With privacy and online safety becoming more important by the day, Facebook has introduced new features in their latest update that gives users more control over what they see and share on their news feed.
Control what you share
For the first time, Facebook is introducing this new tool that allows users to control the commenting audience on their posts. Who can comment on this post? Choose between public, friends, profiles and pages you mention, or all three.
The goal of the News Feed is to keep you connected to the things you want to be connected to, whether that be friends or certain pages. By adding control to your News Feed, you can get the best of the things you like, while shutting out all the unwanted interactions.
Control what you see
Facebook recently announced the Favourites tool, allowing users to pick the things they like and rid the things they don’t. Take control over your News Feed by favouriting up to 30 friends and Pages, and their posts will rank higher in your feed and will be seen as priority posts.
If you’d rather a chronologically sorted feed, just switch through the Feed Filter Bar where you can scroll through the most recent posts. Other tools include Snooze (which can hide a certain person’s activity from your feed for a certain amount of time) as well as the option to switch off political ads.
Why am I seeing this?
Of course, Facebook has, for a long time, acted as a guide for users looking to find new content that they might be interested in. Facebook wants its users to understand how this is done and why they see what they see.
According to Facebook, suggestions are essentially based on factors like post engagement, related topics, and location.
- Related engagement – if other people who interacted with the post also previously interacted with the same groups, Pages or posts that you did.
- Related topics – if you’ve been interacting with a certain topic, Facebook may suggest other content related to that topic.
- Location – depending on where you are, Facebook will show you content that people near you are also interacting with.
In this latest addition, clicking on “Why am I seeing this?” means you’ll be able to tap on posts from friends, Pages and Groups that you follow to get more context on why they’re appearing in your News Feed in the first place.
To benefit from this new update, simply go to your News Feed preferences and privacy settings, and adjust accordingly!
