The sight of Facebook is enough to fill most of us with dread with the constant barrage of useless information and mostly fake news we get alongside the often-annoying ads and feeling of discomfort knowing that your online privacy is being totally disregarded. At east now though we can get all of that with a slightly pretty UI, as Facebook has announced that it has redesigned desktop site which has now been launched and includes an exciting new dark mode.
While Facebook has been trialling its new UI design for the past month through giving people the option to opt-in or not, the dark mode is something that was not immediately communicated and represents arguably the biggest change to Facebook’s UI since its inception. Yes, it still works and feels the same, but in ditching its usual white and blue colour palette, it looks entirely different.
If you would like to try Facebook’s new dark mode out, here’s how:
- Click on the down arrow at the end of the upper menu bar to pull up old Facebook’s settings menu.
- Click “Switch to new Facebook.”
- Click the same down arrow and toggle dark mode from off to on.
Though you could argue that the same thing with a different coat of paint is not likely to change anything, perhaps a new coat of paint is exactly what Facebook needs. Thankfully this is not the only thing changing at Facebook as the company also announced the new people who will form its oversight committee, which is set to control the policy-making and decisions that will guide the content of the website in future. The full list of participants has been provided by Politico and features a wide number of prominent academics, journalists, scientists and former politicians across different countries and cultures with the intent of serving as neutral decision-makers on the content policies on the site.
Those people may be reputable but whether they will have the power to change anything on the site remain to be seen. I appreciate Facebook’s attempts to clean up its image and provide more relevant content to make it more informative to society and though while I think it may offer some benefits at a corporate level, its unlikely to change the way humans will behave and interact with the site.
Last Updated: May 12, 2020
