Facebook has become almost useless because of all the ads and unwanted posts in my feed. Is there anything I can do about it?
You cannot completely eliminate ads from the default Facebook experience, but you can drastically clean up your feed by switching to hidden alternative views and adjusting your settings. Meta intentionally pushes algorithmic recommendations and ads on the standard “Home” screen, but a few specific workarounds will return your feed to a manageable, chronological view of just your friends and groups. [1, 2]
- The Best Fix: Use the “Feeds” Tab
The easiest way to escape “Suggested for You” posts and heavy algorithmic clutter is to bypass the main home feed entirely. Facebook includes a secondary tab that filters out algorithmic recommendations. [1, 2]
- On Mobile: Tap the Menu (three lines or hamburger icon), then select Feeds. From there, you can choose sub-tabs like Friends, Groups, or Pages. This shows you posts strictly from those sources in chronological order. [1, 2, 3]
- On Desktop: Click Feeds in the left-hand sidebar menu, then select Friends. [1, 2]
- Pro-Tip: On the mobile app, you can often customize your navigation bar shortcut settings to pin the Feeds icon directly to your bottom or top toolbar for one-tap access. [1]
- Move to a Web Browser with an Ad-Blocker
If you usually access Facebook via the mobile app or a standard desktop browser, you will see a massive amount of advertising. [1]
- On Desktop: Use a browser extension like uBlock Origin or switch to a privacy-focused browser like Brave Browser. These tools are highly effective at stripping out standard sidebar and inline feed ads when viewing Facebook on the web. [1]
- On Mobile: Uninstall the official Facebook app and log in through a mobile browser (like Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) equipped with an ad-blocking extension. Ad-blockers cannot penetrate native apps, but they do work on mobile websites. [1]
- Clear Out Meta’s Ad Profile on You
While this won’t change the number of ads, it stops Facebook from tracking you across other apps to serve creepy, hyper-targeted sponsored content. [1, 2]
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
- Tap See More in Accounts Center at the top.
- Scroll down and tap Ad Preferences.
- Go to Ad Topics and select See Less on subjects you want to avoid.
- Go to Manage Info > Audience-based advertising to opt out of businesses uploading your data to target you. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
- Aggressively Train the Algorithm
If you prefer to stay on the main “Home” tab, you have to manually signal to the system what you dislike. When a random, non-ad group or suggested post pops up, click the three dots (…) in the upper right-hand corner of that post and select Hide Post or Not Interested. Doing this repeatedly teaches the algorithm to stop serving you those specific topics. [1, 2]