Have you seen too many photos of a family member’s new pet? Is a friendship tempting you too much by posting pictures of everything you ate during your last vacation? According to Facebook account, “it turns out that you are not alone”. That’s why he presents Snooze, a new feature that will be available this week.
The idea is simple: if the publications of a friendship, a group or even a page are overwhelming you, but you do not want to eliminate them or stop them from continuing indefinitely, thanks to this option you will stop seeing your publications for 30 days. At the end of that period of time everything will return to normal, although if we wish we can finish the temporary silencing first.
The function, according to the social network, is a response to the requests of people who demanded more ways to determine what they see in the news feed and when they see it. Neither is a measure as drastic as to erase a friendship, leave a group or remove the like to a page, or an indefinite option such as stop following. Of course, it is also anonymous because it will not be notified that we have used it.
The contradictions of Facebook
This option available in the top right drop-down menu of a message, although with differences to the respites that the social network also allows us, shows contradictions in the discourse that Facebook has maintained for some time regarding the content that we can see in its chronology.
Snooze, according to the statement that has presented, is a way to give more control to people about what they see, “one of the core values of the news feed .” They are options that it is always good to have, yes, functions to spin fine in the personal discrimination of content, interesting at least, but that clash with other postulates of the social network.
The same day that these temporary silenced, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg published an article written by his research team in the seek to convince us that social networks can be harmful to users if they do not share more content. That is, if they are not exposed more to their friendships through publications, messages or interactions. The conclusion is clear: share more and you will be happy.
To this striking publication is added a significant change that for almost two months has worried those responsible for pages: the intention to remove them from the main feed . This is only happening in some countries, but it is one more drop of water in the cup practically filled with the reach of the publications made by pages, which arrive less and less to the users who continue to make them pay for their promotion.
Putting together some initiatives and others, the question arises: Does Facebook become clear? It aims to promote the publications of our friendships over those made by pages, without taking into account the quality of each other, at least a priori, while at the same time giving us options to temporarily silence part of that content that wants to make us more visible . Or want to offer all the available options so that the user is the one who chooses, although we know that in the last stay who chooses the algorithm, or wants to point to all fronts at once to please as many more voices better without defining a transparent line .
Because their words sound really good, “we will continue to provide easy-to-use tools to offer you the most personalized experience possible each time you visit Facebook”, but the reality is that what you see they decide. Even if you have decided to follow a page, they may never show you anything about it. Even if you think you’re up to date with everything your friends post, you’ll probably miss many of them.