Facebook isn’t likely to stop recommending posts in your Feed anytime soon, but it is offering a few options for controlling the content you see there.
On Wednesday, Facebook parent company Meta announced that the social networking platform is offering two more ways to customize your feed: by selecting “Show more” or “Show less” on individual posts, and by adjusting new settings in Feed Preferences.
The new Show more/Show less feature will allow users to tell Facebook if they want to see more or less posts that are similar to the post you’re looking at. Selecting “Show more” means your Feed will show more posts that are similar to a given post. “Show less” will do the opposite. The feature can be used on both posts from your Facebook connections and posts that Facebook suggests to you. In its blog post announcement, Meta offered an explanation of how the feature works:
“Selecting Show more will temporarily increase the ranking score for that post and posts like it. If you select Show less, you’ll temporarily decrease its ranking score. By offering more ways to incorporate direct feedback into Feed ranking, we’re making our artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive.”
For now, you may see the Show more/Show less feature as discrete buttons on certain posts in your Feed. Meta plans to eventually incorporate the feature into the posts’ three-dot menus and is “starting to test this feature in Reels.”
The other new Feed customization option that Facebook says it is “exploring” is a set of new settings users can adjust to determine “how much content you see in Feed from the friends and family, Groups, Pages and public figures you’re connected to.”
While we couldn’t see the new settings on the Android app or on the desktop website, Meta’s announcement did include an image of these new settings, whoch essentially look like drop-down menus that let users decide if they want to see more, less or “normal” amounts of posts from different sources of Facebook posts (friends, groups, or pages).
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
I have lost count of how many times I have gone to bed thinking I will finally sleep on time, only to somehow end up scrolling Instagram or X again. A few minutes turn into an hour, then another, and before I notice, it is 2 or 3 a.m. The next morning, I am usually annoyed with myself because I could have just slept and felt considerably better for the day ahead.
It is also a surprisingly hard habit to beat. Knowing you should put the phone down does not always help once it is already in your hand. Brick Night is a new gadget built around that exact problem. Instead of relying on you to remember to turn on an app blocker, it automatically restricts selected apps and websites when your phone enters your chosen sleep space during the hours you set.