The new feature for On This Day allows users to filter out a specific person or certain dates
Facebook filters memories, now allowing users to evade seeing year-in-review or older photos which can bring back heartaches and painful reflections on their lives. While it might be nice to see that date you were promoted be reminded to you in your newsfeed, you might not like it so much when you see pictures of a past relationship which ended badly.
The social network updated On This Day to allow users to filter out memories from a certain person, specific dates, date ranges or certain time periods. The new filters launched globally yesterday with a new update.
One just needs to click the Preferences button in the header and he/she will then be able to erase specific people or dates from their Facebook memories, by preventing them from popping up during year reviews or other similar elements that appear in the newsfeed.
On This Day is a Facebook feature which came out earlier this year, in March. As evident from the name, this option allows users to see past achievements and notifications from the respective date one year ago or even further back in time.
It allows you to see status updates, photos and posts you have previously shared or been tagged in by those in your friends list. It applies to one year ago, two years ago or even more, depending on what you shared on the respective date in preceding years.
Facebook said it came up with the idea after receiving emails from users who said they enjoy looking back at old photos and posts on the online platform. Some have suggested to the company to develop a feature which would make it easier to access such memories, to offer a simple alternative to keep scrolling down through old posts or searching through countless photos for a specific one from a certain period of time.
The feature is not without its critics however, as some have noted its similarities with Timehop. And right from the beginning, users have expressed concern that Facebook will also pick up memories some users would rather forget.
Ever since then, there has been continuous demand that the social media company improves the feature in order to filter out bad memories. There are also fears that developers have used a similar algorithm to Timehop, which has made significant blunders in the past, such as randomly generating quotes on 9/11 which downplayed the tragedy from 2001.
Photo Credits: Flickr
