Key Takeaways
- Useful email notifications from social media have been ruined by Facebook’s clickbait tactics.
- Facebook deliberately withholds important info in notifications to prompt more site visits.
- Turn off annoying emails by managing notification settings under Notifications in Settings.
I don’t really frequent Facebook, so every now, and then I’ll see an email notification telling me something interesting has happened. However, invariably the email tells me nothing and expects me to go to Facebook. Instead, this clickbait junkmail is making me stay away from Facebook more than before.
It used to be that email notifications from social media were something that I actually preferred. I tend to turn notifications off on my phone for everything except the most important apps.
Since Gmail implemented its separate inboxes for social media and other types of mail, it was nice to take a few minutes at the end of the day and see if there were any emails in my social media bin worth responding to.
By doing this I waste less time looking at my phone every five minutes, and I get to screen only the social media notifications that actually matter to me.
Facebook’s Notifications Deliberately Withhold Important Info
Facebook used to have similarly useful emails, but I had deactivated my account years ago, and I haven’t been to the site in well over half a decade. A little while ago, I decided to reopen my account to stay in touch with friends and family, and I log into it maybe once a week. However, I was getting messages like this one.
Great, so someone I know on Facebook commented on a post. It doesn’t say what they said, or who they said it to. I have no idea why this is even relevant to me. Even worse, Facebook puts the first few words of their post in the subject line, making things even more cryptic. Invariably, if I actually click on one of these, it’s just a random comment that I would never even have seen or cared about.
These Emails Make Me Want to Use Facebook Even Less
Clearly, the reason Facebook is sending me notifications that someone posted a photo, or replied to a post, is to get me to click and log in to the site. This way they can at least get a few ad impressions, and maybe I’ll stick around to look at other things in my feed while I’m there.
The only thing Facebook is actually achieving here is annoyance. I guess one of the reasons I get so many of these seemingly random emails from Facebook that aren’t about people who have tagged or messaged me is because I’m a low-frequency user. So it ends up feeling like I’m being browbeaten, and frankly, this makes me less likely to actually click on one of these email links. Especially considering the few times I bothered to do it, the actual thing I was emailed about ended up being a big nothingburger.
Let’s Just Turn Them Off (Here’s How)
While I’m probably not going to delete my Facebook account again, these scummy emails make me feel icky enough to want them gone. So here’s how to turn them off in just a few seconds. In this case, I’m using a web browser rather than the app, but the general process is the same.
First, click on your profile picture, then “Settings and Privacy.”
On the next menu that pops up, click on “Settigs.”
Now, click on “Notifications.”
On the following page, you can go through each type of notificationa and remove email as one of the notification options, but if you just want them all to stop, head down to the “Where you receive notifications” section,and open the “Email” dropdown.
Here, under “Email frequency,” change your preference to “Required notifications.”
Now all of the “we think you may be interested” content should stop showing up in your mailbox, and you can go visit Facebook yourself when you feel good and ready.
