Facebook "On This Day" Feature Lets You Block Painful Memories — Here's How to Do it

Facebook's "On This Day" feature, introduced in March, allows users to reflect on memories shared on Facebook from prior years. It now also allows users to block memories that they would rather not reflect on. 

Each day, the app refreshes a queue of the user's Facebook activity (wall posts, statuses, photo uploads and tags) that happened on that specific day in years past. The concept is similar to the Timehop app, which pulls old posts by connecting to users' various social media accounts.

Users have complained about being reminded of painful memories, whether of an ex, a weird phase or a personal loss.

Facebook responded Tuesday by introducing a new feature that allows users to block posts from a specific day or year or of a specific person. The preference settings now allows the user to filter out specific dates and people from their memory feed. 

"Your memories are yours, so you should control which ones you see in On This Day," the settings page now reads. "Use these filters to help make sure that we show you memories from On This Day in a way that's meaningful for you."

"We know that people share a range of meaningful moments on Facebook — from celebrating good times like a birthday to getting support in tough times like the passing of a friend or relative," a Facebook representative told Business Insider. "As a result, everyone has various kinds of memories that can be surfaced — good, bad and everything in between. So for the millions of people who use On This Day, we've added these filters to give them more control over the memories they see."