Right i’ll admit it, facebook is a mystery to me, i use it (and hate it) but some things just puzzle me
this is what i want to know though, if a link to video appears on someones timeline (not mine but one ive stumbled across) with
” Billy Williams Via Frank Jedson ” does this mean the Billy and Frank are friends?

sorry for the stupid (and a little bit cryptic) question but I need to know

ta

Not necessarily. It just means it’s appeared on their feed or a page they’ve seen. Could be from a friend of a friend or someone who has posted on a post they are following. Lots of subtle remote connections.

Log out and don’t log back in. Your life will be better for it.

When it says via, I think that would mean they’ve shared a video that someone else has shared (someone correct me if I’m wrong), but they don’t need to know that person. It may well have popped up on their feed because someone they know is connected to that person in some way, or some other subtle connection as stated above. Facebook’s pretty clever, and the rabbit hole goes deep.

It also depends on whether the original poster shared the video with ‘public’ or ‘just friends’, etc.

Ah righty oh, I’ll carry on ignoring the facebook loonies and their ” look what I had for dinner” posts then
Ta all

FB doesn’t show you everything. It realises that we’d all be spammed to oblivion if it did that. So it shows you what it thinks you want to see. This is based on your interactions with those people. For people I’ve chatted to a lot, it alwyas shows me their stuff – with other pepole less so.

I think when it says Fred Bloggs via John Smith – you are friends with John Smith and they have actively shared (ie clicked on ‘share’) something from Fred.

Whether or not you see the things people share depends on how you’ve interacted with them in the past. Or the content. I get lots of shares from someone I’ve friended on here, despite only having chatted sporadically – I think because that person mostly shares stuff about bikes. This part of the system works well, since I am naturally more interested in the bike stuff 🙂

You can ‘train’ FB in what you like by actively selecting ‘I don’t want to see this’ from the little arrow on the top right. I think there’s also a page you can go to that’s labelled something like ‘improve what FB shows me’ where it shows you sample stuff (both advertising and freinds) and you say how interested you are in it.

It’s worth doing. Facebook works much much better when you take control of your content.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a status update on Facebook, all I ever see are videos that will have “tears literally rolling down my face” or claim that “what happened next amazed everyone”

They don’t

If you are new-ish to Facebook make sure you lock down your privacy. Its default settings are world+dog can see everything.

I lock mine down so only friends can see my shit.

On top of that I have three basic rules of Facebook:

1/ Only make friends with people you know
2/ Don’t ‘be friends’ with anyone you work with
3/ Regardless of privacy settings don’t post anything you mind world+dog seeing

Some people may disagree with rule 2/ however I have seen too many arguments at various work places caused by people seeing stuff on other peoples pages.

Other than that live by these rules and you should be ok.

Ah righty oh, I’ll carry on ignoring the facebook loonies and their ” look what I had for dinner” posts then
Ta all

It’s all for the best. It’s pretty much what I do.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a status update on Facebook

Like I said – take control of your content.

On the stupid video post, there’ll be a little arrow top right. Click there and select “I don’t want to see this”

Couldn’t be easier.