Facebook to introduce ‘clear history’ tool soon

Facebook announced plans for a “Clear History” product last year, but technical challenges have delayed its implementation.

According to CNBC, the feature will allow users to see information about apps and web sites they’ve interacted with and delete this information from their Facebook accounts. Wehner shared the feature will make it harder for Facebook to use data collected by third parties to target ads to users.

“Broadly, [clear history is] going to give us some headwinds in terms of being able to target as effectively as before,” Wehner said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2019 in San Francisco.

Facebook first announced this feature at its F8 conference in May 2018. At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the feature would “be a simple control to clear your browsing history on Facebook — what you’ve clicked on, websites you’ve visited, and so on.”

“Once we roll out this update, you’ll be able to see information about the apps and websites you’ve interacted with, and you’ll be able to clear this information from your account,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post at the time. “You’ll even be able to turn off having this information stored with your account.”