Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Prevent Facebook from Publishing Photos to Your Wall Automatically

Every time I am tagged in a photo on Facebook, it automatically publishes a set of thumbnails to my wall before I've had the chance to look at them.  This is a supremely annoying feature, as it allows my friends ultimate control over what photos of me are provided on the web - a freedom I'm not willing to give up.  Since I allow more people access to my wall than to my photos, I'd rather this feature be turned off completely.

Well, thanks to a Gawker reader, there is an answer.  From the article:
UPDATE: According to a helpful tipster, this can be disabled by going to the Settings menu at the top right of your Facebook home page, then to "Application Settings," then the "Photos" application, then click "Edit settings." Then click the "Additional Permissions tab," and there is an option to "Publish to streams." Uncheck this. 

The post is complete with graphics to help enable the privacy controls.  Very nice resource.  The tweak prevents photos from ever having access to my feed unless I choose to share them myself.  Much preferable to an automatic update that I may or may not want people to see.

Ultimately, though, it would be nice if Facebook gave me the option of how I categorized photos as I uploaded them.  Photos I'd like to share I could guide to my wall as well as an album, while those I didn't could simply be put in another place.  Yes, I could do this by categorizing photos into different albums with different privacy permissions and uploading them accordingly...but that is a pain.  It seems like it would be much easier to just have a check box that says "publish to wall" or "don't publish to wall."  Please, Facebook?

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