Updated: How To Remove the Yahoo! News, Washington Post, SocialCam or Spotify Notifications From Your Facebook Ticker

NOTE: The first set of instructions in this article no longer work, as Facebook has removed these specific application pages. You can, however, leverage the update at the bottom of the post to hide posts from pages or advertisers that are spamming your Facebook feed.

I’ve been asked this question more than a few times, so I thought I’d pass it along here. If you hate that apps like Yahoo! News, Spotify, and the Washington Post are pushing articles into your Facebook timeline, there is a quick way to get rid of them.

On top of that, Google and Facebook are now sharing information, so every time you conduct a Google search for a product, that information is shared with Facebook and your news feed is filled with ads.

Luckily, there are options for letting Facebook know if it is serving you up ads or content that are annoying, or even offensive. You can either choose to hide a specific ad or piece of content or you can block all the content from the provider or page.

Skip this stuff – Facebook has removed app pages like these.

To do that:

1) Log in to Facebook

2) Visit the application page for the app that is annoying you:

• For the Yahoo! News application page go to https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=90376669494  and follow the next steps below
• For Yahoo! News also block this application https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=194699337231859 by following the next steps below
• For Spotify notifications, go to this application page at https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=174829003346&ref=ts and follow the steps below
• For the Washington Post reader, go this application page https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=225771117449558 and follow the next steps below

3) On the left side of the page, click Block App.

4) Click Okay to confirm the block.

Blocking Yahoo News will keep it from showing news articles in your timeline

From now on, the Yahoo! News,  Spotify or Washington Post apps will no longer show in your news feed. The same holds true for any app like Farmville.

Hope that helps! Have any annoying apps that you’d like me to add to the list? Let me know and I’ll create a link that you can easily use to block the app.

–Sean

Update #1 – The Better Way to Remove Applications/Ads/or Page Notifications From Facebook

Luckily, Facebook has made it easier for us to remove application updates like those from SocialCam, Yahoo! News, Pinterest, Washington Post, or SocialCam from our news feeds.

For each ad publisher, there is now a drop-down in the upper-right corner that allows us to block any updates from that app, page, or ad.

For instance, in the example below, I can choose the first option to hide this specific ad from Three Insurance.

You can use the Facebook dropdown menu to hide ads or posts from pages that are annoying to you.

Once you choose to hide the ad, Facebook will ask you to describe why you chose the hide the ad. By indicating what caused you to choose to remove the ad from your Facebook timeline, you’re letting know a little more information about the ad or the publisher that might be able to help Facebook remove other ads of this type. 

By sharing why you removed the ad from your timeline, you could avoid seeing similar ads in the future.

If this still doesn’t work and you continue to see ads from a specific publisher or page, be sure to try removing the application from your Facebook permission settings. To do this:

1. Log in to Facebook
2. Choose the dropdown in the upper right corner of the menu bar, next to home and choose “Settings”
3. In the Settings page, choose Ads.
4. In the Ads page, choose”Ads based on data from partners” and set it to “Not allowed”.

By turning off ads from Facebook data partners, other companies like Google won’t share your data.

If you want to go one step further to control the ads that are displayed in your Facebook, you can click the “Ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere” and set it to Not Allowed.

By turning off off Facebook company ads, it will limit what ads you see on other sites that are based on your Facebook activity.

Hope these help!

Cheers!

–Sean