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Mikhail Polyakov

Facebook will let you tune your feed in words: what Your Algorithm is and how to notice changes in your feed and reach

Level: BeginnerReading time: 5 min

Topics: AI, Small business

A vertical feed of blank cards, some glowing amber and some dimmed, beside several plain sliders with one pushed upward

Short answer: according to The Verge on 13 October 2026, Meta announced that Facebook will get a feature called Your Algorithm. It will let a user add and remove, on their own, the topics they want to see in their feed and in Facebook Reels. Meta promises that recommendations will adjust right after the changes, and says it has begun to use large language models more in ranking content. The article has no independent measurements of how this will change the feed or the reach of pages. Below is what exactly was announced and what checks an ordinary user and the owner of a company page have.

What was announced

There is one source: the article by Stevie Bonifield in The Verge dated 13 October 2026. This is a retelling; I did not read Meta's own page.

  • What the feature is. Your Algorithm in Facebook will let you directly add the topics you want to see and manage them in your feed and in Facebook Reels. Meta says that recommendations "respond right away" as soon as you press "interested" or "not interested" for different topics.
  • Where it came from. Your Algorithm was launched on Instagram earlier this year, and a similar feature, Dear Algo, has been launched on Threads.
  • Where to find it. You need to open Your Algorithm or choose "interested" or "not interested" in the three-dot menu on an individual post. These buttons may also appear under posts. Meta says it may ask follow-up questions about what you liked or disliked. You can also answer "in your own words".
  • What stands behind it. The feature is part of a set of "AI-powered" tools that, according to Meta, it uses to customize the feed. Meta writes that it uses large language models (LLMs) more in its ranking systems. In its words, such models can take into account the interests, context and intent carried in natural language, and give an "algorithm you can actually talk to": you say what you want more or less of, and recommendations respond in real time, adapting within the same session.

What is not stated

The article has no data on exactly when and in which countries the feature will start working on Facebook, how soon it will reach all users, what information about your answers Meta stores and how it uses it, and how the reach of page posts will change. These are important questions, and the source does not answer them. Everything said about them below is my suggestion.

Checks for an ordinary user

These are my suggestions, not data from the article.

  1. Look at what you have told it. The topics you added and the posts you marked "not interested" affect what you are shown.
    • Who does it: the user.
    • How to check: when the feature appears in your account, open Your Algorithm and write on a sheet of paper the list of topics recorded there. After a week, compare it with the list of what you actually saw in your feed.
  2. Avoid sharing more than you need. If you answered a follow-up question in your own words, your answer may contain personal details.
    • How to check: before answering, ask yourself whether you are ready for this phrase to be stored in your profile. If not, limit yourself to the "interested" and "not interested" buttons.
  3. Remember that your feed is not the whole picture. A feed tuned to your topics reflects your choice, not the whole picture.
    • How to check: once a month open news from two sources that are not in your feed and compare with what you see in it.

Checks for the owner of a company page

  1. Record reach before the changes. Without "before" numbers you will not know what changed.
    • Who does it: the person who runs the page.
    • How to check: now write down the reach and the number of reactions for the last ten posts from the page statistics and save them in a table. When the feature starts working, compare new posts with this table. Such a comparison will not prove that the feature was the cause, because reach is affected by much else, but the "before" table is needed to see whether anything changed at all.
  2. Name the topic clearly. According to Meta's description, the user chooses topics, so a clear topic helps a person understand what your post is about.
    • How to check: the first phrase of the post names the topic with the same word a customer would use. Ask two customers what topic the post is about and compare with your intention.
  3. Do not promise customers an increase in reach. The article has no data on this.
    • How to check: the contract with a social media contractor contains no promises of a specific reach from this feature.

What this costs

The calculation uses conditional numbers; substitute your own. Suppose the reach table takes an hour of an employee at 1500 roubles, the monthly comparison takes half an hour, and checking the wording of two posts takes an hour. Over three months that is 1 × 1500 + 3 × 0.5 × 1500 + 1 × 1500 = 5,250 roubles. Compare this with what you spend on advertising the page in a month. If you do not know that figure, look it up before you start measuring.

When this does not concern you

If you do not use Facebook and do not run a page there, the feature does not affect you. If you do not have access to Your Algorithm, according to the article it is unclear when it will appear.

Summary

According to The Verge on 13 October 2026, Meta announced that on Facebook you will be able to add and remove topics in the feed and Reels yourself and tell the algorithm in words what you want, and recommendations will adjust in real time. Timing, countries and the effect on the reach of pages are not stated in the article. A user should write down what they have told it; a page owner should write down reach before the changes.

See also another article in this section: ChatGPT answers with charts and forms.

I work on AI agents and automation. If you want to look at my projects or discuss your task, visit my portfolio.

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