First thing,
which automatically has everyone subscribed to everyone so anything anyone does whom you're subscribed to (by default all your friends)
This is false
There are two subscriptions.
- Public Subscriptions
- Friend Subscriptions
Public subscriptions are new. Friends subscriptions were always around in the form of "Hide Stories from this person". (I have confirmed this for some of my subscriptions show as unsubscribed)
So your friends were "subscribed" to you long before the subscriptions feature was officially pushed. If they didn't like your updates all they had to do was
And this auto-magically lets them unsubscribe from your updates.
For the ticker
If you hide someone from your News Feed entirely by unsubscribing from them, they won’t show up in ticker.
http://facebook.com/help/?faq=266468286709084
For limiting what shows on other users' tickers you can change your privacy settings.
Image sources: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/unhide_a_hidden_facebook_friend_in_your_newsfeed.html