How to Control Content on Facebook

Your Facebook experience doesn’t have to feel like a random firehose of content you don’t care about. With the right adjustments, you can shape your feed, lock down your privacy, and manage exactly how your own content appears to the world. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know, from curating what you see to moderating the content others share on your profile, page, or group.

Take Charge of Your News Feed

The first step in controlling your Facebook content is taming your own feed. Instead of passively scrolling through whatever the algorithm serves up, you can actively tell Facebook what you want to see. This transforms your experience from a noisy distraction into a genuinely useful source of information and connection.

The "Feed" Tab and Your Favorites List

You might have noticed Facebook has two primary ways to view content on its main page: "Home" and "Feeds."

• Home: This is the default, algorithm-driven feed. It’s a mix of posts from friends, pages, and groups, plus suggested content and ads that Facebook thinks you’ll find interesting. It’s designed for discovery but can often feel cluttered.
• Feeds: This tab gives you more control. Here, you’ll find a chronological view of posts from your friends, pages, groups, and a dedicated "Favorites" list.

Your Favorites list is one of the most powerful tools for curating your feed. You can select up to 30 friends and 30 pages to add to this list. Their posts will appear higher in your main feed and will be collected in a separate, chronological Favorites feed. It's the best way to make sure you never miss updates from your closest friends, family, or the creators and brands you follow most closely.

How to set up your Favorites:

1. On the Facebook app or desktop site, go to "Settings & Privacy."
2. Select "Feed" (or "News Feed Preferences").
3. Tap on "Favorites."
4. Here, you can search for and add the people and pages you want to prioritize. A blue star will appear next to their names, confirming they're on your list.

Unfollow and Snooze: The Gentle Curation Tools

Sometimes you want to stay connected to someone as a "Friend" but aren't interested in their daily posts. That’s where Unfollowing comes in. It's a discreet way to clean up your feed without causing any social awkwardness. The other person won't be notified, and you'll remain friends - their content just won't appear in your feed anymore.

If you just need a temporary break from someone's frequent posting, use the Snooze feature. This temporarily hides all posts from that person, page, or group for 30 days. It's perfect for when a friend is posting minute-by-minute holiday updates or a group is buzzing about a TV show finale you have yet to watch.

How to Unfollow or Snooze:

1. Find a post from the person or page you want to see less of.
2. Click the three dots (...) in the top-right corner of their post.
3. Select "Unfollow [Name]" to remove them from your feed permanently, or "Snooze [Name] for 30 days" for a temporary break.

Telling the Algorithm What You Like (and Don't Like)

You can also train Facebook's algorithm to better understand your preferences. On any post in your Home feed, click the three dots (...) and you’ll find options like "Show more" and "Show less."

• Show more: Tells Facebook you want to see more posts like this one.
• Show less: Signals that you’re not interested in this type of content.

Consistently using these options helps fine-tune the recommendations and suggested posts that appear in your feed over time.

Manage Your Privacy: Control Who Sees Your Content

Controlling content on Facebook also means managing what others can see on your own profile. This involves mastering your post audience settings, locking down your timeline, and deciding who can find and interact with you.

Mastering Post Audience Settings

Every time you create a post, you can choose who sees it. The audience selector tool is usually visible right below your name when you’re writing an update. Your main options are:

• Public: Anyone on or off Facebook can see the post. This is ideal for professional content, announcements, or anything you want to be widely shareable.
• Friends: Only your official Facebook friends can see it. This is the common default for personal updates.
• Friends except...: Lets you share with all your friends *except* specific people you select. Useful if you'd rather your boss not see your weekend photos.
• Specific friends: Lets you create a hand-picked list of people who can see the post. Great for sharing inside jokes or content relevant only to a small group.
• Only me: Makes the post visible to you and you alone. This is perfect for saving links, drafting ideas, or using Facebook as a personal journal.

Pro Tip: You can also retroactively change the audience for older posts. Go to "Settings & Privacy" > "Privacy Checkup" > "Who can see what you share." In this section, you'll find an option to "Limit Past Posts," which changes all of your old "Public" or "Friends of Friends" posts to "Friends" with just a couple of clicks.

Lock Down Your Profile Information

Your profile’s "About" section contains a lot of personal data, from your birthday to your work history. It's smart to review who can see each piece of information.

How to review your profile privacy:

1. Go to your profile and click "Edit Profile."
2. Scroll down and click "Edit Your About Info."
3. Beside each piece of information (like your email, phone number, and location), you’ll see an audience icon (a globe for Public, two people for Friends). Click it to change who can see that specific detail.

It’s generally a good idea to set details like your phone number and email address to "Only me" and be selective about who can see your birth date or friends list.

Control Tagging and Your Timeline

When someone tags you in a photo or post, it can automatically appear on your timeline. If you’d rather approve these posts first, you can enable Timeline Review.

• Go to "Settings & Privacy" > "Settings" > "Profile and Tagging."
• Under the "Reviewing" section, turn on "Review posts you're tagged in before the post appears on your profile?"

With this enabled, you'll get a notification whenever someone tags you. The post won’t show up on your timeline until you manually review and approve it. This gives you final say over the content that appears on your personal profile.

Set Boundaries: Managing Comments and Messages

Part of controlling your content involves managing how people interact with it. Facebook gives you tools to limit unwanted comments, filter messages, and even block users completely.

Limiting Comments on Your Public Posts

If you're posting publicly but only want to hear from people you know, you can limit who is allowed to comment. This is especially useful for public figures, content creators, or anyone who wants to avoid spam or comments from strangers.

1. Go to "Settings & Privacy" > "Settings."
2. Under "Audience and Visibility," click on "Followers and Public Content."
3. Find the "Public Post Comments" section and choose who is allowed to comment: "Public," "Friends," or "Friends of Friends."

Hiding, Deleting, and Moderating Comments

On any of your own posts, you have full control over the comments section. If a comment is unhelpful, spammy, or offensive, you can take action:

• Hide Comment: This makes the comment invisible to everyone except the person who posted it and their friends. It's a subtle way to remove negativity without escalating the situation.
• Delete Comment: This permanently removes the comment.
• Block/Ban User: This permanently removes the comment and prevents the user from interacting with your profile or page in the future.

To access these options, just long-press on a mobile comment or click the three dots (...) next to it on a desktop.

For Admins: How to Control Content on a Page or in a Group

If you manage a Facebook Page or Group, you have an even wider set of tools to maintain a safe and productive environment for your community.

Setting Up Page and Group Moderation

Moderation Assist is an automated tool that can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. You can set up rules to automatically handle certain situations. For example, you can tell Facebook to automatically decline new posts or hide comments that:

• Contain certain keywords (like profanity, spam links, or phrases related to common scams).
• Are from profiles with no profile picture or that were created very recently.
• Contain links to specific websites.

You can find "Moderation Assist" in your Page or Group settings. Setting up a few basic rules can dramatically reduce the amount of manual moderation work you need to do.

Enabling Post Approval in Groups

One of the best ways to control the quality of content in a Facebook Group is to enable post approval. When this feature is turned on, any post submitted by a member must be approved by an admin or moderator before it goes live. This prevents spam, off-topic conversations, and repetitive questions, ensuring the group remains a valuable resource for its members.

Look for "Post Approval" in your Group settings to turn this on or off.

Assigning Admin and Moderator Roles

You don't have to manage a community alone. Facebook allows you to assign different roles with varying levels of permissions:

• Admin: Has full control, including the ability to change group settings and manage other admins and moderators.
• Moderator: Can approve or decline posts, delete comments, and remove members, but cannot change group settings.

Delegating responsibilities to a trusted team is key to scaling a healthy and well-controlled online community.

Final Thoughts

Gaining control over your Facebook experience isn't about one magic setting, it's about making intentional choices. By curating your feed, actively managing your privacy, and leveraging moderation tools, you can transform Facebook from a time sink into a platform that genuinely works for you, whether for personal connection or professional growth.

For creators and brands, a solid content plan is the ultimate form of control. Staying organized lets you manage your voice, cadence, and strategy instead of just reacting. When we built Postbase, our goal was to provide that sense of command. Our visual calendar lets you see your entire strategy at a glance, and our reliable "schedule once, post everywhere" functionality means you're in charge of exactly what goes live and when, especially for the video formats that matter today.