Summary

We’ve probably all had that experience where a friend tags us, along with 100 other people, in a picture or a post on Facebook. If you’re in the photo, or the post is something relevant to you, then that’s fine. It’s possible you’d want it on your Facebook wall newsfeed.

However, if you’re being tagged in a photo that you don’t appear in, or are being associated with a post that has nothing to do with you, then such things just clutter up your own timeline and detract from other posts you’re wanting to share. Depending on what your friend feels is appropriate, you may end up with something on your own timeline that doesn’t necessarily represent your own views.

Whether you’re being tagged in a post, or having people post directly to your time line, the result is the same. This document describes why and how to adjust those settings.

Limit Posting to Your Timeline

When you let people post to your Facebook timeline, it’s a nice way to have spontaneous public dialogs with people that they initiate. It’s a good mechanism for transparency and accessibility. However, those posts and conversations end up getting mixed in with the other news and notices that you’re posting on your timeline. This is undesirable for the same reasons mentioned above.

To use Facebook effectively, you’ll want to limit your daily number of posts — for two reasons: (1) If you have too much content streaming from your timeline, people will just choose not to follow your news. (2) Facebook seems to have an automatic system that prevents any one person from posting 500 things that will dominate the aggregate news shared with all.

In other words, the few things you really wanted to share may have more likelihood of getting noticed if they’re not included with many other less important posts. So, prioritize what you really want to share on any given day.

Some people really like using the “Post to Timeline” feature as a way of communicating with people, such as “Hey, are we meeting for lunch today?” Such posts to your timeline aren’t really a problem, but they just clutter up the timeline. It’s better to have people send you an instant message or email for such things.

To limit posts to your timeline, you could monitor throughout the day, then hide some posts that are less important than others. Or, you could just turn off the option in Settings as shown below.

Limit Being Tagged in Photos and Posts

For all the reasons explained above, it’s a good idea to limit how many pictures and posts you’re tagged in. Facebook has a feature that let’s you monitor and approve photos or posts before they are put on your wall timeline. It’s good to turn this feature on because it alerts you to such posts. Even if you don’t allow them on your timeline wall, they are showing up on Facebook, and will appear in photos of you.

Facebook has a really cool feature that brings together all photos of you — even ones that you didn’t take. This happens when people tag you in pictures. They show up in the “Photos of You” collection of pictures that you and other see. Probably 99 out of 100 times this is a great feature, but sometimes you’ll find totally irrelevant pictures there of pets, flowers, events, etc. Nice stuff, but just not in the right place.

So, you’ll want to prune and curate the collection of photos and posts you’re tagged in. This is done in Settings as shown below.

Adjust Facebook Timeline and Tagging Settings

Follow these instructions to adjust Facebook Timeline and Tagging settings.

STEP #1 – From click on the Settings menu option that appears under the triangle drop-down menu to the right of your name as shown below.

STEP #2 – In the Timeline and Tagging area, under “Who can post on your timeline?” choose Only Me as shown below.

STEP #3 – Under “Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline?” choose Enabled as shown below. Keep in mind that even with this feature enabled, you’ll still need to go to that post and specifically remove yourself from being tagged in it in order for the connection to be broken. The setting below only prevents the post from showing up on your timeline.