Many would immediately react with “Can the notorious Facebook improve? or care to?”. There has been so much bad news about Facebook, its neglect of users’ privacy, and its priority only on business, and too much constantly feeding users only those FB wants (just to improve its business and profits)……
This post is not to discuss- condemn or defend any of these issues behind the use of FB (or its policy, users’ preferences, etc), this post is simply to elaborate on recent (published on March 31, 2021) changes in FB’s features on what they promote as further choices and controls for users on what they share and see on their FB pages- these changes are long overdue (my opinion) but still better late than never.
I am a FB user and found that they do provide a useful platform for sharing and recording my activities and favorites- e.g. photos of trips I want to share, my views, etc. However; the contents FB shows on my front page have been far from satisfactory and I hate that there was not much control on it at all. Some pages just pop up there too often and repeatedly, yet some (which I hope to see more) simply ‘refuse’ to be shown. Basically, what users see on their pages is determined by certain algorithms which FB uses. If you are interested in what the basis of these are, please read the last section (Understand Why You See Suggested Posts in News Feed) of FB’s published news, from which most of my materials have been derived.
Like me, many users have been very dissatisfied and critical of this. FB has known about this for long and eventually, took some action in the right direction. So what are these?
Control What You Share
FB now allows users to manage who can comment on your public posts.
By adjusting your commenting audience, you can further control how you want to invite conversation onto your public posts and limit potentially unwanted interactions.
FB claims that this helps you control and curate your News Feed to best reflect who you are as your interests and priorities evolve.
Control What You See
FB latest added features would make it easier to sort and browse News Feed, giving you more control over what you see- Favorites, a new tool where you can control and prioritize posts from the friends and Pages you care about most in News Feed. By selecting up to 30 friends and Pages to include in Favorites, their posts will appear higher in ranked News Feed and can also be viewed as a separate filter. People who use Favorites frequently can access it from the Feed Filter Bar, a new menu at the top of News Feed.
The Feed Filter Bar offers easier access to Most Recent too, making it simpler to switch between an algorithmically-ranked News Feed and a feed sorted chronologically with the newest posts first. Android app users can access the Feed Filter Bar when they scroll up on News Feed. The same functionality will be available in the iOS app in the coming weeks. Regardless of how often you use them, you can find Most Recent and Favorites in the Shortcuts menu.
FB claims that such have been designed to help you control what you see in News Feed, including tools such as Snooze (where you can temporarily hide posts from a person, Page, or group) and the ability to turn off political ads.
To update what you want to see and how you share to your News Feed–
check out your News Feed preferences and privacy settings in the app and adjust them to your liking. We know that helping you better manage your experience on Facebook can support wellbeing, so we will continue to invest in ways to give you more control and context. Try them out and hope you find them useful.
Credits and Sources
More Control and Context in News Feed – About Facebook (2021). Available at: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/03/more-control-and-context-in-news-feed/ (Accessed: 7 April 2021).
How do I control who can see my Page’s posts on Facebook? | Facebook Help Centre (2021). Available at: https://www.facebook.com/help/352402648173466 (Accessed: 7 April 2021).
How to Customize Your Facebook News Feed to Maximize Your Productivity (2017). Available at: https://buffer.com/library/customize-my-news-feed/ (Accessed: 7 April 2021).