Feed Filter

New in this version:

• Added an option to hide “Person is at a place” posts from Facebook Places. (See the new checkbox on the News Feed tab of the Options window.)
• Fixed a problem with the “Get Connected” box in the right sidebar sometimes not being hidden.

Install version 2.0.7 here

New in this version:

• Fixed the “Hide all comments” feature not working because of a Facebook change.

New in this version:

• Added an option to move the Applications list to the top of the left side of the Home Page. See the General tab of the Options window.
• Added an option to add helpful links to the left side of the Home Page (Pages, All Friends, Phonebook). See the General tab of the Options window.
• Fixed the Applications list being displayed multiple times.

New in this version:

• Fixed right sidebar items not being moved or hidden because of a Facebook change.

New in this version:

• Fixed right sidebar items not being moved or hidden because of a Facebook change.

New in this version:

• Fixed News Feed posts not being hidden because of a Facebook change.
• Added an option to move or hide “Recommended Pages” in the right sidebar.
• Added an option to hide “changed their profile picture” News Feed posts.

Hi all,

Just a note to say that I’m aware of the problems with version 2.0.1 not hiding things correctly anymore. It appears Facebook changed the News Feed page again. I should have a new version for you very soon.

Thanks,
Russell

Feed Filter 2.0.1 is now available.

New in this version:

• Fixed “likes a page” posts not being hidden when the page is outside of Facebook.
• Added an option to hide “updated their profile” posts (“added a school or job”, “updated their current city”, etc.)

Feed Filter 2.0.0 is now available.

New in this version:

• Removed all features that hide ads or contact Facebook’s servers directly or indirectly. This was unfortunately necessary in order to keep from being shut down by Facebook. :-(
  The following features have been removed:
  • Remove “Recent Activity” posts from your Wall
  • Keep your Home page on the “Most Recent” News Feed
  • Expand “SHOW SIMILAR POSTS”
  • View all comments
  • Load “Older Posts” until a certain number are shown
  • Hide ads in the right sidebar, and all other ads
• Fixed hiding stories by type on Top News feed.

For more information on why these features had to be removed, please see the last few posts on this blog, about the Cease and Desist letter I received from Facebook’s lawyer — especially these two posts:

• Cease and Desist Letter Received from Facebook for Feed Filter
• Good News!

After reading the details of the Cease and Desist letter from Facebook again, I realized that the reason they sent it might not be exactly what I thought it was the first time I read it. So I called the lawyer and ended up having an honest, open talk with him about it, and learned more about the particular issues that Facebook has a problem with. It basically comes down to two things:

1. Hiding ads.  Yes, this is no surprise, but the reason might not be because of what you think.  It’s not necessarily just because they want to make more money.  It’s because they sell advertising space to some other company, who pays for a certain number of ad “views”.  If Facebook displays the ad on the page and counts that as a view, but the ad gets hidden and the user doesn’t actually see it, the company gets charged for something they didn’t get — and then they get mad at Facebook.
2. Connections back to the Facebook web servers.  It might appear as though Feed Filter just deals with the browser on the local user’s side, but features like removing Recent Activity posts from your wall send requests to Facebook’s web site to remove the post.  And for other features like loading “Older Posts” or expanding “similar posts”, Feed Filter clicks the links for you, which causes the browser to connect to Facebook’s web site to load more posts.  This can result in extra hits to their servers.  Whether that number is higher than it would be if you just clicked the link yourself is up for debate, as is whether or not the requests are being made too often, or if it’s really a problem for their servers — but certainly some programs could cause a lot of extra hits to their servers if they weren’t careful.  Facebook has decided they don’t have time to check out each individual program to see if the extra hits are causing a problem, so they’ve taken the stance that they just don’t allow any outside programs to connect to their servers at all.

Regardless of whether or not we agree with everything about these points, it was at least good to finally have a clear understanding of what they have a problem with.

So in the face of possibly having to shut down Feed Filter completely, I proposed a possible solution…

I suggested that I could remove the features that were in conflict with the points above, in hopes that I could keep the features that operated purely on the local browser side, and still keep Feed Filter alive.  I think there are still lots of good features that can be kept in Feed Filter even after removing the ones they don’t like. The lawyer said he would pass my proposal along to Facebook, and see if we could get it approved.

So in the meantime, I’m working on a new version that will be similar to the last one, but with the following features removed:

• Remove “Recent Activity” posts from your Wall
• Keep your Home page on the “Most Recent” News Feed
• Expand “SHOW SIMILAR POSTS”
• View all comments
• Load “Older Posts” until a certain number are shown
• Hide ads

But the following features will still be in Feed Filter:

• Hide posts based on their type: “is friends with”, “became a fan”, “joined a group”, “was tagged”, “events”, “relationships”, and applications.
• Show specific applications (the “Apps to show” tab on the Options window)
• Create links for applications (the “Apps to link” tab on the Options window)
• Display posts for just one application (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, etc.)
• Move or hide sections in the right sidebar, except ads (the “Sidebar” tab on the Options window)
• Expand filters on the left side of the Home page
• Expand long posts and comments (with “See More” links)
• Hide all comments

Look for version 2.0.0 to be announced here and on Feed Filter’s fan page on Facebook very soon.  And when I hear more from Facebook about my proposal, I’ll let you know.

Thanks,
Russell