Facebook changes let you choose your best friends, and hide those who have become annoying

CHANGES on the world’s largest social network will let users decide more of what they want to see, as Facebook reveals it can’t really work out who our besties are.

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FACEBOOK has admitted it cannot guess who your best friends are.

The multibillion-dollar social network made the admission this morning as it announced changes that will hand back some control to users.

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The changes will allow Facebook members to choose which of their friends and interests they want to see prioritised in their News Feed, and to “unfollow” or hide friends who they no longer find interesting.

Who’s your favourite? ... Facebook has announced changes allowing users to prioritise updates from their best friends.

Previously, Facebook has decided which posts will appear in a user’s scrolling home page using a computer algorithm to display the most popular updates.

But Facebook’s software decisions about what users most want to see have not always been popular themselves, with friends’ posts sometimes appearing days after they were first made or not at all.

Many Facebook users also protested the removal of a default chronological News Feed, with the network only delivering it as an option that can be selected from a side menu.

Facebook News Feed product management director Adam Mosseri told Time magazine its “most recent” timeline feature was better as an option only - rather than a default setting - because “if everyone was on chronological all the time, people would miss a lot more important content”.

Facebook decides ... Social network Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, has come under fire for its lack of a default chronological news feed.

Facebook’s new options, when launched, will be accessible in its side menu by selecting News Feed Preferences.

In that menu, users will be able to select friends and pages to prioritise, make difficult decisions about who to unfollow (which will hide updates) and see whose posts they viewed most over the last week.

Facebook will also suggest pages users may like to follow based on their existing interests.

The new updates will be made available to Australian users today on Apple iOS devices, however those using Google Android-based smartphones and tablets, and viewing Facebook on the web, will have to wait longer.

A spokesman said the updates would arrive for those users “over the coming weeks”.