How To Remove Favorites On Facebook

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'south algorithmic ranking and display content in the order it was posted instead.

The changes build on previous tweaks to 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 displaying information technology in a separate feed. The visitor also offers users the option to sort their feeds past "most recent," but buries these options in obscure menus.

Facebook is at present making these "Favorites" and "Recent" filters much more prominent, putting them right at the pinnacle of the News Feed as separate tabs that users tin switch betwixt. You tin see what that looks like in the screenshots below:

The News Feed filter bar will permit users swap betwixt algorithmic, chronological, and "favorites" filters.

Image: Facebook

This filter bar is launching globally on Facebook'due south Android app today and coming to iOS "in the coming weeks." It'southward not clear if it volition be bachelor on the web version of Facebook.

The filter bar will appear for all Facebook users when it rolls out, but if yous don't admission it over the course of seven days (by swiping either to the Favorites or Recent tab) it'll disappear from view. To find it again you'll merely need to swipe up and it'll reappear.

In addition to the filter bar, Facebook is introducing a new tool that lets users limit who can comment on their posts (this can be restricted to friends or but to tagged people and pages) and expanding the content covered past its "Why am I seeing this?" characteristic.

This latter tool was introduced final April and lets users click on posts suggested by Facebook's algorithms to see why it was recommended to them. These explanations will now embrace suggested posts from pages or people that users don't follow, showing how posts' related topics, interactions, and location led to them being suggested.

"Why am I seeing this?" will offer more information nigh why posts were suggested to users.

Image: Facebook

These changes are relatively minor, but overall give people more control over Facebook's oft opaque algorithms. The changes propose that the world's largest social network is keen to deflect criticism over choices made past its algorithmic systems. This is not surprising considering that the visitor has repeatedly come nether fire over studies that show these automatic systems amplify misinformation and extremist content in an credible bid to drive up user engagement — a metric that rules Facebook'southward pattern choices.

Such criticisms have been levied confronting the site for years, simply have go increasingly sharp in contempo months equally legislators and the visitor's ain Oversight Board mull more than intrusive regulation of Facebook'southward algorithms. With this in mind, it's makes sense for the company to give its users the ability to opt-out of algorithmic sorting altogether.

But equally is often the case with Facebook, the visitor seems hesitant to commit to changes that might undermine its ain engagement stats. If the filter bar is subconscious from view afterward seven days of inactivity, it invites an obvious question: is Facebook serious about letting users choose what they encounter on the site, or does it just want to give the advent of command?

Correction, March 31, 3:14PM ET: The story has been corrected to note that the filter bar doesn't disappear entirely if unused for seven days, but can be accessed again by swiping upwardly.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/31/22359782/facebook-news-feed-turn-off-algorithmic-ranking-favorites-most-recent-filter-bar

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