Facebook Tip: How to Stop Receiving Emails from Comment Threads

Let’s face it: Facebook is almost must-have at this point, but like any ubiquitous service, there’s plenty to gripe about. Topping the list is the onslaught of notifications that can flood your phone and inbox.

Comment threads in particular can spiral out of control. Here’s how to keep Facebook from turning into a comment-response firehose:

1. First of all, get your notifications under control by taking five minutes to understand and adjust them Facebook-wide. I recommend turning off ALL text notifications, and not receiving emails either.

Navigate to Account -> Account Settings -> Mobile, and either deactivate your device or turn notifications off.

For Email, you can either setup a non-used email account that takes one for the team under Account -> Account Settings -> General, or you can go to Account -> Account Settings -> Notifications, and wade through the mindboggling amount of options for notifications.

2. If your comment pertains to a post in a group, look for a link called “Unsubscribe” under the comment itself. When you click that link, it will change to “Follow Post”.

Groups, since they’re populated by lots of people, can be a major source of annoying notifications, so if you click “Edit Settings” on the group page, you get a dialog like this:

Make sure it’s set to “Only posts I am following.”

3. If your comment is on another person’s status update or other personal item, things get tricky. There’s no unsubscribe button. However, you do have one option:

Delete your comment – hover over it and click on the X that appears. If you have another less destructive way of getting out of Dodge, we’d love to hear it.

In addition, for your particularly gabby friends, you can change notifications settings by navigating to their wall and hovering over the “Subscribed” button on their profile. This produces a list of settings.

If your friend plays games for example, you can turn off notifications about the latest sheep they purchased in Farmville. Or if they’re really annoying, you can unsubscribe from them all together, without defriending them.

Now with that said, we’ve done Facebook posts before, specifically on privacy, and the Zuckerminions keep changing their settings so fast it’s like a constant cat and mouse game.

But for the next fifteen minutes at least, hopefully this article will steer you in the right direction, and make sure you also check out the Facebook FAQ on subscribing.