Facebook Groups, the most recent addition to the Facebook family of tools, while a great way to organize and categorize your friends has quite a few a bit up in arms. Facebook, despite being a permission based platform, has created Facebook Groups as an open join, meaning that each user can create groups and add their friends as they see fit. There are not invitations sent asking someone to join the group, just a simple click of their name and they are added to the group. Of course, they have to be friends with someone in the group but is this just another step in moving to Facebook being non permission based?
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups is a good concept in that not all of our friends are friends, not all of our friends are really friends as some are our parents, cousins, nieces, etc. and we do not want everyone that we are friends with to see all of our posts. We do not always want to clog up all of our friends' walls with everything that we are posting. Groups allows us to talk to the group members and define how public this information is through, open, closed and secret. We are able to have multiple friends on a chat and create an event that easily invites the group members. This is a very useful feature. However, it has been met with controversy.
How to Leave a Facebook Group
Facebook has opted to have groups open and not permission based. This is frustrating for users as we do not always want to be in a group that we are unable to control the name of, the members, etc. We receive a notification that we have been added to the group and before we can even open our Facebook profile, we are inundated with email notifications of the postings of the other group members. While we cannot accept a group invite as it does not exist, we can easily leave the group.
1. Click on the group you have been added to.
2. On the right side, under chat with group and add friends to the group is Leave this group.
3. Click on Leave this Group and a new window pops up confirming that you want to leave the group and also instructions on how to rejoin the group.
The Ugly Side of Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are not for everyone as we do not have control as to which groups we are added to, the other members that were added and the security level of the group. If we post in the group, our postings in the group are seen by all group members, whether they are friends or not. In addition, the administrator/creator of the group decides if the group is open, closed or secret. Then there is the email notifications. If you were like me and catching up on some much needed rest while groups you were added to were busy posting away to the tune of 168 email notifications, you were running to see how to stop these notifications or leave the groups. This has to be the ugliest side of Facebook Groups as your account settings were set to receive the group notifications and will remain in place until you change them.
How to Rid Your Inbox of Facebook Group Notifications
If you want to turn off notifications for an individual group but keep them for other groups, you will have to go into each group you wish to turn off the notifications individually:
1. Click on the group.
2. Click on Edit Settings and a new window pops up. Here you can decide which notifications you receive, if any at all. You can receive an email notification when: A member posts, A friend posts, Only posts you are subscribed to or you can turn off notifications completely by unchecking the Email notifications to (your email).
If you wish to turn off notifications for every group that you have been added to:
1. Click Account at the top right hand corner.
2. Click on Account Settings.
3. Click on Notifications. Scroll down to Groups and uncheck the boxes that you do not wish to receive notifications for.
Facebook Groups can be very useful, especially when we are trying to share things with some friends and not all of them (like mom) however when we start getting to the point where we are spending more time cleaning up our inboxes than we are interacting on our page, it is time to take action and either leave the group or opt out of email notifications.
What do you think, are Facebook Groups useful or are they just a step in the direction of a non-permission based platform?
photo credit: tothepc