Facebook Inc. today announced a slew of changes that the company says will give users more control over what they see on the platform.

First and foremost, the changes will mean that people have more power to control what appears in their News Feed, rather than Facebook’s algorithm making the choice for them. The company has come under considerable pressure over what some people say is Facebook manipulating the News Feed so users only see certain things.

“People should be able to better understand how the ranking algorithms work and why they make particular decisions, and they should have more control over the content that is shown to them,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, wrote in a post on Medium.

From now on, people will be able to choose a “Favorites” option that will mean they can pick up to 30 people or Pages that they want to see. There will also be a “Most Recent” option, so users can view posts in chronological order rather than the algorithm make a decision for them. People could tweak what content they saw in the past, but it took some effort. Now users will have a one-click option in a new News Feed filter bar.

Clegg talked about the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” in which Facebook is portrayed as a kind of dystopian technology here to wreak havoc on society by polarizing people. He went on to explain the benefits of social media and the fact it isn’t going away, but admitted that this “does not mean the concerns about how humans and algorithmic systems interact should be dismissed.”

In defense of the algorithm, Clegg said it is there to ensure people see content that they might find interesting, but then said it may have too much “independent judgment.” He also discussed polarizing content and the criticism that Facebook promotes it.

That he denied. “Advertisers don’t want their brands and products displayed next to extreme or hateful content – a point that many made explicitly last summer during a high-profile boycott by a number of household-name brands,” he said.

In light of that, Facebook will now allow users to limit who can comment on content they post by selecting a certain audience, or they can choose to allow only comments from people they tag in the post. Facebook said it will also expand the “Why am I seeing this” button to better explain to people why the algorithm has chosen that particular content.

“Wherever possible, I believe that people should be able to choose for themselves, and that people can generally be trusted to know what is best for them,” said Clegg. “But I am also acutely conscious that we need collectively-agreed ground rules, both on social media platforms and in society at large, to reduce the likelihood that the choices exercised freely by individuals will lead to collective harms.”

Photo: Facebook