Facebook Announces Major Change to News Feeds

Expect to see more from friends, family, Zuckerberg says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 12, 2018 2:41 AM CST
Facebook Announces Major Change to News Feeds
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with a group of entrepreneurs and innovators during a round-table discussion on Nov. 9, 2017, in St. Louis.   (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

What you see when you log on to Facebook will be changing soon—because Mark Zuckerberg wants to make sure "the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent." The Facebook CEO announced major changes to news feeds in a post Thursday, saying they've received feedback that "public content—posts from businesses, brands, and media—is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other." Zuckerberg said that from now on, "you can expect to see more from your friends, family, and groups," and the public content that does appear should be the kind that encourages "meaningful interactions between people." He gave the example of "tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams."

In a blog post, Facebook said it will "predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in [your] feed." Zuckerberg acknowledged that the focus on interaction instead of passive consumption might cause people to spend less time on Facebook, but he said the change "will be good for our community and our business over the long term, too," the Guardian reports. The move follows criticism that Facebook and other social media sites exploit human psychology to make themselves addictive, though analysts say Facebook consumption was already beginning to tail off. "Facebook is responding to a decline in consumption, not just encouraging a decline in consumption," Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser tells USA Today. (More Facebook stories.)

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