I did not like facebook to begin with, so I shut down my account. A few of the connections I do miss, but not the lack of controls. I have sameness issues and I would open my FB homepage and it was all different! Eek! How dare they? (Lol) Like the OP, I found it irritating at being unable to opt out of changes. NT people find variety appealing or something.
So my solution (back in the day) was to tape paper to my screen to cover stuff I didn't want to see. It was a simple solution & it worked!