THERE’S a little-known Facebook feature that can help you clear up your profile.
It allows users to mute specific words so that posts containing those words don’t appear on their pages.
A similar tool was first introduced by Twitter in 2017, allowing users to block keywords from their timelines.
It’s a useful way to avoid topics you’re not interested in, be that a TV show you don’t want spoiled or a political scandal you’re sick of hearing about.
The feature proved popular among users and has since made its way to Mark Zuckerberg’s social network.
However, Facebook only allows you to mute comments containing certain words on your profile.
“You can choose up to 1,000 keywords in any language (e.g. words, phrases or emojis) to block from your Facebook profile,” Facebook says.
“When people include a keyword you’ve blocked in a comment, we’ll hide the comment so that it doesn’t appear on your profile.”
The feature does not apply to posts from others that appear on your News Feed, though an expanded mute function may launch further down the line.
To block words from your Facebook profile, tap the downward arrow at the top of Facebook and select Settings & privacy, then click Settings.
In the left menu, click Profile and tagging. Below Profile, select Hide comments containing certain words from your profile.
Add keywords that you want to block or click the emoji button to select an emoji you want to block.
There are plenty of other ways that you can clean up your Facebook timeline.
The platform also lets you mute certain people and pages, so their posts don’t appear in your feed.
It provides a more polite way to strip their content from your view than simply unfriending or unfollowing them.
To do that, tap or click on their profile and then hit the button at the top of the page with a silhouetted figure on it.
Select “Unfollow” to mute their posts indefinitely, or “Take a break” to mute them for a short period.
Of course, you can always go nuclear and block someone if they’re really grinding your gears.
To do that, tap or click on their profile and select the button with three dots on it at the top of the page. Tap “Block”.
You can re-follow or unblock someone by following the steps above.
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