Facebook tweaks its News Feed for the ‘small group of people’ who actively hide posts

If you’re a fan of the “hide” feature on Facebook, then you’ll want to pay attention — it’s getting a small tweak today that could affect the stories you see on the social network.

For the “small group of people” on Facebook that hide a large number of stories in their News Feed for whatever reason, the social network’s algorithm will no longer consider hiding to be a strong negative signal. What this means is that if you fall into this category, you’re going to see more stories from the Pages and friends you’re connected to than in the past. Ideally this should showcase more content that you’re interested in.

When Facebook rolled out “hide” to its users, it was a way for people to let the social network know what types of posts and stories they’re not interested in. But now, for those that opt to click “hide” on every post, Facebook will no longer view that action as strongly as it did before. So if you’re a “super hider” and hide a VentureBeat post (please don’t), then Facebook could show you more stories from VentureBeat.

Of course any change that relates to News Feed automatically includes a discussion about Pages. If anything, Page admins could probably see an increase in the number of their stories hidden within their Page insights. However, Facebook says it doesn’t expect Pages to see “significant changes in distribution as a result of this update.”