Are your Facebook friends hiding from you?
Turns out the latest update to the Facebook news feeds sets a bunch of feeds that you may want to follow to “hidden” so that they don’t show up in your main feed. This includes both “friends” and “public profiles”, so it’s probably worth checking to see if you have some things hidden that I did not mean to!
How to check?
This is not self-evident, at least it wasn’t for me. The trick is that you first have to hide a news item, and then Facebook will (briefly) give you a link to edit your hidden items (i.e. “show hidden friends”):
This will open up a menu similar to this one where you can unhide (or “add to newsfeed”):
Personally, I was not only surprised at the number of “pages” or public profiles that were hidden, but also at just how many people were hidden in my menu. I think the old messaging of “show fewer updates” turned into “hidden” in the new layout.
And if you’re looking for more background on Facebook, maybe you should ask yourself, Why bother with Facebook Pages?
Facebook
38 Comments
I figured out how to “Show Hidden Friends” (and I feel like a bit of an idiot that it took me this long): at the bottom of the news feed, in the box that you click for “Older Posts” there is a link that says “See Hidden Friends” – and ALLEGEDLY this offers the option to “Add to News Feed”; however, these links seem to be non-functioning at present.
So my Hidden Friends are doomed to remain Hidden until this is resolved.
Hey Kids, I think my friend may have hid me. Is there any way I can tell if she hid me? let me know if anyone has anything?
I think they’re hidden you if you don’t pop up in their friends list on their home page, that is, the sidebar that appears on their profile that has a list of ten friends or so. I think Facebook’s code lists the people you interact with the most, so if you’re hidden from their news feed, then you won’t show up on their friends list. I hope that helped.
how can i tell if my other half has hidden certain friends he doesnt want me to know about?
Pretty sure there’s no way to “hide” selective people on your friend list from your existing “friends”…
Your explanation is incorrect. If you don’t show up on your friend’s list, it is because they have either de-friended you, blocked you, or they have deactivated their account. Hiding a friend’s posts from your news feed does not remove them from your friends list, it only hides their posts on your news feed which you can restore anytime you want as long as they have not de-friended you in the meantime.
I wanted to know if my fiance was hiding friends from me,as hes always on f/b and ive got mutual friends with him and he hasnt spoke to any of them no comments,anything,just thought maybe with his track record of cheating he may of hidden a few women from me,also want to no if he can hide me from them,and also our relationship status.
Sounds like a great person to get married to, considering the history of cheating and the fact that you have major trust issues. Be prepared for divorce, that is if you ever make it down the isle.
Hopefully Laura reads this again. In order to get my friends off their hidden status (I noticed that the links are completely gone now) I had to hide someone and then click the “Show Hidden Friends” that popped up in the window… as shown in this article. It’s the only way you can change the list right now.
Sooo frustrating.
Has anyone figured out how to hide/unhide friends out of the Facebook BlackBerry App? I’m forced to unfriend folks that annoy me with updates, but I’d rather just hide them!
I’m wondering how you’ve managed to use the Blackberry app at all. I think I *might* be stuck with an old version because I find it unusable for anything other than uploading photos. Status updates for example still force me to start with “dustin (is)…”
Hey ,can anyone tell if his friends are hiding his news feeds?
Interesting twist Dany…. I’m pretty sure there’s no way to tell.
Thank you very much. it works. lol
Well, its pretty simple to unhide your friends. I finally figured it out. Go to the end of the news feed page. At the bottom right corner, you will see “options” menu which will pop up a screen showing all the feeds or friends that are hidden from your news feed. You may then select to “Add to news feed” button to add them back so that you can see their posts.
damn.. i’m also looking for the option to hide a few (i’m lying a LOT) of overzealous updaters on my blackberry. I love em but damn it! its too much! stop with the updating!!! When will they fix this??!
I what to unhide the Farmville links on my facebook! Any ideas?? I hide it when I didn’t have time to have a farm but now have one and need to adopt 2 animals to get a ribbon but I need to do this through the entries! PLEASE HELP!
I have no idea about Farmville. I’ve managed to successfully avoid that game!
I accidentally hid farmville feed & i want it back if you get answer please tell me! Thank you ever so much
At the bottom of your newsfeed to the right is a button marked “Options.” Clicking on that will bring up a window that shows all hidden Friends, pages, and apps. Simply remove Farmville from the list and you should have it back.
I’m with Dany… I’d like to know if I’m being hidden… There has to be a patch for that. Hackers, how about a hand?
I’d like to know if there is any way do discover if any of my friends are hiding me.
I am no longer able to see my neighbor’s farmville posts either. HELP!
Hi.. m v worried tht my bf iz cheating on me haz been avoiding me & he haz smehow managed 2 appear offline 2 me on fb chat while he still remainz online 4 da rest of his friendz.. plz plz plz help me out n tel me if thr iz sme way tht i can find out if he iz appearing offline 2 me only….
Madeeha, If there’s a way to hide your status to only one person, I wouldn’t no how to do that. Sorry I’m not gonna be much help.
This post is pretty old but I just read it. There was a way to do this before fb changed the chat recently. I my facebook friends organized into lists for my family, coworkers, etc. In the old chat I was able to turn each list on and off so I was only shown as online to certain lists. You can put only one person on a list and turn their list off on your chat.
Since fb changed the chat recently I can’t see my lists anymore so I just stay offline all the time. lol
Thankyou Dustin 4 ur trying 2 help… but m pretty sure tht u can create certain friend lists n appear offline 2 thm only while appearing online 2 the rest of the frndz… PLz GUYZ N GALZ…. NEED HELP HERE!!! m sure thr must sme way of finding out… msn yahoo n gtawk all hv been covered m sure thr must b a hacker whu haz found out 4 fb also……… DESPERATELY HELP NEEDED!!!!!!
My son travels with his job and used to mention his whereabouts on facebook almost daily . Also another son would post and 2 daughter-in-laws.. No I feel like it’s all hidden from me. Nothing new has shown up in weeks. Is there a way to view those hidden files w/o contacted them?
As far as I know, if someone hides stuff from you, there’s really no way to see it as long as you’re logged in as yourself.
This post is pretty old but I just read it. There was a way to do this before fb changed the chat. I have my facebook friends organized into lists for my family, coworkers, etc. In the old chat I was able to turn each list on and off so I was only shown as online to certain lists. You can put only one person on a list and turn their list off on your chat.
Since fb changed the chat recently I can’t see my lists anymore so I just stay offline all the time. lol
oops sorry disregard… this was supposed to reply to the post above yours… lol
aughh im bored at skool
Not working its mozilla and updated facebook
This no longer works..
I am an old user of face book and I don’t even know that there such things like hiding someone from your news feed. Thanks and I found this site. And now I can hide those super noisy friends of mine. And same for those friends who always publish their face book games.
Hidden from newsfeed sounds like a good idea but if you really want to keep someone from your wall and eliminate them from your news feed, and then you really are not friends with them. Looks like so unfair for your face book friend’s side!
Hi is there a way that a friend is hiding friends posts/replies on her wall?
she’s either suddenly very unpopular or she’s deliberately hiding their responses from me?
I can see the friends on her friend list so she’s not put them in a seperate hiden group but no-one ever replies to her posts.
we recently split up and i think she’s hiding what she’s up to and who she’s in touch with from me
please help!
along these same lines, I’m wondering why I can’t see 1 of my BF’s Friends on his page anymore and his Friend count dropped by 1 (she is not one of my Friends) – but when I search for her, the search that comes up says we have 1 Mutual Friend (which would be my BF). When I look on his FB account at her page, there is more information there (like it would be there for her Friends) than I see when I look at her page through my FB account.
Sooooo, did he unfriend her? Is she hidden or something? Can you hide ONE friend? Unsubscribing doesn’t remove someone from your list…. I’m puzzled!
TIA,
Same problem as Suzy… my potential girlfriend (online, overseas, not met yet) is mutual friends.. how do I put it?… one guy is mutual friends (he’s not my friend; 3 of his friends are also mine) with 3 of my friends. I know he is her friend (through posts). Only 2 of my friends show up on that mutual list. I can see when she is mutual friends of others, but not always.
Also, she liked a pic of another guy. Now it says ’6 people like this’… I can only see 5, not her. This occurs here and there.. sometimes I can see her likes, sometimes not. It points to selectively hiding things, surely?
I could be wrong, but I feel she is being cagey with me. Or is it the guys hiding stuff?