The anti-social social networker

Invites to events on Facebook are a pain. About 2% are events I actually have any interest in attending. The other 98% are marketing or promo fluff which clog my notification centre and send annoying push notifications.

Worse, some aren’t an event at all but a plea to “vote for me!” or “do you like sausages?!”. I’d hate for my friends to know the truth, that I don’t care about their “event” – I care enough to spare them a “declined” invitation. But how to stop the alert hose?

Two current Facebook features help to flush out these irritations:

1. “Turn Off” event notifications.

Click your notification globe in the site header, roll over the event alert and click the little blue “x” which shows in the right top corner of the notification. A message asks “Turn off notifications for [event name]?” and BAM, gone.

2. Remove Invites

Visit your events page, along the top will sit your outstanding invitations (which you have not yet accepted or declined or “maybe’d”). Roll over an unwanted invitation and, you got it, hit the x. The invite will be subtly removed, your friend will not know unless they check for you specifically, and you will get no further notifications from the event itself.

Of course, if your offending friend is offensive enough, they may just post event spam to your actual timeline or elsewhere in your way on Facebook. Friends don’t spam friends, there is an “unfriend” button!

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