Many of us use Facebook for something other than FarmVille… that is, real life friends (what a concept!). Unfortunately, a lot of these friends do not play FarmVille and may even have a grudge against it because FarmVille players publish a lot of posts to their walls. They could just hide FarmVille posts by clicking Hide on one and selecting “Hide FarmVille,” but many people are stubborn and refuse to do so. This also doesn’t block others from being able to see your FarmVille posts on your profile page as well. This guide is also good for those that do not want non-FarmVille players to know they play FarmVille at all.
Facebook has implemented new security and privacy settings, one of which can allow you to only show posts from Applications to certain people, or restrict it from certain people. Your friends will no longer have to complain about their feed being spammed with your FarmVille posts, and you can post away to share bonuses, animals, collections, and more! Follow these simple steps below:
1. Open Facebook to your main page. On the left-hand side you should see lists (News Feed, etc.). Click the word “Friends”.
2. Near the top of the page, in the middle but by the right sidebar there should be a “Create New List” button. Click this.
3. You should see a new window. Title your new list, “FarmVille friends”, “FarmVille neighbors” or whatever you want to call it. Select “Create List”. Select any of your existing FarmVille friends that you want to be added to this list.
4. When FarmVille pops up something to post to your feed, such as a collection or a lonely animal, before you just click “Publish,” click the lock image to the left of that button and select Customize:
5. A new window will come up within the Publish window called “Custom Privacy.” In the drop down under “Make this visible to” select “Specific People…”
6. In the text box under “Specific People…” write in the name of the FarmVille group you named earlier (in step 3).
7. FarmVille has not fixed their box to be able to use this setting properly yet, so you will have to use the tab key on your keyboard to tab through the fields until you can see the “Save Setting” button. Click on this button. Note: Looks like this has finally been fixed so you wont need to tab much. Occasionally it still will not show correctly and you will need to tab however.
8. Click Publish, and you’re all done! Your FarmVille friends will be able to see your post, but anyone that is not on that list will not be able to see your post.
Important: Whenever you add a new friend for FarmVille before you confirm them, select the “Add To List…” drop-down and select the name of your list (chosen in Step 3). You must put them on this list for this to work!
As a further note, you can use this guide in conjunction with our Add Friends and Protect Your Personal Information Guide. Keep in mind that if you add any of your real life friends to the list and use the Protect Your Personal Information Guide to restrict access to certain parts of your profile, those real life friends will also be restricted to seeing the bare minimum of your profile. In this case, you may want to create a second FarmVille neighbors list such as “FV Special” or “Real Life FV Friends” and add people to that list that you want to be able to both see your profile and your FarmVille posts. Do not put those people on your restricted FarmVille list. (You will have to type in both lists in Step 6 of this post)
Do I have to do this everytime I post or will this save this for next time I post and if not is there anyway to make this setting permanent?
that’s exactly what i want to know
TO BLOCK ANNOYING GAME POSTS: Mouse over the post (Farmville, Mafia, etc.), click HIDE (on right), then choose “hide this application” or “hide this person” (If you hide the person, you’ll also not be able to see their personal posts.) To KEEP your game posts, but temporarily hide them, click friends in left column, choose “status updates” and you’ll skip all the games for the moment. To restore, click “Top News”.
What if the seacond screen after it say share doesn’t come up..I can post anything like cows, eggs, bushel etc etc,, what do i do about that??
my fv will not post to home page can u please tell me how to fix this thank you nothing is showing up
Really, there is a much simpler method with Facebook’s new privacy settings. I’ve done this for mine and my husband’s accounts and tested it using the other account.
-> Go into Facebook->Account->PrivacySettings
-> Select Applications at the bottom
-> You should see “Choose your privacy settings: Applications, Games and Websites” at the top.
-> Click the “Edit Settings” button next to the second item (Game and application activity)
-> Change this to Custom and edit for a list of your folks who play games.
-> All game/application posts only go to those people now.
I don’t use other apps that I want people to see, so this works great for me. My wall shows nice and clean for friends who don’t play games!
Thank you for that Lynne, I have alot of real life friends who don’t play FV and I get some ‘smart’ comments from them when out socialising etc. (“,) I enjoy conversing with them on FB so I’m going to give your way a go. Here’s hoping I can do it right
man, it’s broken now. And for those asking, it seems you have to edit the post settings for EVERY post, which is crazy really.
Geez, this is easier:
TO BLOCK ANNOYING GAME POSTS: Mouse over the post (Farmville, Mafia, etc.), click HIDE (on right), then choose “hide this application” or “hide this person” (If you hide the person, you’ll also not be able to see their personal posts.) To KEEP your game posts, but temporarily hide them, click friends in left column, choose “status updates” and you’ll skip all the games for the moment. To restore, click “Top News”.
You can stop Farmville from posting on your wall (the way Lynn explained) but…
what Farmville does is they get your friends to do the posting. So whenever your friends find anything to share with you, Farmville makes THEM post on your wall.
This makes your wall look like all you are doing on Facebook is playing Farmville!
Any idea on how to turn it off? Farmvile has no right to use my friends to post FV stuff on my wall if I do not want it there.
And NOW the posts do not let you select a friend list like they used to, only individual posts (as of today). So, if I wanted to post from Farmville and only have my FV playing friends see it, I would have to select EACH PERSON’S NAME! This is crazy…it’s going to make me not be able to post at all. Why does FB keep giving us settings and then taking them away?
Very helpfull for Farmville Fanatic Farmer
I’m having trouble retrieving bushels for crafting. My ovens are empty, go to neighbors stalls, bushels are there but none of them will let me click on them. What’s going on or what am I doing wrong. It worked fine this AM.
This method no longer works… they changed it again… any new suggestions?
What happened to the custom privacy option?!?!?!?!
Anyone find a way around this latest update so I don’t harass my friends that don’t play?
I’m not sure what you are referring to… I can still use the lock and hide it or show it to certain people.
So, I followed this through, step by step, three different times (after setting up my lists). It seems to work for that particular publish, but the settings are not being saved permanently (as the default). For me, tonight anyway, I would have to do the list selection every time I publish something to the feed. Hmmmm Will try again later. Anyone else?
There is a more simple way to stop farmville, Mafia wars, frontierville, or any game on facebook from posting to non-game players posts. It’s so simple, I had to try it out myself. All you need to do is inform game players to click on the small lock located next to the “publish”. By selecting “friends only” will only post to your neighbors of that game. It may take time for all of them to get the hint, eventually it will become habit. I have done this since non-gaming friends complained about how many game-related posts were flooding their posts. Try it. It works great…Happy Farming….
hai