You Can Now Mute People On Facebook Without Having To Unfollow Or Unfriend Them

Facebook rolled out its latest feature today that is designed to give its users the ability to choose which people they’d like to see on their timeline without unfollowing or unfriending them. It’s a Snooze feature that lets you mute a friend, page, or a group for about a month, giving you the chance to purge your News Feed of their toxic updates.

This new feature can filter the content that you don’t want to see on your news feed without unfriending or unfollowing someone. For example, if you’ve had enough of someone’s posts about her daily life, you can temporarily snooze that person so you won’t see their posts on Facebook. People going through a rough breakup can use this feature, too.

Facebook has been previously criticized by a number of its former employees and investors publicly. Former executive Chamath Palihapitiya said that they might have created tools that are breaking the very fabric that makes up society.

You can find the Snooze option, together with the other controls for News Feed, such as Unfollow, Report, Hide and See First, which offers users more options to customize their News Feed. Although considered as a minor update, the snooze feature comes at a time when a lot of people are looking at how social media affects society in general. There are people who may get overly comfortable with what they want to see, which may lead to misunderstandings and the inability to understand other people’s point of view. This may result in a filter bubble or a state of isolation when a website, such as Facebook, selectively guesses what information a user would like to see.

Having the option to mute a person can actually lead to further distancing users from their friends who have different points of view. Choosing only the ideas that resemble your point of view can lead to indifference. But, at least the Snooze button can help you cleanse your News Feed of any unnecessary drama without unfriending people.

Facebook will notify you once the Snooze button is about to end. So, if you’re finding yourself hitting the snooze button time and time again, consider unfriending them instead.