“Show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are†is a powerful saying. But in today’s digital world, it all comes down to privacy and keeping certain things to yourself. This is especially true for social media, as we tend to share more information there than we should.
For example, when you add someone to your Facebook friends list, you can see their friends, and they can see yours by default. But for various reasons, you may not want to disclose such details of your personal life to everyone.
There can be a million reasons to hide your Facebook friends. Whether you’re trying to keep your professional and personal life separate, or just want to keep the peace between yourself and two friends who hate each other, here’s how you can improve your Facebook privacy and hide your Facebook friends from each other.
Hide your Facebook friends from everyone
This is the path you can take if you don’t want anyone to see your Facebook friends at all. You can simply change your privacy settings so that only you can see your friends list. To do this, follow these steps:
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- Log in to your Facebook account and go to your profile page by clicking your name in the upper left corner.
- Go to your friends list by clicking the Friends tab.
- On the Friends page, click the pencil icon in the upper-right corner, then go to the Edit Privacy section.
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- In the pop-up window, click the down arrow icon in the upper right corner. There you will find various options for “Who Can See Your Friends List”. Select Just Me and this will prevent people from seeing others on your friend list.
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- Click Finish to save your changes.
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As mentioned earlier, this will completely hide your Facebook friends list. The only information other people can see is mutual friends.
Keep in mind that you can only manage your profile the way your friends manage theirs. This means that if you set your friend list to Just Me, and your friend’s friend list is set to Public, people will still see that you are friends on your profile.
Hide Facebook friend from another
If you find the first option a little hardcore and don’t want to hide your Facebook friends from everyone, there is another way.
Facebook currently doesn’t have the ability to prevent two people from seeing each other but still seeing all of your friends. The only way to do this is to completely deny these two people access to your Facebook friends.
If for any reason you want to hide one of your Facebook friends from another, you need to do the following:
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- Follow steps 1 through 3 of the above process.
- In the Edit Privacy window, click the down arrow again. Only this time choose Custom.
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- In the User Privacy window, go to the Do Not Share section and enter the names of both friends you want to hide from each other. You can also just enter one name if you want to prevent only one person from seeing your Facebook friends.
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- Click Save Changes.
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Alternatively, you can choose a different route.
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- Follow steps 1 through 3 as described above.
- Under Change Privacy, click the down arrow and select Friends Other than .
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- Here enter the name of the friend (s) you want to block from seeing your friends on Facebook, or select their name from the list.
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- Click Save Changes.
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In both scenarios, you will deny these specific people access to your friends list. Besides them, everyone else will be able to see your Facebook friends.
Many people have hundreds of Facebook friends and it can be difficult to manage all of them. Your friends list isn’t the only thing you can keep with you. Setting certain privacy settings can help you hide your updates from certain Facebook friends. Or prevent people from seeing your Facebook status.
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