Changes to Facebook News Feed in the works

Facebook is making changes to how it uses feedback to improve users’ News Feed.

The company announced the changes on 22 April.

The changes are part of Facebook’s efforts to improve the feature.

“Our goal with News Feed is to arrange the posts from friends, Groups and Pages you follow to show you what matters most to you at the top of your feed,” wrote Facebook’s product management director, Aastha Gupta.

“Our algorithm uses thousands of signals to rank posts for your News Feed with this goal in mind.”

Facebook to prioritise inspirational content in News Feed

In 2019, Facebook introduced several surveys to get a better understanding of what people prefer to see in their News Feeds. The company is continuing this by asking new questions based on what content they want to see.

One of the questions Facebook will ask users is whether they find the content inspirational. The company will run tests worldwide to ask users questions included with the content. The findings will then be used to modify the News Feed ranking. The overall goal with this is to showcase more inspirational content.

Facebook will also ask people if they want to see content based on topics. This is in response to content shared by friends that doesn’t necessarily speak to the user’s interests.

Facebook said user feedback reported that people were seeing too much political content. The company will work to identify content tied to negative experiences. For example, posts that garner a lot of angry emoji reactions.

There will also be a new icon on the app for users to instantly remove content from their News Feed that they don’t like. If you click on the ‘X’ icon in the top right-hand corner of the post, it will immediately remove the post. The removal will also be used to tailor your News Feed further.

Feature image: Unsplash/Austin Distel

Read more: Instagram adds tools to Direct Messages to prevent harassment