Facebook took a step today towards addressing perhaps the most common gripe its users have — control of the “news feed” that users see when they log in.
Users choose which friends and pages are eligible to be in the news feed, but Facebook’s algorithm decides what actually appears there. Many users feel the algorithm prevents them from seeing all the items they wish to see, and there’s always been concern that the social media firm was manipulating the feed for commercial purposes (or even research).
Today, Facebook said it was giving users more control over what gets in the news feed, though it’s unclear how much more. Users will get a new choice when they see items they don’t like. Rather than simply unfollowing someone (or something) that annoys them, users can choose to see less of that person’s posts.
More intriguing, Facebook will allow users to see who ranks high in the algorithm that controls what they see, and give them the chance to re-sort that ranking. In a post on Facebook’s site, product manager Greg Marra offers some more details.
“News Feed settings will now show a list of the top people, Pages and Groups that you’ve seen in your News Feed over the past week. You can choose to sort by people, Pages or Groups posts, or see an overall summary. Unfollow any friend, Page or Group if you don’t want to see their stories in your News Feed. You can also see who you’ve unfollowed in the past and can choose to re-follow them at anytime,” he wrote.
The new options are supposed to filter through the network today, but as of noon PT, I don’t see them either on my desktop or my mobile site. Do you? Please let me know how they work for you.
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