Facebook’s finally rolling out a change to the newsfeed we can all get behind. We can finally mute friends and pages for a little while without having to go all-in on unfollowing or even unfriending them.
Maybe you know some people who’s being particularly annoying right now and you want some cooling off time without having to cut the ties indefinitely. Now you have a feature that’ll give you a bit of space now and bring that friend back to you later when they’ve hopefully had a chance to reflect on recent posts. It just makes you wonder how many Facebook friendships could have been saved had this feature been rolled out a lot sooner. We may never know…
TechCrunch first broke word of the new feature Thursday and told us we can use it to temporarily silence friends, pages, or groups. And we can even select how long we want to stop hearing from them, whether it be 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.
You can access the option by clicking the three dots found on the top right side of the post of the offending friend. From the drop down menu, select “unfollow or snooze”. Then select the time range you prefer.
Some people will not see the new feature just yet, instead seeing the traditional “unfollow” option. That’s because the feature is still in test phase and won’t be visible to all users yet.
A spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We’re testing new ways to give people control over their News Feeds so they can stay connected with the stories they find most relevant.”
While the feature could help us save a few friendships, the feature could be the greatest boon for businesses and groups so they don’t lose valuable followers over a spate of pushy or off-message posts.
Facebook has always put a premium on curating and culling the content we see on our newsfeed. This time around, they had the bright idea of giving users a little more say in how we can manage our content ourselves.
