Meta is implementing customizable and personalized content through Facebook Reels to further cater to your interests, the company said on Tuesday. The new features feel similar to aspects of TikTok’s personalized ForYou Page.
The new personalization controls for Reels will let people customize the content they’d prefer to see and avoid the content they don’t. Meta also said it is adding Reels to the main navigation of Facebook Watch, which will allow for short and long-form video scrolling.
The personalization controls come in the form of the Show More or Show Less buttons you can touch by selecting the three-dot menu below the video player after viewing a video. Meta said this option will also organically pop up below reels and videos in your Watch feed. The icons serve viewers’ interests, and Meta said in the release, temporarily inflate or deflate the ranking of the content.
Meta introduced the Show More/Show Less feature through Facebook’s Feed in October. The tool relies on AI to prioritize and deprioritize content based on a person’s selection.
Reels are becoming more popular, Meta said, with the rate at which people are resharing reels on Facebook doubling over the last six months. Meta is also launching labels on Reels videos, which inform the viewer as to why a certain piece of content is popping up on their feed.
The updates to Reels seem to take notes from popular short-form video platform TikTok. The video app grew in popularity through its hyper-personalized ForYou Page that relies on an algorithm to determine which videos a viewer likes or doesn’t like.
TikTok’s future in the US is uncertain: Some US lawmakers are pushing to ban the app over alleged national security concerns related to Chinese parent company ByteDance. As lawmakers try to figure out next steps for TikTok, other social media companies are copying some of its popular features.
