Another New News Feed?

Facebook has announced it is once again fundamentally changing the nature of its underlying News Feed algorithm.

The New York Times is reporting that it would prioritize what peoples’ friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.

As of 10:00 A.M. EST this morning, Facebook stock is down nearly 4%.

The Times reports that over the next few weeks, Facebook users will start seeing fewer viral videos and news articles shared by media companies, and instead will highlight posts that friends have interacted with.

The changes are intended to maximize the amount of content with “meaningful interaction” that people consume on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview. Facebook, he said, had closely studied what kinds of posts had stressed or harmed users. The social network wants to reduce what Mr. Zuckerberg called “passive content” — videos and articles that ask little more of the viewer than to sit back and watch or read — so that users’ time on the site was well spent.
– via www.nytimes.com

The goal of the overhaul, ultimately, is for something less quantifiable that may be difficult to achieve: Facebook wants people to feel positive, rather than negative, after visiting.
– via www.nytimes.com

Wall Street obviously doesn’t take kindly to this move, and so what about Facebook’s 2 billion users. That I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

But here’s a novel concept: Give Facebook users themselves more control over what they see in their feed.

Give me access to Facebook’s new machine learning models and AI algorithms so I can “tune” the engine and get just the right mix of skateboarding bulldogs, fake news, and pictures from the high school reunion I didn’t bother showing up for.

In other words, start treating us like adults and put a stop to the social network nanny state.