With profits shrinking of late, Facebook has been shutting down unpopular apps and focusing on its core services. To that end, it’s updating the primary Facebook Feed to let users see fewer or more posts from friends, groups and pages. That will in turn let it incorporate user feedback into Feed rankings, “making our artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive,” it said in a blog post.
As it stands now, the Facebook app only lets you hide posts from people you follow or those it suggests. Now, for friends or recommended posts, a new setting will allow you to “show more” or “show less” of that content. Doing so will not only change your feed content, but improve its AI system used for Feed rankings.
It’ll “periodically” show the setting on posts in Feed, and you’ll soon be able to access a similar setting on every post by tapping on the three-dot menu at the top right. It’s also testing the feature in its short video Reels feature.
In addition, Facebook is testing a global menu to customize the number of posts you see from Friends and family; Groups; and Pages and public figures. As shown in the image above, you’ll be able to select “Normal,” “Show more” or “Show less” of that content. That will appear along with the current Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect in the Feed Preferences.
With the changes, Facebook appears to be addressing one of the main user complaints: too many posts that they don’t want to see. Considering the number of ads in Feed (with more coming to Instagram and Reels as well), parent Meta no doubt wants to make sure users are happy with other content.