Facebook makes it easy to turn off algorithmic ranking in your news feed

Facebook is introducing a handful of new features that will give users greater control over their news feed, including an easier way to turn off the feed’s algorithmic ranking and display content in the order it was posted. published.

The changes build on previous changes to the News Feed functionality. Last October, Facebook introduced a “Favorites” tool that allows users to select up to thirty friends and pages, prioritizing their content or posting it in a separate thread. The company also offers users the option to sort their feeds by “most recent,” but buries those options in obscure menus.

Facebook now makes these “Favorites” and “Recents” filters much more visible, placing them right at the top of the News Feed as separate tabs that users can switch between. You can see what it looks like in the screenshots below:

Image: Facebook

This filter bar is launching worldwide on Facebook’s Android app today and will be available on iOS “in the coming weeks”. It is not clear if it will be available on the web version of Facebook.

But there is a big caveat: the filter bar is not permanent in addition to the Facebook user interface. The company said The edge that the feature will disappear if users do not access the Favorites tool for seven days. They will then need to find their favorites via the News Feed preferences menu and the filter bar will return. Likewise, the “most recent” tab will also disappear if it is not consulted regularly.

In addition to the filter bar, Facebook is introducing a new tool that allows users to limit the number of people who can comment on their posts (this can be limited to friends or just tagged people and pages) and expand the content covered by his “Why am I seeing this?” functionality.

The latter tool was introduced last April and allows users to click on posts suggested by Facebook’s algorithms to see why it was recommended to them. These explanations will now cover suggested posts of pages or people that users born follow up, showing how the posts’ topics, interactions, and location led to their suggestion.

Image: Facebook

These changes are relatively minor, but overall people are giving more control over Facebook’s often opaque algorithms. The changes suggest that the world’s largest social network is eager to deflect criticism of the choices made by its algorithmic systems. This is not surprising given that the company has come under repeated criticism for studies that show these automated systems amplify disinformation and extremist content in an apparent attempt to boost user engagement – a move that governs Facebook’s design choices.

Such criticism has been leveled at the site for years, but has grown increasingly fierce in recent months as lawmakers and the company’s supervisory board consider more intrusive regulation of Facebook’s algorithms. With that in mind, it makes sense for the company to give its users the option to opt out of algorithmic sorting altogether.

But as is often the case with Facebook, the company seems reluctant to commit to changes that could hurt its own engagement metrics. If the filter bar disappears after seven days of inactivity, it raises an obvious question: Is Facebook really serious about letting users choose what they see on the site, or does it just want to make it appear in control?