Facebook has embraced the concept of the temporary story: short video clips and content uploads that are visible for 24 hours before disappearing from the platform.
Popular with businesses, content creators, and private users, Facebook stories are considered a more efficient way of sharing updates with friends and family members, with these stories less curated than grid posts and often more authentic in presentation.
Accessing stories is easy, with the updates posted across the top of your main Facebook feed – inviting you to click and watch them in full screen mode.
But sometimes the flood of stories can get a little tiresome, especially when you keep seeing stories from the same users popping up at the top of your feed.
Here’s how to hide stories from specific users…
Muting a User’s Stories
There are two ways of muting a specific user’s stories, so that they no longer appear across the top of your Facebook feed.
The first can be done from within a story.
Simply click on the user’s story to open it in full screen mode, then select the three dots icon in the top right hand corner of the screen. Select ‘Mute Story’ and then confirm your decision to mute the story in the pop up menu box.
The second method is found in your Facebook Settings.
Click on the menu button in the bottom right hand corner of your Facebook screen and navigate to your Settings. Scroll down to the section of the menu titled ‘Audience and Visibility’ then select ‘Stories’.
Inside the ‘Stories’ menu you will find information about how visible your stories content is, as well as those users who you have muted. You can click on ‘View’ to see which stories you have muted.
Increasing the Privacy of Your Own Story
If you want to limit the visibility of your own Facebook story and increase the levels of privacy around your story, you can do so within the same ‘Audience and Visibility’ menu in your settings.
Once you’ve clicked through to ‘Stories’ you will see an option to change ‘Who can See Your Stories’ from Friends to Public or even a Custom list. You can also change the options on whether other users can share your story.
Following steps like this and using these privacy and visibility settings will help you to keep your content as private and secure as possible. Stories are a great way to share quick and unedited updates with your friends and followers – but this shouldn’t be to the detriment of your own security!
And let’s not forget that you can always mute the stories of those users who you simply find to be annoying!
