Today Facebook introduced a new tool to give you more control over what you share to News Feed by managing who can comment on your public posts. Now, you can control your commenting audience for a given public post by choosing from a menu of options ranging from anyone who can see the post to only the people and Pages you tag.
The goal of News Feed is to connect you to what matters most to you: the people in your life, interesting content, and the world around you. The friends you add, the Pages you like, the groups you join, and the things you interact with all shape how your News Feed looks on any given day.
By adjusting your commenting audience, you can further control how you want to invite conversation onto your public posts and limit potentially unwanted interactions. And if you’re a public figure, creator, or brand, you too can choose to limit your commenting audience on your public posts to help you feel safe and engage in more meaningful conversations with your community.
This new tool is the latest example of how we’re helping you control and curate your News Feed to best reflect who you are as your interests and priorities evolve. We also want to continue to help you understand why you see the content you do on News Feed.
Control What You See
In October, Facebook made it easier to sort and browse News Feed, giving you more control over what you see. Facebook launched Favourites, a new tool where you can control and prioritize posts from the friends and Pages you care about most in News Feed. By selecting up to 30 friends and Pages to include in Favourites, their posts will appear higher in ranked News Feed and can also be viewed as a separate filter. People who use Favourites frequently can access it from the Feed Filter Bar, a new menu at the top of News Feed.
The Feed Filter Bar offers easier access to Most Recent too, making it simpler to switch between an algorithmically-ranked News Feed and a feed sorted chronologically with the newest posts first. Android app users can access the Feed Filter Bar when they scroll up on News Feed. The same functionality will be available in the iOS app in the coming weeks. Regardless of how often you use them, you can find Most Recent and Favourites in the Shortcuts menu.
These are just the latest additions to the existing controls suite designed to help you control what you see in News Feed, including tools such as Snooze (where you can temporarily hide posts from a person, Page, or group) and the ability to turn off political ads.
Understand Why You See Suggested Posts in News Feed
To help you discover new and relevant content, Facebook suggest posts in your News Feed from places like Pages and Groups that you don’t already follow, but they think you may be interested in. These post suggestions are primarily based on factors such as post engagement, related topics, and location. Because you haven’t chosen to follow these accounts on Facebook, Facebook have clear guidelines about what content they aim to recommend to people.
Today, they also providing more context around the content we suggest in News Feed by expanding “Why am I seeing this?.” This means that you’ll be able to tap on posts from the friends, Pages, and Groups you follow as well as the posts we suggest to you and get more context on why they’re appearing in your News Feed.
There are several factors that influence your suggested posts in News Feed such as:
- Related engagement: A post may be suggested for you if other people who interacted with the post also previously interacted with the same group, Page, or post as you.
- Related topics: If you’ve recently engaged with a certain topic on Facebook, we may suggest other posts that are related to that topic. For example, if you recently liked or commented on a post from a basketball Page, we could suggest other posts about basketball.
- Location: You may see a suggested post based on where you are and what people near you are interacting with on Facebook.
To update what you want to see and how you share to your News Feed, check out your News Feed preferences and privacy settings in the app and adjust them to your liking. We know that helping you better manage your experience on Facebook can support wellbeing, so we will continue to invest in ways to give you more control and context.