Meta details updates to the Facebook Feed that let users show more or fewer posts from friends, Groups, and Pages, helping improve Meta's AI-based ranking
EngadgetSteve Dent
Context & Ripple Effects
The new Feed controls establish an explicit user-feedback layer for Meta’s ranking systems. Meta later published system cards explaining recommendation AI across Feed, Stories, and Reels, and expanded ad disclosures to show how activity informs its ML models.
The same ranking agenda later reached Reels through a push toward fresher, more-relevant Reels and then Meta AI’s search of public Facebook posts. The controls matter as an early mechanism for tuning what Meta’s AI distributes across its social surfaces.
First-order effects
Facebook users can directly raise or reduce the visibility of posts from friends, Groups, and Pages, while Meta receives clearer preference signals for Feed ranking.
Groups and Pages face more immediate variation in organic Feed distribution as members’ controls influence how often their posts are surfaced.
Second-order effects
Meta’s recommendation disclosures and these controls together make ranking behavior more legible, increasing pressure on Page and Group operators to earn sustained user preference rather than rely on default distribution.
The model of using freshness, relevance, and user feedback in Feed can be carried across Meta surfaces, as its later Reels ranking update indicates.
Third-order effects
Meta is building a distribution system in which social content serves both as an item to recommend and as input for AI products, culminating in AI Mode searches of public Facebook posts.
If this pattern persists, control over ranking signals and public social content gives Meta’s existing social surfaces an advantage in AI-assisted discovery, while raising the importance of clear user-facing controls and explanations.
The trend: Meta is turning its social feeds into AI-ranked discovery systems that learn from explicit user controls, engagement signals, and public content.
Today, we're announcing new ways to customize what you see in your Facebook Feed so you can discover what's most relevant to you. You can select “Show more” or “Show less” on posts from the people and communities you're connected to and posts that Facebook recommends to you. http…
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. We are also starting to test this feature in Reels. https://twitter.com/...
Would be great if @Meta would share data with us all on what news outlets people opt to see more of and less. Meta Platforms said it is tweaking the Facebook news feed in an attempt to give users more control over what they see on the platform. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Here's the thing about this feature: 1) it's too late. 2) unlike IG, where people actually want to do this but may not know how but learn from their peers, nobody on FB *wants* to do this. 3) FB is just gonna serve you crap with its crap AI anyway...which nobody wants. https://tw…
The assertion that Facebook users have no meaningful control over what they see in their Feed has always been wide of the mark ( https://nickclegg.medium.com/ ...), so I'm pleased that today we're taking more steps to allow people to customize what they see on Facebook. Read more…
See something you want to see more of on Facebook? Now you can let us know!🎉 We're introducing new ways to customize your Feed so you can discover new content, and see more of what you want and less of what you don't. Learn more: https://about.fb.com/...