How Can I Really Turn Off "Close Friends" Notifications?

Question

Recently Facebook has begun notifying me of random things. It started when it would tell me about everybody's check-ins. That wasn't so bad, because it doesn't happen very often and I can appreciate Facebook wanting me to immediately know where my friends check in, just in case I want to go join them. So it was ok.

But now, Facebook has escalated the situation. Now Facebook wants me to know a lot about what my friends are up to. If they post a photo, if they change a status, darn near anything. Maybe my Facebook habits have given the application cause to think that I'm a stalker? If so then it could use a little tweaking to properly identify the target individuals.

A little research indicates that somehow Facebook has decided that some of my friends are closer than others and that I should be notified of their actions immediately. The notifications menu seems to agree with this, because the useless notifications all have what I've come to believe is the "close friends" icon (though it may be a different icon that's quite similar, there's no alt text to specify):

Upon further inspection, however, it would appear that I have no close friends. And, just to be sure, I also turned off the notifications for my lack of close friends:

So why is Facebook continuing to badger me on the trivial updates of everybody in my life? Does it hate me? Has it caught some kind of illness from Twitter? Is it judging my friends and finding some less wanting then others? Or is this not a "close friends" thing at all and Facebook is just toying with me to test some other feature?

My phone's notification area and I both humbly beg your assistance.

Answer 1

It looks like Facebook has done another update so everyone gets more notifications. This thread on the Facebook forum has a couple of solutions suggested, this one seems to have the most love:

Go to the top of your screen and click the little globe symobol where you can view your recent notifications. Hover over one of the them on the top left and click the X. It'll ask if you want to turn off "top friend" activity notifications. Click yes. They will still appear in your news feed, you just won't get notifications for it all.

On a side note I think the icons you've circled in the first picture have more to do with identifying the notification than close friends (photos & status get the star, links get the pin).

Updated

Click the Notifications globe at the top of the Facebook window and when the drop-down drops click the Settings link (the little X's next to each notification have been removed recently). In the "What You Get Notified About" section, you can edit and turn off "Close Friends activity"