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Facebook changes: news feed to feature less public content

Facebook today announced that it would be making some pretty big changes to its overall aims, and specifically to the way the main news feed works in the app and on the website. What you see when you log into the service is about to change, and hopefully for the better.

Creator Mark Zuckerberg explained the changes in detail in a long post, but the essence is this: Facebook wants to start prioritizing “meaningful interactions” over puff content from brands and businesses. This means the algorithms used to decide what you see when you scroll through the news feed will be changed to show more posts from friends and family, and less promotional material from public pages.

For most users, this sounds like a good move, filtering out much of the content that users tend to complain about most. It means you should start seeing less random promo content, and less “clickbait” articles that try to force user engagement. Pages that encourage natural, friendly interactions will be impacted less by this change, say Facebook, and you can still set your favorite public pages to display alongside your friends and family.

Zuckerberg summarized it thus: “At its best, Facebook has always been about personal connections. By focusing on bringing people closer together — whether it’s with family and friends, or around important moments in the world — we can help make sure that Facebook is time well spent.” You can read his full statement here.

We don’t imagine Facebook will cut down too much on sponsored content, as it makes most of its money from advertising. But this is definitely a step in the right direction and we hope it means the company will be listening more to what its users really want in the future. The changes are to start rolling out immediately, so you should start to notice a different, less annoying tone to your news feed. About time!