Facebook on Friday announced its latest feature in the form of Snooze, providing users with the option to temporarily unfollowing friends, groups, and pages, i.e. stop seeing their posts on the News Feed for 30 days. The functionality has been in testing in the United States since mid-September but is now rolling out globally and users in all parts of the world should be able to benefit from it in the coming days. The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant said Snooze was implemented into its service primarily based on user feedback, suggesting people were specifically requesting this kind of functionality.
Snoozing a person, page, or a group is as simple as tapping the three-dot icon in the top right corner of their post on your Android News Feed or clicking the same menu while using the desktop browser version of Facebook. Doing so will present you with a drop-down menu from which you’ll be able to temporarily unfollow the author of the post for an entire month. Cancelling the snoozed period early is always an option, as is prolonging it after the initial 30 days are over, Facebook said. The platform will notify you shortly before the same period expires in order to provide you with enough time to decide whether you want to continue avoiding posts from the snoozed subject or start doing so again. The company indicated there are many valid reasons to temporarily unfollow a person or page and while doing so has been possible for a long time now, the Snooze feature automates the entire process so that you don’t forget to follow that briefly annoying friend back.
Following months of testing, the current version of the feature is unlikely to be radically changed in the immediate future, though Facebook will surely be tracking its usage and trying to determine whether it’s serving users as well as it should. Facebook is presently in the process of wrapping up a mixed year that saw it post record profits while getting involved in a variety of controversies ranging from problematic advertising practices to its role in the Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election in the U.S.