A lot of us share this experience, of a friend who was acting like a saint, but on Facebook, this friend is a creep, he spams your timeline with a lot of meaningless posts and you regret adding him. This friend even indulges in commenting on your posts indiscriminately. You can’t unfriend him, then how do you limit his sphere of influence? This post is for you then, it will show you the means and method of restricting a friend on Facebook.

Once you add someone to your Restricted list, they’ll no longer see any of your updates, photos, or other Facebook activity except you have flagged it as “Public” in your privacy settings. With this, you’ve certainly unfriended them without unfriending them.

Here’s how you do it: Once you locate their name on your news feed or on their timeline, move your mouse over it, wait for the pop-up window to appear, then click the Friends button.
Select “Add to another list” from the drop down menu, scroll all the way down, then click Restricted.

Note: You’ll still have to “unfollow” people on your Restricted list to keep their Facebook updates out of your news feed if it’s their posts that actually piss you off.

Once you banish someone to your Restricted list, they’ll no longer see any of your updates, photos, or other Facebook activity—or at least, nothing that you haven’t flagged as “Public” in your privacy settings.

In other words, putting a frenemy on your Facebook Restricted list is as close as you can get to unfriending someone without actually unfriending them.
Bonus tip

Want to see a list of all the friends whose posts are blocked from your news feed?

First, go to your news feed, hover your mouse over the News Feed link in the top-left corner of the page, click the little gear icon, then click Edit Preferences.

A pop-up window should appear with lists of friends who you’ve seen the most in the past week, along with a second list of unfollowed friends. Change your mind of any of them? Just click the “+ Follow” button next to a name.