Facebook Will Finally Let You Control Your News Feed

Today, Facebook is introducing a long-requested feature. No, it’s not a dislike button—but it does fix something most people dislike about their news feed. Facebook’s new iOS app will offer users the ability to tailor content in their newsfeed to their liking, thus escaping the oft-criticized algorithm that attempted to read users’ minds. “Ultimately, you know what matters most to you,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Facebook announced the revamp early this morning. So far, it’s only for iOS users, but it will be applied cross-platform over the coming weeks. In their newsroom, Facebook uploaded a video and detailed explanation of the new features:

“News Feed is a personalized stream of stories that you build from the people and Pages you’ve connected to on Facebook. The goal of News Feed is to show you the stories that matter most to you. To do this, we use ranking to order stories based on how interesting we believe they are to you: specifically, whom you tend to interact with, and what kinds of content you tend to like and comment on.

We’re always working to improve and personalize your News Feed experience. We know that ultimately you’re the only one who truly knows what is most meaningful to you and that is why we want to give you more ways to control what you see. Last year we announced some new ways to control what you see in News Feed. Today we are announcing even better tools for you to actively shape and improve the experience. We’ve redesigned and expanded Facebook’s News Feed Preferences to give you more control.”

New Features

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Select friends and Pages you want to see at the top of your news feed

You can now select which friends and Pages’ posts you want to prioritize on your feed.

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Page discovery

Based on your browsing habits, Facebook will present you with Pages you might be interested in. This appears to be a separate menu and is not integrated into the news feed.

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Easy unfollow/refollow system

Facebook will curate a list of the top posts appearing in your news feed that week, and make it easy to unfollow any friend or Page whose posts you no longer want to see. There will also be a menu for easy refollowing.