Facebook today announced a slew of changes coming to its iOS and Android apps. Users will be able to turn off the algorithmically ranked News Feed, and it's also adding new tools to control who can comment on posts.
Facebook previously introduced a new Favorites timeline, allowing users to designate their favorite friends, family members, and Pages and only allow them to see their posts. Facebook is now building on that functionality with a newer feature that will display posts in chronological order rather than relying on an algorithm.
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The new timeline, which will be available on iOS in the coming weeks, is already available on Android. Facebook also offers tools to turn off political ads and the ability to “snooze” posts from a specific page or person.
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Another change to Facebook’s timeline is that users will be offered more information about why they might be seeing a particular post. For content marked “Suggested for You,” users can now learn what factors triggered Facebook’s algorithm to suggest the post to you. Factors can include previous relevant posts you’ve engaged with, topics you’re interested in, or your location.
Engagement: A post may be suggested for you if other people who interacted with the post had also previously interacted with the same group, Page, or post as you.
Related topics: If you've recently engaged with a particular topic on Facebook, we may suggest other posts related to that topic. For example, if you recently liked or commented on a post from a basketball page, we might suggest other posts about basketball.
Location: You may see a suggested post based on where you are and the people near you are interacting with on Facebook.
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Finally, following in Twitter's footsteps, Facebook will now allow users to control who can comment on their posts. Users can choose whether everyone, only their friends, or only profiles and pages mentioned in the post can comment.
Source of information: macrumors.com
