Facebook Now Takes Typed Requests. Your Fans Won't Type Your Name.

For ten years the feed guessed. It watched what people stopped on, what they finished, what they sent to a friend, and inferred the rest. On October 13, Meta told Facebook users they no longer have to be guessed at. They can type it.

Nobody is going to open that box and type your artist's name. They will type "more drum and bass edits", "less true crime", "more people restoring old synths". Your next release either lives inside the words fans use about themselves, or it waits for a recommendation that never comes.

What Meta actually shipped

Meta's newsroom post, "Your Algorithm, Your Words", describes three changes rolling out on Facebook:

• Your algorithm. A space, reached from the three-dot menu on any post, where people add and manage the topics they want to see in Feed and Reels.
• Feedback in your own words. After a user taps Interested or Not interested, Facebook may ask follow-up questions, and the user can answer in plain language. Meta says recommendations update in real time.
• LLMs in ranking. Meta says large language models now help its ranking systems take in "the interests, context, and intent behind natural language", adapting within the same session, on top of the thousands of behavioural signals it already reads.

What Meta did not say matters as much. No countries, no languages, no completion date. Nothing on how much a typed request weighs against everything else Facebook knows about a person, how long it lasts, or whether the text reaches ad targeting. And a page owner cannot see what any fan typed. The only evidence you will ever get is reach moving.

Facebook is late to handing fans the keyboard

Instagram launched Your Algorithm for Reels in December 2025 and extended it to Feed and Explore in June, as TechCrunch notes. Threads has Dear Algo: start a public post with "Dear Algo", describe what you want, and the change sticks for three days; other users can repost a request to borrow it. TikTok users have had Manage Topics sliders for some time. On streaming, Spotify's Prompted Playlist turns a typed description into a playlist built from the listener's full history plus real-time information on "trends, charts, culture, and history", and tells the listener in one line why each song landed.

We have covered the DSP side of this shift with Spotify's Taste Profile and YouTube Music's Ask Music. Facebook makes it a social problem too.

The shift underneath is simple. Platforms are moving from inferring taste to being told it. Inferred taste rewarded whatever held attention. Declared taste rewards whatever matches the words people use to describe themselves.

Two things change for a release campaign

Your artist has to be a topic, not just a name. Music Ally put it plainly in its read for artist teams: fans won't ask Facebook for "more of" your artist; they will ask for the things they already care about. Meta has not said what its models read on the content side. But a system built to match plain-language requests needs language to match against. If your posts never say what world they belong to, you leave the match to luck.

"Not interested" now comes with a reason. A skip used to be one weak signal among thousands. Now a user can explain it, and the system can generalise from the explanation. Posting the same 15-second clip 40 times always cost you something. Now it hands users a sentence to file the whole format under.

Campaign architecture for a feed that listens

This is the order MusicPromoToday works in when a platform changes what it listens to: lanes first, then formats, then the people and budget that carry them.

1. Write the topic map before the content calendar

List the interests that sit next to the music: the scene, the aesthetics, the hobbies, the places, the values your listeners actually share. Keep two or three that are true to the artist. A topic the artist doesn't live is a costume, and audiences spot costumes fast.

A worked example (hypothetical): a Lisbon-based electronic producer with a second-hand synth habit and a running crew. Lanes: vintage synth repair, late-night city running, Lisbon after dark. The single sits underneath all three. Each lane is something a fan could type into a box without ever having heard of the artist.

2. Make every post say its lane out loud

Put the lane in the caption, the on-screen text, the first spoken line and the hashtags, in the words a fan would type, not your internal campaign name. Keep the vocabulary consistent for weeks so the association builds. Music Ally points to Mary Malú, who consistently made Instagram content around #manifestation and reached a high-affinity audience already engaging with that topic. Fold these rules into your social media marketing guidelines so they survive a busy release week.

3. Turn each lane into a recurring format

A one-off post doesn't build an association. A series does: the repair diary with the single as the soundtrack, the 5 a.m. run, the city-at-night walk. The song rides inside content people already asked for instead of interrupting it.

4. Brief creators by lane, not just by sound

Most creator briefs still say "use the track". Brief by topic. Pick creators whose content already lives in the lanes your fans type, and hand them a format, not a dance. Their audience has already told the platform it wants that topic, so your song arrives as a match. In influencer and UGC campaigns, pay for fewer, better-fitting creators before you pay for more of them.

5. Use paid to find the winning lane

Meta hasn't said whether typed preferences reach ad delivery, so don't build a plan on it. Use paid to learn. Run the same song through separate creatives per lane, broad targeting, equal budgets, for two to four weeks. Judge on cost per engaged view, saves and follows rather than clicks; the testing logic in 300 Ads, Not 3 applies. Then move organic and creator weight behind whichever world converts. Good music advertising now doubles as audience research.

6. Stop paying the "Not interested" tax

Cap repeats of any single asset. Rotate the hook every few posts even when the song is the same. If one clip has been running across Reels for a month, change it before users start explaining why they're tired of it. The same discipline pays on YouTube, where originality rules for Shorts already punish recycled clips.

7. Time the release to the request window

Threads applies a Dear Algo request for three days. Facebook says it adapts within a session. Declared interest is a moment, not a setting you can count on. Line up release-week content with the moments when your lanes are already being talked about, such as a season, an event or a scene's own calendar, so fans are asking for that world the week you arrive in it.

8. Mirror the lanes on the DSP side

Spotify says Prompted Playlist draws on trends, charts and culture. The words fans type into Facebook are the words they type into a prompt. Music PR that ties the song to a scene, editorial pitches that name the moment, and playlist and video descriptions in the lane's language all push the same signal from different directions. Build your Spotify promotion pitch in the same words as your captions.

Measuring what you can't see

You will never see the requests, so report by lane, not by post. Tag every post with its lane and track reach, completion, shares, saves and follows per lane every week. Read the comments for the words fans use and feed them back into captions. When a format's reach drops, check your repeat count before you blame the platform.

What to do this quarter

1. Write the topic map for every priority artist: two or three adjacent lanes, in fan language.
2. Rewrite caption and on-screen text rules so every post names its lane.
3. Launch one recurring format per lane before the next release, not on release day.
4. Re-brief creators by topic for the next campaign.
5. Split paid creative by lane for four weeks; move budget to the winner.
6. Set a repeat cap for every asset.
7. Align PR angles, DSP pitches and descriptions to the same lane language.

The feed now listens to what fans say they want. The job is to make your music part of what they're already asking for. MusicPromoToday builds release campaigns where PR, creators, paid and DSP work one story across 40+ markets. If your next release needs that, start with Plan My Release. The lanes are the brief; at MusicPromoToday, they come before the content calendar.

FAQ

Is Your Algorithm live on every Facebook account?

Meta says it is rolling out and has not named countries, languages or a completion date. Plan for it as a direction of travel, not a switch that flipped.

Do typed preferences affect Facebook and Instagram ads?

Meta has not said. Its announcement covers Feed and Reels recommendations only. Treat paid as your testing tool, not as a way to reach typed interests.

What should an independent artist do first?

Write down two or three interests your listeners share that are true to you, and start one recurring post format for each. Name the topic in every caption and on-screen line.