It's easier than ever to take a break from annoying Facebook friends
Facebook has launched a feature to let you temporarily hide annoying friends from your newsfeed.
The feature, Snooze, allows you to unfollow a person, page, or group for 30 days.
With Snooze, you can clear your News Feed of friends you still like, but who currently won't stop posting about their recent exotic vacation, wedding, or new cat. When their life is back to normal, you can "Unsnooze" them, and they'll be none the wiser.
If you don't Unsnooze, though, a Snooze will automatically expire after a month. Don't worry -- you'll be notified, so if someone's vacation or cat-picture phase lasts longer than that, you can renew as needed.
The option to Snooze a friend will appear in the right-corner drop-down menu on their posts. If you don't have the option yet, it should appear in the next few weeks as the feature rolls out.
Facebook has been monkeying around with its News Feed lately, in an effort to get people to share more, and more often, on the network. Features like Unfollow, Hide, Report, and See First have always allowed users some degree of control over the content of their news feeds. But Facebook's elimination of the Ticker tool earlier this week worried some users that the company was trying to restrict this control.
Facebook also just launched more granular controls about which parts of Facebook you want the things you post to appear.
Those users can rest slightly easier after this release. It grants users yet another element of control over their own Facebook experience, and keeps the News Feed -- to some extent, at least -- in the hands of its readers. Facebook's algorithms are sophisticated, but they haven't overtaken us yet.
Topics Facebook Social Media
Monica wrote for Mashable's Tech section with a focus on retail, internet of things, and the intersections of technology and social justice. She holds a degree in creative writing from Brown University, and has previously written for Dow Jones Media, the New York Post, Yahoo Finance, and others. In her free time, she can be found attempting to cook Asian food, buying board games, and looking for new hobbies.
