It's a complaint that has been growing over the last few months. "I never see you on Facebook any more!" You may have said that to a friend of yours and they tell you that they posted yesterday. It's embarrassing, but not your fault. Facebook has decided to not show you your friends content.
How did that happen? It's all in how you interact with Facebook. If you liked your Aunts picture of her dog, Facebook took a note and now shows you more posts from your Aunt. If you shared your dentist's meme, now you're seeing all your dentist's posts. Multiple this activity and you're getting a lot of posts that Facebook thinks you want and less of everything else.
How can I fix this? Facebook has some settings that will help you take better control of your Facebook experience. These screenshots will come from Chrome on desktop, so they may look different on different browsers and phones.
Show me what to do!
On the left, click the dots next to News Feed. Go down to Edit Preferences.
This brings up your Feed preferences. Most of the changes you can make to your feed can be done here.
Under "Prioritize who to see first" you can select from all your friends and family, who you want to see first in your feed. Note: You can only select up to 30 people or Pages.
You can also select which Pages you want to see first in your feed.
Under "Unfollow people to hide their posts" you can select who you don't want to see anymore. This section is nice because it already puts everyone in the order of how much they post. No wonder you see so much of a certain person, they post all day!
Under "Reconnect with people you unfollowed" you can check to see if there is anyone that you may have unfollowed in the past and re-enable them into your feed. This is nice because you may have forgotten that you unfollowed someone 3 years ago and were wondering what became of them. They're still around, you just haven't seen any of their posts!
Now, back to the News Feed option at the top. If you select Top Stories, you can see your Feed in chronological order. Keep in mind that Facebook will always default back to Top Stories. Pro tip: After you select Top Stories, bookmark that page. Also note that this pretty much ignores all the Feed settings that you made earlier and just shows you your content in the order received. People you blocked will still not show.
On mobile, select the three lines at the bottom right hand corner. Under Explore, go down to Feeds. Most Recent is at the top in there.
There are a couple more places you can tell Facebook that you want to see this person or Page's content more. If you go to the Page, there is a "Following" button near the top. Click that and select "See first"
If it's a person, go to their page. That function is located here:
Giving your friends timeouts. This is pretty fun tool. Let's say one of your friends has gone off the rails and is posting garbage, but you don't want to unfollow and forget about them. Facebook has a new tool that will unfollow them for 30 days. In your feed, select the dots at the top right of the post, then select "Snooze for 30 days"
Have any more secrets and tips? Comment below!