Facebook has announced it’s giving users more control over what they see in their News Feed, as well as letting them give feedback about what they’re seeing.
In your News Feed settings, you’ll now see a list of the most prominent Pages, Groups and people who have appeared in your feed over the past seven days. You can filter the view by people, Groups or Pages, or see them all at once. You can also unfollow directly from this section, and also see who you’ve previously unfollowed (and choose to re-follow them if you wish).
Additionally, by tapping the little arrow in the top right of a story, you can hide it. However, now you’ll also be able to choose to see less from a particular person or Page.
If you’re new to how Facebook’s News Feed works, here’s a brief recap. Rather than showing a chronologically ordered list of all posts in your News Feed, Facebook’s algorithm picks what it thinks is more notable and important and surfaces that to the top. This is broadly based on your interactions within your News Feed, so the more you interact with with certain people, the more likely you’ll see their posts. The number of comments and likes a post gets can also expedite its arrival on your homepage.
Of course, it’s not always going to be correct. Which is why Facebook is looking bring a little more control to the table for its billion+ users.
The refreshed News Feed settings are rolling out from today on desktop and mobile, while the additional new option for providing feedback about News Feed will be available on desktop only for now, before landing on mobile later this month.
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