Facebook is, without a doubt, a big part of many people’s digital lives – many of us have been on the social media for a decade now and since then, we’ve seen our news feed go from things our friends share, to click-bait articles on why cats are better than dogs (they’re not, by the way).
Many have been asking the folks over at Facebook why they see what they see on their news feeds and the American social media company has responded by giving us the “Why Am I Seeing This Post” feature – which its functions are quite self-explanatory.
Image credit: Facebook
The global launch of the feature sees the smartphone app version of Facebook be equipped with the option to list reasons why certain posts appear on users’ feeds – the reasons vary from friends liking the post, the content being from a page or group that the user follows, posts from pages that are frequented by users (shameless plug: please like and follow our Facebook page here), and more.
Facebook says that it’s all based on interaction, may it be from the public (read: viral posts) or how often users like, comment and share content of specific genres, like memes.
With the introduction of this feature, comes a set of customization tools that can be accessed from the settings menu, allowing users to hide, unfollow, hide and even set a page to “see first”, prioritizing content from a favourite page.
Image credit: Facebook
The feature will also be applicable for ads. Just clock the options drop down menu on the top right of the post and tap “Why am I seeing this ad” and you’ll be greeted with an itemized list of reasons why.
If you don’t see the feature yet, it could be that the update hasn’t rolled out to your device yet, just remember to update your app from the app store and you should get the features eventually.
