Meta testing new controls for users, brands in FB News Feed

Facing intense scrutiny over users' data privacy the world over, Meta (formerly Facebook) has announced several new controls designed to give users and businesses the ability to tailor their News Feed experience on the social media platform. The company also plans to collaborate with third-party partners to develop a brand suitability verification tool for News Feed.

"We're testing new ways to make it easier to find and use News Feed controls to adjust people's ranking preferences and customise their News Feed," Meta said in a statement late on Thursday.

As part of this, users can now increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the friends, family, Groups and Pages they're connected to and the topics they care about in their News Feed Preferences.

"We're also making existing controls easier to access, including Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect. We'll begin testing in countries around the world to a small percentage of people, gradually expanding in the coming weeks," the social network informed.

Facebook has tweaked News Feed controls numerous times in the past to help billions of users prioritise what is the right set of content for them.

The company said that it is also expanding the 'Topic Exclusion' controls for News Feed test to a limited number of advertisers that run ads in English. The advertiser topic exclusion control allows an advertiser to select a topic to help define how the company will show the ad on Facebook, including News Feed.

In early testing with advertisers, Facebook found that advertisers that excluded the News and Politics categories were able to avoid News and Political adjacency 94 per cent of the time. "We expect to kick off in 2022 and provide updates along the way starting in Q1," Meta said.