If you’ve ever opened Facebook and were instantly frustrated by the way it displays new content, you aren’t alone. Some users have even found ways to disable it completely. The company, which is now known as Meta, has been tweaking the News Feed algorithm for years. And just about every update has been as bad as the last. A fix could be coming, though, as Facebook is testing giving users more control over how they see new content on their feed.
What’s changing with the Facebook News Feed?
There are no official plans to release the features that Facebook is testing, but the company did release a blog post with some details about the changes. According to that blog post, a “small percentage” of users will start seeing adjustable preferences. They can then use those preferences to increase or reduce the amount of content they see from specific friends, groups, family members, and pages they’ve connected with.
Meta also noted that it’s making it easier to access the existing controls, too. Those include settings like Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow, and Reconnect options. Like the News Feed changes, Facebook plans to test these with a limited number of users first.
History repeating
It’s unclear just how big these changes to Facebook’s News Feed could be. But, if they give you more control over your feed itself, that could solve one of the biggest problems users have with the social media platform. Of course, that’s ignoring all the other questionable stuff that it has been called out for.
This isn’t the first time that Facebook has changed things up. Back in October, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the company, said he wanted to retool the website to appeal to younger audiences. That would call for a huge operational shift, which we haven’t seen yet. This also isn’t the first time that Facebook has made changes to the platform this year, either.
Earlier in 2021, the social media giant added ways for users to change who could follow them. They could also determine who could see their posts, and who could comment on them. While a welcome addition, it didn’t fix the biggest problem plaguing Facebook users—a News Feed full of stories they don’t care about. If the testing here proves successful, we could see a newly imagined News Feed sometime in the future.
Of course, there’s no telling when that future version might arrive. For now, we’ll have to wait and see if Meta chooses to expand on those options, or if it keeps the News Feed the way it is right now.
