Facebook is testing a feature that will let users have more control over what they see in their News Feed.
On Thursday, the company announced it’s giving more granular options to users, allowing them to better customize their News Feed. “People can now increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the friends, family, Groups and Pages they’re connected to and the topics they care about in their News Feed Preferences,” the company said in a blog post. Existing controls (located under Settings & Privacy – News Feed Preferences), such as Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect, will also be easier to access.
Oddly, the company didn’t share any other details nor screenshots of these features, so it’s hard to tell how useful they are (we’re not seeing them in our settings just yet). Facebook says the test will start in countries around the world, first with a “small percentage of people,” and then gradually expanding “in the coming weeks.”
Ultimately, the new controls should let users “see more of what they want and less of what they don’t,” which sounds pretty darn useful on a social network that’s historically made it very hard for users to personalize the News Feed.
There’s no telling when, and if, the new controls will be enabled for all users. “We’ll continue to share our progress as we test and learn,” Facebook says.
The company also said it will expand the Topic Exclusion controls for the News Feed to “a limited number of advertisers that run ads in English.” In practice, businesses will be able to prevent their ads showing up next to three topics: News and Politics, Social Issues, and Crime & Tragedy.
