specials and coupons they have (most are the national site but since they have a restaurant near me that I visit I put them here). Some interests have a couple of pages listed in them some have 20 or 30 pages.
I can check them out or ignore them as I want to, and every time I go there, I get the recent posts each page has made. In this way I can decide if I want to see the post with out having it be stuck on my timeline, and being subjected to the information overload.

By doing this I have more control over what I see everyday, and it's a conscious choice rather then according to some sort of algorithm that Facebook has created.