Something to look forward to: Have you ever found yourself avoiding specific posts on Facebook like the outcome of sporting events or spoilers of your favorite TV show? Maybe you have just grown tired of hearing about a particular subject like immigration. If so, you may like a new function that Facebook just started testing called “keyword snoozing.”
The feature was first spotted by Chris Messina last Sunday after he had discovered a string for “snooze keywords for 30 days” within the Facebook app’s code. There was some speculation on Twitter that it was for an unannounced upcoming user option. Facebook confirmed this to TechCrunch on Tuesday, but the information was under embargo until early this morning.
Is this a new feature for Facebook?
— Chris Messina (@chrismessina) June 23, 2018
"You can now use keywords to stop seeing posts in your News Feed. You won't see any posts containing the keywords you choose for 30 days."
There is already a snooze function which allows users to mute groups or individuals for 30 days. Keyword snooze works similarly. Click the drop-down menu for a post containing the keyword you want to mute and select “snooze keywords in this post.” This will extract the nouns from it which you can choose. You may choose one or more words.
For example, say you wanted to avoid posts about the season finale of Westworld. You could find a Facebook entry about Westworld and choose to snooze that keyword. Then for the next month, you would not receive Westworld posts in your newsfeed. If the post does not contain another keyword you want, like "finale," you can just search for any post containing that word and select it the same way.
The one caveat is that you may uncover a spoiler in your search for your keyword of interest. A spokesperson told TechCrunch that they might implement a way for users to enter keywords themselves to avoid this some time down the road. Snooze also only works on regular posts, so ads containing keywords still will come through.
The feature is currently in the testing phase and is only available to a small percentage of users at this time. It appears that it is coming to the Facebook app first, but since the website has all the same drop-down options as the app, it’s a safe bet that keyword snooze will be available globally when it get through testing. There is no word how long that will be.
App image via TechCrunch
https://www.techspot.com/news/75269-facebook-began-testing-feature-allows-you-nooze-keywords.html
