Facebook was showing me EVERY “like” and EVERY “comment” made by EVERY one of my Facebook friends. I want to keep up with what’s going on in my friends’ lives but that was ridiculous. Here’s how I removed most of the clutter:

1. In the left column of your feed there’s a heading called “Friends.” In it you’ll see lists like “Close Friends,” “Family,” etc. Click the word “Friends.”
2. You’ll now see your Friend Lists. Some of these you might have created yourself (like adding select friends to your “Close Friends” list), but Facebook creates some automatically.
3. Click “Acquaintances.” These should theoretically be your non-close friends and consequently the ones you want the fewest amount of updates from.
4. Near the top towards the right you should see a button that says “Manage List.” Click that button, then from the drop-down menu select “Choose Update Types…”
5. Deselect “Comments and Likes.”

You can return to return to step 1 and edit your update types for other lists, but for me doing this for the “Acquaintances” list was enough to get my feed under control.

Although it took a bit of digging around to figure all this out, I actually like the way Facebook handles friend lists and lets you filter what you see from each list. If you ever want to add a friend to a list, hover your mouse over their name, then click the “Friends” button from the pop-up window and click “Add to another list…”