Meta rolls out new discovery and personalization controls for Facebook Reels

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is introducing new features that make it easier for users to discover and personalize Facebook Reels recommendations. The company is launching new personalization controls for Reels that let users customize what they want to see more or less of.

Now when you see a Reel, you can tap the three-dot menu at the bottom of the video player and select either “Show More” or “Show Less.” Users will start to see this option at the bottom of Reels as well as videos in the Watch feed. If you select the “Show More” option on a Reel, Facebook will temporarily increase its ranking score and for Reels like it. Selecting the “Show Less” option will temporarily decrease its ranking score. Facebook previously rolled out the Show More and Show Less buttons to regular posts on the social network.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook is also introducing new labels on the Reels video player to explain why you’re seeing a certain reel. For instance, Facebook will now tell you that it’s showing a certain Reel because a friend of yours liked it.

In addition, Facebook is making it easier to discover relevant Reels by adding Reels to the main navigation at the top of Facebook Watch to give users quick access to short-form videos. Additionally, when watching videos on Facebook, users will now be able to scroll between Reels and long-form videos.

Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after Meta added support for longer Facebook Reels of up to 90 seconds, along with some new creative tools, including a new templates feature that lets users create Reels with trending templates.

Meta has previously said that Reels is its fastest-growing format and that it continues to grow quickly. Last week, Zuckerberg said during Meta’s quarterly earnings call that time spent on Instagram has grown more than 24% since the company launched Reels on the platform thanks to AI-powered content recommendations. Meta CFO Susan Li seemed to shy away from an analyst question regarding whether Reels was having a similar impact on Facebook, but did repeatedly note that on Facebook, AI-driven recommendations that don’t come from direct connections are increasing engagement among users.