• by Colin Kirkland , October 5, 2022

In a move to grant Facebook users greater control, Meta announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out updates for a further customizable Facebook Feed.

“Now you can select Show more or Show less on posts from the people and communities you’re connected to and posts that Facebook recommends to you,” the company stated in a recent blog post. 

By selecting “Show more” or “Show less” buttons -- which will appear below posts from friends and recommended content -- Facebook will use machine learning to temporarily increase or decrease the rank of a specific post and any additional posts similar to it. 

After Facebook’s number of daily active users shrunk for the first time since its founding, Meta is aiming to provide users with feeds that feel more personalized, so they engage more with the content and spend more time on the platform.

“By offering more ways to incorporate direct feedback into Feed ranking, we’re making our artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive,” the company said.

Both buttons will also appear in the three-dot menu on individual posts and in the Feed preferences settings.

The company said it is also testing “Show more” and “Show less” in Reels. 

These updates follow other tools and preferences that users have been using to customize the content they see on their feeds, including the choice to hide posts, add favorite friends, and snooze posts from specific groups, friends, and pages.

Instagram has also invited users the option to customize the content they see.

Last month, the Meta-owned platform announced plans to begin testing ways in which users can further their content preferences via individual lists of keywords and emojis they’re not interested in.