Recommended Stories Has Become Overwhelmingly Sports-Focused and Needs Category Controls

[roozjunk]

Hello Firefox Team,

For years, I have wished Firefox would allow users to explicitly choose which genres or categories appear in their recommended stories. That option has never existed, but under the previous layout the feed still felt reasonably balanced. Even without direct controls, the mix of topics did not feel dominated by any single category.

With the current layout, that balance seems to be gone. Sports content is now far more prominent and much more “in your face.” Between dedicated sections for the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, soccer, a general Sports section, and sports stories also appearing in “Popular Today,” it often feels like close to half of the entire feed is sports-related, with the other half covering everything else. That is a dramatic shift in emphasis compared to how the feed used to feel.

Since the new layout became available, I have consistently (ie, everyday) used the thumbs-down and dismiss options on sports articles and sections (to the point that I clear entire sections of the available articles). After several months of doing this, I have seen no visible reduction in volume, frequency, or placement of sports content. The experience has remained essentially unchanged. This makes it difficult to believe that these controls meaningfully influence the recommendations.

At this point, there are really only two ways this can be addressed in a way that feels respectful of user preferences:

Either:

• Firefox provides direct category-level controls, allowing users to explicitly enable or disable topics such as sports, technology, politics, culture, or science.

Or:

• Firefox significantly reduces the overall volume and prominence of sports-related content so that it does not dominate the feed.

Right now, the feed feels less like a personalized recommendation system and more like a heavily sports-centered content channel with some other topics mixed in. That is a major change from how Firefox’s New Tab experience used to feel.

If personalization controls are presented to users, they should lead to visible and reliable changes in what is shown. Otherwise, they create the impression of choice without delivering actual control.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[BryanM]

Hi thanks so much for the feedback. I'm one of the product managers working on New Tab.

To the top right side of each section (e.g. for NFL), do you see a button for Follow? Also if you tap on the 3-dot menu, a button for Block? That would be the best way to have direct control over the topics that you see. 

Hope that helps!

[roozjunk]

@BryanM - Thanks for responding but I don't see any of the options you mentioned. Here is a screenshot of today's feed:

The only options are to downvote (thumbs down button) or to dismiss the tile. Hovering over the section title (eg, NFL) does not present me with any options. Clicking the pencil icon button (not pictured) in the lower right side of the page lets me select wallpaper and also to enable/disable weather, shortcuts, and Recommended Stories. Last option there takes me to the Home section of the Settings page, which does not present any further customization options for Recommended Stories. I am using the latest version of Firefox (147.0).

[DanK1313]

I am in complete agreement with roozjunk!

Give us the option to curate the topics.

Thank you.

[zchopper62]

i am in agreement with all of the users concerning lack of options for "recommended stories". you would think in this day and that technology can track a fly up a persons bung hole, it would be better?

[KineticOverride]

Add me to the list. Same problem, no option to follow/block headings, only individual tiles.

[leobilly69]

I'm really tired of deleting sports stories on my news feed. Not into sports, yet they are half the news stories in my feed. Please let us selected the types of stories in our news feed. 

[jan198]

I must agree, made an account specifically for this, blocking, thumbs downing, filtering the categories basically does nothing and resets itself.  I like the idea of this feature but it needs to be more customizable, hopefully allow adding your own RSS feeds, and respecting filtering.  As things are now though I think I am just gonna turn the feature off and look else where because its been without anyway to control it for years and does not provide me with the content I want.