Facebook is experimenting with a bunch of different control
options for users and advertisers to manage how the content appears for them on
the platform. It is also making sure that the News Feed control options are easy
to find.
According to Facebook, with the new control options, users
will be able to “increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the
friends, family, Groups and Pages they’re connected to and the topics they care
about in their News Feed Preferences.”
The existing News Feed preferences options on Facebook allow
users to have better control over what they are shown in their feed. Users can select
favorite profiles that will then get higher priority when they post, and can
also unfollow Pages, people and topics from a central space, and snooze certain
users/Pages.
Facebook is now further improving these options, by allowing
users to increase or decrease the content that they are shown from each element.
The company plans to start testing its new control options with a limited
number of people and will gradually expand it in the coming weeks.
Moreover, Facebook is expanding its Topic Exclusion controls
for News Feed to a limited number of advertisers that run ads in English. This control
option allows advertisers to select topics to help define how they are shown ads
on Facebook, including News Feed. The topics include News and Politics, Social
Issues, and Crime & Tragedy. By selecting one or more of these topics,
advertisers can choose not to have their ads delivered to people recently
engaging with the selected topics in their News Feed.
The Topic Exclusion control allows advertisers to avoid
unwanted associations with certain topics and their related discussions, so as
to prevent being affected by negative impacts. Facebook further revealed that
after testing this option, it was found to be successful in ensuring that the
ads are not shown alongside such discussions in the app.
