Replied to a post by Jeff Doshna (facebook.com)

I have a real problem. I HATE FACEBOOK, what they are doing with our data, how they control access to information and news for millions of people, and the fact that they've insinuated themselves into every aspect of our lives.

So I'm inclined to walk away from it entirely.

But....

There's real information on here that I need, about people I care about, about things going on in my communities, and keeping connected with folks who've been part of my life over the years.

So, what to do?

You can add people to custom Facebook lists and just read those, but then you’re not necessarily getting all the data you want given the Facebook algorithm deciding what you see.

There’s lots more I could advise doing, but if you’re only using Facebook for reading content you want to get out of Facebook, then lock the whole thing down as best as you can (privacywise) and then use suck the data you want out as a feed and pipe it into a feed reader.

You can unsubscribe or unfollow folks to limit your feeds to the bare minimum. The atom feed the appspot tool gives you will be everything and it will be reverse chronological. Good feed readers like Feed.ly and Inoreader will allow you to filter out posts you don’t want to see using a variety of keyword filters.

If you need specific help in setting it up or the instructions are unclear, let me know; I’m happy to help.

If you want to set up and run your own custom private system/server for close family, I can make some suggestions for doing that too.