Facebook is set to make sweeping changes to how your news feed works, making posts from businesses, brands and media less prominent.
The social media giant said its tweaking what people see to make their time on Facebook more “meaningful.”
On Thursday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said people will likely spend less time on Facebook as a result.
“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community 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 wrote on his Facebook page.
He said that he and his team felt a responsibility to make sure Facebook was good for people’s wellbeing.
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Facebook users will see more posts from friends and family and fewer articles and videos, which Facebook considers “passive.”
The company said it has already started to make the changes, but it will still take months to fully implement. The changes won’t affect ads and will likely hurt businesses that want to reach followers without paying to advertise.
Friday morning, Facebook shares were down four per cent, trading on Nasdaq at US$179.14, down US$8.63.
Past criticism
The changes comes as the company faces criticisms for algorithms that may have prioritized misleading news and misinformation in people’s feeds, influencing the 2016 American presidential election as well as political discourse in many countries.
Last year, Facebook disclosed that Russian agents had used the network to spread inflammatory posts to polarize the American electorate.
— With files from Reuters and the Associated Press
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