Facebook now lets you filter bad memories out of your nostalgia

To us, Facebook has two main purposes. One, it’s a way to see what friends, family, and now, celebrities, are up to in real time. Who’s apple picking? Who just went to a great concert? Who got engaged?

And second, it’s a digital yearbook and extreme nostalgia machine that lets us look back to the good old times we had years ago.

But now, the social media’s “On This Day” feature, which launched in March of last year, has a way to make sure your memories from yesteryear are rosy ones, scrubbed clean of any distressing ones.

As The Verge reports, Facebook just launched a way to filter out upsetting or painful memories like a photo with an ex or a post about a death in the family.

“We know that people share a range of meaningful moments on Facebook,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

“As a result, everyone has various kinds of memories that can be surfaced — good, bad, and everything in between.”

The filters let you sort out certain dates and people and are meant to give you more control over the memories in your timeline.

So if you don’t want to see your ex (and you’re still friends with them on Facebook), you can block them so you won’t be reminded of a past Thanksgiving dinner with their family next month.

The new feature comes after Facebook was criticized for not giving users enough control over what popped into their newsfeeds.

If you want to change the setting and block a sensitive date or person, just go to the “On This Day” page and click “Preferences” in the upper right-hand corner. Add the date or person you don’t want to see, and hit save.

It’s good that Facebook heard people’s complaints and are giving them really tangible ways not to be saddened or shocked when they take a digital walk down memory lane.

(Image via Facebook)

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