Facebook to Incorporate User Feedback on News Feed Arrangement Based on Preference

Facebook said on Thursday it was taking steps to incorporate direct feedback from users to arrange their News Feed as per their preference.

Facebook's News Feed, that comprises posts from friends and businesses, is the first thing users see when they open their account on the mobile app or go to the website.

The company is running tests globally to get more specific feedback from users on what they want to see, wrote Facebook in a blog post.

“While a post's engagement — or how often people like it, comment on it, or share it — can be a helpful indicator that it's interesting to people, this survey-driven approach, which largely occurs outside the immediate reaction to a post, gives a more complete picture of the types of posts people find most valuable and what kind of content detracts from their News Feed experience. Now, we're building on these surveys by asking new questions about the content people find valuable as well as the content people don't enjoy seeing in their News Feed,” wrote product management director Aastha Gupta in the blog post.

Some of the new approaches that Facebook will be exploring to gather feedback from users include: finding out whether users find a post inspirational, gauging interest in certain topics, better understanding content users want to see less of, and making it easier to give feedback directly on a post.

“Overall, we hope to show people more content they want to see and find valuable, and less of what they don't. While engagement will continue to be one of many types of signals we use to rank posts in News Feed, we believe these additional insights can provide a more complete picture of the content people find valuable, and we'll share more as we learn from these tests,” Gupta wrote.

Users have asked for more control over their feed, and for less political and more motivational content, the social media company has said previously.

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