Facebook introduces new tools to manage News Feeds, commenting audience, and more for a personalized experience on iOS and Android

Facebook has announced new management tools on iOS and Android apps. The updated app now offers a new Feed Filter Bar to easily access ‘Most Recent’ posts on the timeline, ‘Why am I seeing this?” information for recommended content, and the ability to control who can comment on posts.

Previously, Twitter introduced the option to restrict who could comment on users’ tweets as a preventive measure against cyber on the platform. And now Facebook is working on making its service more secure as well; in addition to adopting Twitter’s anti-bullying and trolling feature, it recently released support for security keys and took action against hackers taking advantage of its platform to attack iOS and Android devices.

New tools to control News Feed and comments on Facebook

• New option to control the commenting audience for public posts.

By adjusting your commenting audience, you can further control how you want to invite conversation onto your public posts and limit potentially unwanted interactions. And if you’re a public figure, creator or brand, you too can choose to limit your commenting audience on your public posts to help you feel safe and engage in more meaningful conversations with your community.

• New Feed Filter Bar feature to see the ‘Most Recent’ posts first. Placed on top of News Feed, the new feature allows users to easily switch between an “algorithmically-ranked News Feed and a feed sorted chronologically with the newest posts.” The Feed Filter Bar is available on the Android version of the app but will come to iOS in the coming weeks.

• The “Why am I seeing this?” feature for recommended content is expanded to show context around the posts from friends, Pages, and Groups users follow and suggested content.

To apply the new changes, users will have to update the app from their respective app stores. Facebook hopes that the new tools to control information users see and share will improve their experience on the platform. “We know that helping you better manage your experience on Facebook can support wellbeing, so we will continue to invest in ways to give you more control and context.”