Facebook now reminds you about ways to control what you see in your News Feed

In an effort to continue to improve what’s displayed on a user’s News Feed, Facebook will begin displaying a reminder note at the top of page that lets you pick which friends and/or Pages you have displayed first. The expectation is that people forget they can do this, so this gentle nudge will encourage users to fine-tune what they see, giving the social network’s algorithm more input data to better serve relevant stories.

Here’s how it works: If you see the above image in your News Feed, tap on the link to select which friends and Pages you want to see first — it’s not just all friends and not just all Pages, you can be picky. You can also tap on a person’s profile picture to be shown the stories that they’ve shared since you were last on Facebook at the top of your News Feed. Those posts with a star in the top right of their post are the ones you’ve given priority to.

The above actions have been available for quite some time, but every now and then, Facebook feels the need to remind users that they have control over their data and what they see — it has done this with privacy settings and now is focusing on improving the overall quality of the News Feed.

Facebook also wants to let you know that besides controlling the content on your News Feed, its app will help you discover people and Pages you can either follow or unfollow.

By having you fine-tune your content, Facebook is helping you maximize your experience on the social network: You’re getting the really important stuff front and center without having to parse through all the notifications and status updates. But at the same time, the company gets much more information about your behavior to improve its algorithm in order to serve more ads that are personalized just for you.