Facebook parent company Meta, is yet again, making changes to its News Feeds as it continues to tinker with how users are served with contents from friends, family, and businesses on the social media platform.
According to TheVerge, the company said in a blog post Thursday that it is currently testing its new changes, using a “small percentage” of users, by allowing people to adjust their preferences to increase or reduce the amount of content they see from specific friends, family, groups, and pages they’re connected with on the platform.
This isn't the first time Facebook has tweaked the way the News Feed presents content to its users, having done so numerous times in the past several years.
However, perhaps not satisfied with the outcome of past changes, the company seems to keep rethinking what content should be prioritized and why.
In 2015, it said it was changing News Feeds to favor content from close friends over that from brands and publishers. In 2016, Facebook said again it would adjust its algorithm so posts from friends would get priority over publishers. Then in 2018, the company said it was changing the News Feed in favor of posts most likely to spark user engagements (discussion).
It's most recent change came in 2020, where Facebook said it would favor more trustworthy and quality news sources.
It's latest change unlike the previous ones, will allow users decide for themselves, what they want to see and how often they see them appear on their News Feed.
We encourage our followers who value our publications, and who desire to continue receiving updates from us, to decide in our favor, by up voting posts from our pages, even as we remain committed to objective reporting.