Facebook is working on ways that would allow to control what and how much they see from the timelines of their relatives and friends. The Meta-owned company has started testing ways that it can allow users to customize the content they see in their News Feeds.
In a blog post, the company said the current beta test has been made available to a small percentage of users whereby they can adjust preferences to control how much of content they want to see from specific groups such as family, friends, alumni etc. This isn't the first time that Facebook is attempting to tweak algorithms on its News Feed.
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In addition to this, Meta is also expanding its Topic Exclusion controls on the News Feed that will limit the number of advertisers running English ads. Advertisers would choose from three topics, viz., news and politics, social issues and crime and tragedy. And when the advertiser makes the choice, their ad will steer clear of people who are not interested in those topics.
The blog post says this exercise would be a bridge between the current status of user customization and what they hope to achieve through testing a content-based suitability control that covers advertiser concerns over displaying ads next to topics based on their brand suitability preferences on Facebook and Instagram.
One step forward, two steps back?
The latest decision appears to overturn an earlier thought at Facebook whereby the company had tweaked the News Feed to include more content from relatives and friends over those from publishers and brands. This decision in April of 2015 had ruffled more than a few feathers amongst the top content publishers.
Barely a year later, the company announced an adjustment of their algorithms that gave posts from friends and relatives priority over publishers. Two years later, they again tweaked the process in order to generate more discussions, which buttresses the engagement model that Facebook has always propagated.
However, two years down the line - in 2020 - Facebook the News Feed yet again in favor of what they called trustworthy and quality news sources. This happened in the immediate aftermath of the public discotent around the platform's role in the US presidential election and resulted in some top publishers going off the radar again.
All of this makes us wonder how Facebook actually decides to control its News Feed from time to time. In a report published on their blog in September, the company gave some insights into how it suppresses content or demotes it. It listed out areas like clickbait links, domains with limited fact-based content etc. for demotions.
However, the current decision once again turns the focus away from the publishers to friends and relatives, groups and pages.
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