Make Facebook Show Only People in the News Feed

October 07, 2022 Post a Comment

What's in your Facebook newsfeed?

Bunch o' junk you don't care to see?

Do you miss seeing posts from friends, and the Facebook Pages you adore?

Take control NOW! Here's how.

UPDATED September 2022 with NEW Feed Preferences.

We'll run through some newsfeed basics, then delve into how you can see what YOU want to see!

What Shows Up on Facebook Newsfeed?

Facebook Feed is the constantly updating list of stories on your Facebook home page.

It includes status updates, photos, videos, links, app activity and likes from people, Pages and groups that you follow on Facebook.

Posts that you see in your Facebook Feed are meant to keep you connected to the people, places and things that you care about, starting with your friends and family.

Adam Mosseri, "Head of News Feed," will clue you in on how FB determines what to show you:

Facebook shows you what they decide to show you

Here's the deal. When the average Facebook user logs on, there are potentially thousands of posts from their friends and "liked" business Pages that could be shown to them.

In 2013, Facebook said the average was 1,500 stories, and in 2014, they said it could be up to 15,000. Who knows how many by now!!

For many years, Facebook has NOT been showing you ALL those posts. In fact, there's no way you could find them all, even if you spent all day and tried really hard 🙂

The FB feed is NOT a waterfall feed, like Twitter, where the most recent posts are shown at the top, and all posts from everyone you follow are shown in chronological order. Nope.

Facebook uses a mysterious Ranking algorithm (formerly called Edgerank) to determine which posts you get to see.

The Facebook Feed algorithm attempts to figure out which posts you most want to see.

Posts that you see first are influenced by your connections and activity on Facebook. The number of comments, likes and reactions a post receives and what kind of story it is (example: photo, video, status update) can also make it more likely to appear higher up in your News Feed.

Posts that you might see first include:

A friend or family member commenting on or liking another friend's photo or status update.
A person reacting to a post from a publisher that a friend has shared.
Multiple people replying to each other's comments on a video they watched or an article they read in News Feed.

This screenshot shows what Facebook purports to show you as of September 2022:

Keep in mind that if you feel you're missing posts you'd like to see, or seeing posts in your Feed that you don't want to see, you can adjust your settings. We'll dive into that below!

If there's a friend or Page whose posts you want in your newsfeed, be sure to to interact with the posts that you do see.

If you're not seeing any, go to their page and leave likes and comments on a few recent posts.

If you want to see their posts,never hide their posts.

P.S. Please don't ever hide Fan Page posts – if you don't like what they post, it's better for the business if you "unlike" or unfollow the Page.

It's an algorithm thing 😉

You might also like: Why Can't I Send a Friend Request on Facebook?

How Can I Fix my Facebook News Feed?

We will first cover how to see the most recent posts, then go into fine-tuning exactly what you do and don't want to see!

How to see the most recent posts on Facebook

The Facebook News Feed default is to show you the "Top Stories." That means you're going to see the posts that have a lot of comments and likes, not what was posted most recently.

Even worse, the more comments and likes they continue to get, the more likely you'll see the same stories again at the top of your Facebook news feed.

But you can easily change this priority to "Most Recent." Note: This content was checked on September 19, 2022 and still works.

On desktop, just go to the home page (newsfeed) and click "See more" in the left sidebar.

Then scroll down, down, down until you see "Most Recent."

Click this and your News Feed will instantly change to the most recent post instead of the most popular post. You can see in the first screenshot, the top post was posted 12 hours ago, and in the second screenshot, it was posted "Just now."

How to see the most recent posts on Facebook mobile

This is equally easy to set up on mobile. Note that you have to redo this every time you open the app!

From the Facebook news feed or your profile, tap the hamburger menu in the bottom right corner.

Under All shortcuts, scroll down until you see Recent and favorites. You may need to tap See more for it to show.

Simply tap it and you'll be taken the Recent feed. From here you can also choose to view the Favorites feed.

How to see more friends' posts on Facebook

You can set more granular preferences to see more posts that you want to see, and fewer of those you don't.

Here's how: "Favorite" up to 30 friends and Pages, unfollow others, and reconnect to ones you miss later. Or you can "Snooze" them for a time.

Note: Finding the preference settings has been completely changed as of September 19, 2022.

How to edit your Facebook Feed preferences on desktop

1 | Click your mini profile picture in the top right corner of any Facebook page.

2 | Choose Settings & Privacy.

3 | On the next tab, choose Feed. (It seems they no longer call it News Feed).

4 | Uh oh, Facebook is trying something new!

Now you can test out more ways to better control your News Feed. We'll let you know if this feature goes away.

Well, I did not find better ways to control my feed. What I did find was that my previous preferences had disappeared.

Posts from friends and Pages added to Favorites are prioritized, or shown higher, in your News Feed. Some friends and Pages are already prioritized based on info like your past interactions and things you have in common on Facebook. Adding them to Favorites prioritizes them even more.

I was given 23 Friends and 24 Pages to choose to Favorite. That's it.

There were Friends from a group I'm active in, and recently added Friends. But none of my old buddies and family members. All 23 choices are new Friends from the past year.

Included were a few Pages I interact with. No idea how they chose the other ones, or why my choices were mostly Pages!

I hope this is a glitch of the change and will be sorted soon.

How to edit Facebook News Feed preferences on mobile

As of September 2022, I could not find Preference settings anywhere on mobile.

1 | Prioritize who to see first in your Facebook feed

Go to the Favorites option. When you add friends and Pages to your Favorites on Facebook, their posts will be shown higher in your News Feed.

Choose whose posts you want to see first, from Facebook friends and "liked" Pages. You can click on the "ALL" button to choose whether to prioritize only friends or only Pages.

Select up to 30 friends you want to see at the top of your news feed! Your selections aren't ranked. For example, your first selection isn't seen first, your second selection isn't seen second.

Once you've made your selections with the blue star, click the arrow to go back to set other preferences, or the X if you're done. Your choices will be saved.

Alternatively, you can click the blue star to un-favorite someone. No worries, they won't know either way!

If you like, you can choose to see ONLY posts from your Favorites. They'll show newest first, instead of most popular.

Go to your News Feed.
Click Favorites in the left menu. You may need to click See More to see this option. Now your feed shows ONLY posts from your Favorites.
To see posts from everyone else again, click the house icon at the top of Facebook.

The "Favorites feed" resets to "all posts" every time you open Facebook.

For some reason, you can't Favorite groups.

2 | How to see all friends' posts

The way to see ALL friends' posts on Facebook is to Unfollow people, Pages, and groups you don't want to see. Leaving just friends!

Click on the next section to choose what you want to stop seeing. When you unfollow someone, you won't see their posts in News Feed, but you'll still be "Facebook friends" with them.

Again you can choose to see all kinds at once, or click the "ALL" button to unfollow FB accounts in one category:

Friends – but not necessarily the friends you want to see!
Pages – business or Fan Pages you "Liked."
Groups you're a member of.

Either way, you can keep scrolling until you've selected all the ones you want to unfollow. Click the blue check to make it gray.

The people, Pages, and groups won't be notified that you've unfollowed their posts.

Click the arrow or the X and move on.

Another option is to unfollow someone when you see a post of theirs in the feed.

Click the 3 dots on the top right of their post.
Select Unfollow [Name].

Easy peasy, one and done. Next!

3 | Reconnect with people, Pages, and groups you unfollowed.

If you wish, you can use the next section to re-follow any accounts you previously unfollowed.

You might want to take a minute here to decide if you even want to be connected to these accounts at all.

If you do want to unfriend or unlike, you could right-click to open another browser window and be done with them once and for all. Totally up to you.

When you're done with this section, click the arrow or X.

How to temporarily unfollow a person, Page, or group

The Snooze section prevents you from seeing certain accounts' posts in your FB Feed for 30 days. The profile, Page, or group won't know that they've been snoozed.

Snooze someone directly in the feed by clicking the 3 dots to the top right of their post. In the preferences, you can only UNdo the Snooze.

How to Get Notifications when your friend posts

This used to be a thing, but seems to have been removed with New Facebook.

Previously: To get notified when a friend posts on Facebook, hover the "Friends" button and click on "Get Notifications."

Rogers Herus1950