Facebook is trialling a new ‘Snooze’ feature that makes it much easier to avoid spam from your friends and pages.
The News Feed on Facebook is always improving, but there are still problems. For instance, a friend being on holiday will often leave your feed overwhelmed by jealousy-inducing vacation snaps, which is the last thing you want to see on a grim September weekday.
The solution, right now, is to simply delete or mute the friend, but that’s a permanent action that requires manually undoing when you’re keen on seeing content from that friend once more.
To resolve this, Facebook is testing a new feature called ‘Snooze’, which allows users to temporarily mute their mates – or business pages, for that matter – so you aren’t inundated with temporal spam.
The feature was first brought to light by a report from US tech site TechCrunch, which uncovered ‘Snooze’ on Facebook’s desktop site in the USA.
In a statement sent to TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the feature was being tested, and said: “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.”
To Snooze a person, you simply tap the drop-down arrow in the top right of a post written by a person or page. You’ll be able to select different time-frames, including a day-long, week-long, or month-long snooze.
It’s part of Facebook’s continuing bid to improve the News Feed and ensure that people’s News Feeds reflect the content that actually want to see. However, there’s no guarantee that Snooze will ever roll out generally – that’ll depend on the success of the testing.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
