Facebook unleashed a new update to its newsfeed on Wednesday that lets people snooze World Cup news so they don’t accidentally consume spoilers before they’re ready. The update also works for other sports and current events.
The new feature gives Facebook users more control over what they see on their newsfeed. The platform uses an algorithm to decide what posts appear on a user’s feed. Increasing user-control is something the company has been doubling down on in the wake of complaints.
Users can snooze posts by keywords, such as the World Cup, Super Bowl or names of people and events that they want to avoid. The goal will be to keep those on the platform who might have otherwise avoided logging into Facebook to escape accidentally seeing spoilers or unwanted news.
The new feature also enables Facebook users to snooze posts from certain people, pages, and groups. The snoozed posts will remain hidden from a user’s feed for 30 days.
SportTechie Takeaway
While newsfeed functions might have only been interesting from a privacy standpoint a year ago, the ability to snooze sports updates is becoming increasingly important as consumers put off watching live sports on linear TV and instead choose to stream content at a later time at their leisure.
The ability to hide spoilers will continue to be an important issue for Facebook as the company scoops up additional sports rights to compete with Amazon, Twitter and other digital streamers. If Facebook is going to become a hub for live and on-demand sports content, giving users greater control of how and when they see updates about their favorite teams will be crucial.