This week our social media agony aunt tackles Facebook’s confusing list-creation method, and how to avoid broadcasting your musical taste
Dear Cybersorter,
I didn’t want my Facebook friends from work to see my photos so I took your advice and made a friends list. Except I made a group rather than a friends list and all my work colleagues got a mail asking them if they wanted to join my group “Prying Busy Bodies”.
I think I’ve managed to pass it off as a joke but the atmosphere in my workplace has cooled significantly.
I wanted to alert your readers to this easy mistake and ask you why the hell you didn’t point this out in your previous columns?
JW
Dear JW,
Surprisingly, I have some sympathy for your situation. I am unfortunately familiar with the stomach-churning moment of discovering I’ve made a social faux pas. It happens because the flight response has been triggered and you receive a dose of adrenalin to enable you to run away from the rage you have provoked in another animal.
In this case you have taunted the grizzly bear that resides in the cubicle next you, and presumably, the giant mummy bear in the boss’s office.
I will forgive your wild wagging of the finger of blame as you are obviously still licking your self-induced social wounds. It was your choice to label your group with an insult. The best advice to anyone and everyone in general, when it comes to using social media, is to be aware that anything you do on it may become public, most likely by your own hand and possibly by technical hitch.
To make a friends list you click on “friends” on the left-hand side of your home page. Then click “Edit friends” and “Create a list”. To make a group you click on “Create Group”.
Dear Cybersorter,
Recently I started using Spotify, the digital music service. I logged in using my Facebook ID so I could see my friends’ music. But now Spotify uses my Facebook account to tell the world – meaning that my FB friends now know my secret listening habits, including really embarrassing 1980s electro-pop. But because Spotify is all-you-can-eat music, I pick the music I never bothered to buy on iTunes – and those are the songs I get outed for on FB. Can I still spy on my friends’ music and hide my own?
RP
Dear RP,
You can try two different approaches
1)Simply log in to your Facebook account as soon as you have updated a Spotify list and click the “Remove” button on the update.
2)Spotify recommends selecting the “people” icon on the top right corner of your Spotify homepage and choose “Disconnect from Facebook”.
To ease your embarrassment, 1980s electro-pop is so naff it must be making a comeback soon enough. It only takes one of your “cool” friends to decide it is back in and hey presto, you turn magically from an out-of-date saddo to a retro trendsetter. It’s all in the attitude.