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Computer help forum: Facebook Group Chat Issue

by: XFiiire April 21, 2012 5:25 AM PDT

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Facebook Group Chat Issue

by XFiiire - 4/21/12 5:25 AM

I'm currently part of a few groups on Facebook, there is the option to chat to members within the group and many of the other members constantly chat to one another. This results in constant chat notifications popping up at the bottom of my Facebook screen which can be quite distracting and sometimes annoying when you don't wish to talk to members of the group or read what they're talking about.

I've searched around on Google, the previous opt-out solution where you can uncheck "receive group chat messages" has been removed (rather cleverly by Facebook -.-). Other solutions include going completely offline, but I still want to receive messages from other colleagues about work etc. Another option is to leave the group (undesirable).

Facebook offers a solution to "Hide Chat for this group" which I tried with an experimental group, but it seems to be permanent, which means that once you click Yes or Ok to it, you'll never be able to see group chat messages from that group ever again. This is also undesirable, since at times if they're organising an event or something I may wish to have a say, but just not ALL the time.

Are there any solutions which would still allow me to opt-out when I want from the chat and opt-in when I'm free or available to talk?

Note: I guess there is a partial solution of simply disabling sounds so I won't realise that a message from the group has been sent. But once again this means if an individual friend needs to contact me, I wouldn't realise that either. And with the chat still open, you can inevitably end up reading it.

Thanks for any help!


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If you were using Firefox

by Jimmy Greystone - 4/21/12 7:06 AM

In Reply to: Facebook Group Chat Issue by XFiiire

If you were using Firefox, it's at least conceivable that something like Adblock Plus could be used to block the alerts, and then when you're feeling more sociable, you could disable adblock on Facebook to let the alerts through again.

Otherwise, welcome to the world of "social" networking, breeding tomorrow's narcissists. People who think that just because they CAN say any useless thing and people CAN read it, that people therefor WANT to read any useless thing they say. I mean, who wouldn't want to read a 10 page dissertation on how their cat just horked up a hairball?

Any solutions you find are going to be imperfect at best, sorry to say. The only ones who could offer an elegant solution is Facebook, and it is generally not in their interests to do so for various reasons.


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Thanks!

by XFiiire - 4/21/12 9:51 AM

In Reply to: If you were using Firefox by Jimmy Greystone

I quickly Googled up Adblock Plus, before downloading it, I was just wondering, how exactly it would be able to block alerts from those one or two groups specifically inside Facebook? Or does the extension actually manage to get into Facebook and block certain specific chats?

Haha that made me laugh, but I understand you, sometimes people do take group chats too far as a means of expressing anything and everything not worth hearing or reading! I doubt Facebook would be willing to change anything, however I was confused about how just 1 year (or more) back, you would have had the option I stated in my original post with an option to deselect "receive group chat messages" but then they removed it as of about July for groups.

Would you per chance have any more information about this "Hide Chat for this group" option present when you click the little settings button on group conversations? I googled it, but there wasn't much information, as far as I'm aware it disables group messages permanently for the future, any way to activate or allow them again as that could be a potential possibility for opt-in and opt-out.

Once again thank you for the help and reply!


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AdBlock Plus

by Jimmy Greystone - 4/21/12 11:05 AM

In Reply to: Thanks! by XFiiire

AdBlock Plus works by creating filters on a domain level basis. It can actually be a bit more fine grained than that, but basically it can remove only certain parts of a webpage based on very specific rules, which are not overly difficult to create if you also nab the companion extension element hiding helper.

So when the announcement of some sort pops up, you go to the adblock plus menu, select the element hiding helper, move the mouse around and you'll see it outlining different parts of the webpage; so all you have to do is highlight the announcement. Click the mouse button, a dialog box will pop up allowing you to edit the rule if you want, and there's a box that will let you preview the page with that rule. Assuming no ill effects you hit the OK button and blissfully go about your business. Then when you want alerts, you just disable adblock plus for the facebook.com domain, and the alerts will be free to show up again. Just remember to reload the page after disabling/enabling adblock plus.


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