Stop Facebook Quizzes & App Notifications - Privacy Guide

Dealing with Unwanted Content on Facebook

It’s a common experience: you join Facebook at the urging of friends and family, only to find your news feed inundated with trivial quizzes, applications, and other distracting content. Completely blocking everyone isn’t a viable solution, so what alternatives are available?

Often overlooked is the impact these activities have on your social connections; many users find excessive quiz-taking irritating to their friends.

Blocking Individual Applications

If a friend is heavily engaged with a particular Facebook game, you may receive frequent notifications about their in-game achievements. A simple solution is to select Hide –> Hide Application.

While this method can be effective initially, the constant influx of new games on Facebook can quickly overwhelm you, requiring repeated hiding actions and diminishing the benefit of this approach.

Controlling Posts to Your Wall

For those seeking a more comprehensive solution, you can prevent others from posting directly to your wall by adjusting your privacy settings. Access these settings from the view of your wall.

Subsequently, deselect the option allowing "Friends may post to my Wall".

This setting preserves your ability to message, chat, and comment on others’ posts, while preventing unwanted content from appearing on your profile.

Utilizing Facebook Purity

If you wish to maintain the ability for friends to share genuine updates on your wall, consider using a browser extension like Facebook Purity. This Greasemonkey script, designed for Firefox, effectively filters out unwanted quizzes, applications, and similar distractions.

Ensure the Greasemonkey extension is installed and Firefox is restarted, if necessary. Then, navigate to the Facebook Purity installation page and click the Install button to add the script.

Upon reloading your Facebook Wall, the distracting content will be hidden, with a small link in the upper right corner providing an option to restore it if desired.

For many users, this script is essential for a more enjoyable Facebook experience.

Download Facebook Purity Greasemonkey Script from userscripts.org