Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced a few significant changes coming to the Facebook application very soon. The new changes will affect how you browse and use the application, and it’s taking many cues from the popular TikTok app. Facebook will have a revamped Home and Feeds tab.

The existing Home tab will remain in place, but the social network giant announced that it’d introduce a new tab called Feeds. The Feeds will contain separate views for looking at posts from pages you follow, friends, groups and more. The existing Home tab will remain the default view once you open up the application, but instead of seeing what friends post and your favorite pages, it’ll be filled with recommended posts and other content that makes you scroll more. Facebook is essentially bringing TikTok to its biggest money maker, and it raises a few red flags about user experience.

The new changes are rolling out today, and will become more broadly available over next week. The feature will roll out to both iOS and Android users. The new Feeds tab will let users pin the shortcut to the top/bottom bar, or remove it if they decide it’s not for them. This has been a feature for a while now, and you can remove a tab you don’t need or use, except the Home feed.

Facebook Feed pinning feed and home tab.png

Source: Pocketnow, Meta

Meta describes the new Home tab as a place where you “will discover new content through recommendations in addition to connecting with your friends and family. From Home, you can also create a Reel, see what your connections are sharing on Feed and in Stories, and build community over new and shared interests. Your Home tab is uniquely personalized to you through our machine learning ranking system. This system takes into account thousands of signals to help cut through the clutter and rank content in the order we think you will find most valuable. We’re investing in AI to best serve recommended content in this ranked experience.”

It’s clear that Facebook wants the Home feed to become a TikTok-like feed, focusing solely on grabbing your attention with content that will stay relevant to the subjects and categories you’re interested in. This wouldn’t be a bad idea, but if you’ve used Instagram in the past year, you know how bad it has all become.

Facebook new Home Feed Tab.png

Source: Pocketnow, Meta

Algorithmic feeds aren’t a bad thing; after all, the software can be tailored to your unique self, offering better and more relevant information. We’ve all seen how great TikTok’s algorithm is at recommending content that you like. The primary reason for doing this is to make users spend more time scrolling the Facebook application, and it seems to have worked for Instagram and TikTok, as they’re all now based on short and lengthy videos. They offer better and more engagement and higher views.

Let’s not forget that Meta is not only a social giant, but also an advertising company. The more relevant content is, the more time people will spend using the application, meaning more ads will be served. The more ads there are that users interact with and view, the more money Facebook and Meta will make. It’s fairly simple, and there’s a good reason behind adopting this Facebook-wide.

The bad news is that Facebook’s algorithm isn’t as good as TikTok’s, and personally, the entire Instagram application was ruined a long time ago. You can now look at your friend’s posts in a new tab, but no one posts many images anymore, as it’s tough to find them. Most of the time, I get recommended irrelevant content and ads without ever seeing my friends’ posts. It’s safe to assume that something similar will be brought over to Facebook’s Home tab, and it’ll take extra effort to see the content you’re interested in.

What are your thoughts about the new changes? Will you stop using Facebook, or will this encourage you to use it more? Let us know in the comments below!