How to get Facebook news feed in chronological order on Android

• Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says the company's algorithms amplify harmful content.
• She believes that switching to a chronological feed would be one way to make Facebook healthier.
• Here's how you can make your Facebook feed chronological.

Debates around how Facebook and its parent company Meta could make its platform safer for users heated up in 2021 after whistleblower Frances Haugen started leaking company documents to the press last September. She followed that up with appearances before lawmakers in the US and beyond.

One of the main points Haugen has made during her various testimonies is related to "engagement-based ranking."

Engagement-based ranking is when social media companies like Meta create algorithms that determine where pieces of content are placed on your feed to try and maximise engagement. 

Although the documents Haugen leaked covered a wide range of issues including misinformation, hate speech, and teen mental health, she believes getting rid of engagement-based ranking and replacing it with chronological news feeds is one way of tackling the diverse set of problems Facebook and its affiliated platforms face.

You can already toggle your Facebook News Feed so it displays posts in chronological order, rather than letting its algorithms decide what you see first.

Here's how to do it on the Facebook app on your phone:

In the top right-hand corner of the app click on the "menu" icon — which looks like three horizontal lines.

Once on the menu screen, scroll to the bottom and hit the "see more" button.

You'll see a box labelled "recent and favorites" — click it.

Here's how to do it on your browser:

When you load up Facebook on your browser, go to the sidebar on the left-hand side of the page. Scroll down until you see "most recent" and click it — this will set your feed to chronological order.

Facebook doesn't let you make the chronological feed your default setting so you have to toggle it on every time you visit the site. 

Meta-owned Instagram scrapped its chronological feed in 2016, but Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced that the platform plans to re-introduce an option for a chronological feed in the first half of this year.

It's possible that, in future, Meta will have to make the option to switch to chronological feeds easier and more prominent, as House and Senate lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at forcing social media companies to do exactly that.

Experts on misinformation and hate speech don't necessarily think chronological feeds will solve the problems on Facebook. Kate Starbird, professor at the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering, told Protocol last October that bad actors might find a chronological feed easier to spam.

"In a purely chronological [feed], to get your stuff to the top, you just put out more and more crap," Starbird told Protocol.

Oh, Facebook. Why are you so irresistible, yet so irritating at the same time? The social media platform is amazing for staying in touch with family and friends. However, the developers like to throw us curve balls from time to time that make using the app or desktop site a pain in the neck. New avatars pop up that we can’t get rid of easily. Posts pushing false information show up in our timelines.

Many of us just want to get our Facebook timelines to show our posts in chronological order. It would seem like the most logical way to follow what’s happening in real time, but Facebook developers have other ideas.

Facebook’s default timeline display is based on the company’s algorithm that shows users what it believes is relevant and important. Even back in 2015, Facebook representatives explained the reasons behind not using chronological order on its timeline.

“In general, chronological, I think, helps people who are worried about missing things or seeing more recent things, but if everyone was on chronological all the time, people would miss a lot more important content,” Adam Mosseri told Time when he was working for Facebook as its News Feed Product management director. (He’s now the head of Instagram.) “Our whole mission is to show people content that we think that they find meaningful. Recency is one important input into what people find meaningful, but we have found over and over again that it’s not the only one.”

But what about those of us who are tired of messing with our timeline to get posts in chronological order? There is a solution! Facebook hasn’t made it easy (or permanent), but there is a way.

How to Make Your Facebook Timeline Chronological on Your Phone

First, here’s the trick for getting a chronological feed on Facebook’s mobile app.

When you open the Facebook app on your smartphone, you should see a top menu on your news feed with Home, Favorites and Recent. If you don’t see this Feed Filter Bar, simply scroll up on your news feed to find it.

Select Recent. That should switch your Facebook feed to listing posts in chronological order.

However, this setting cannot be saved. When you close Facebook on your smartphone, it will default back to its usual algorithm.

An alternate method is to go into your profile settings and enter the Recent & Favorites menu.

Select Recent as your Facebook feed view. Like the other method, this is also not a permanent setting. You will need to repeat the steps if you close down the app.

On your desktop, you’re just a few clicks away from setting your feed chronologically.

Open Facebook on your desktop, then click the Home icon at the top.

In the menu on the left, click “See More,” then scroll (for a while) down and click “Most Recent.”

Like the mobile app trick, this isn’t a permanent fix. If you close your browser tab, Facebook will return you to the popular posts it thinks you should see the next time you open it. But once you get the hang of this, you can quickly set Facebook to how you would like to see it — not how the algorithm wants you to see your news feed.

How do I change Facebook News Feed to most recent on Android?

How do I turn on chronological feed?