Refresh of the News Feed algorithm will de-prioritize content shared by media and businesses in favor of that produced by friends and family, Zuckerberg says 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg announced a major overhaul of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm that would prioritize “meaningful social interactions” over “relevant content” on Thursday, one week after he pledged to spend 2018 “making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent”. 
 
 The social media platform will de-prioritize videos, photos, and posts shared by businesses and media outlets, which Zuckerberg dubbed “public content”, in favor of content produced by a user’s friends and family. 
 
 “The balance of what’s in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do – help us connect with each other,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the change. “We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being.” 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg sets toughest new year's goal yet: fixing Facebook Read more 
 
 The changes seemed designed to quiet some of the maelstrom of criticism Facebook has received in the past year, as critics have taken the company to task for cloistering users in filter bubbles, facilitating the proliferation of misinformation, allowing foreign interference in national elections, and exploiting human psychology for profit. 
 
 Facebook was slow to acknowledge the legitimacy of those concerns, with Zuckerberg notoriously dismissing the idea that propaganda and fake news impacted the US presidential election as “pretty crazy” in late 2016. But the company changed its tune in fall 2017, after it acknowledged that a Russian influence operation had purchased $100,000 worth of ads promoting politically divisive content in the lead up to the election. 
 
 After a handful of former Facebook insiders began speaking out about social media’s addictive nature and deleterious impact on society, the company acknowledged for the first time in December that passive consumption of social media can be harmful to users’ mental health. 
 
 Facebook maintains that active and “meaningful” interaction can be good for people, so users will soon be more likely to see a post from a friend than a viral video. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Zuckerberg pledged to spend his year ‘making sure time spent on Facebook is time well spent’. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters 
 
 In his post, Zuckerberg noted “video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years”, to the extent that some feel it is “crowding out” updates from friends and family. 
 
 What Zuckerberg did not mention is Facebook’s direct involvement in that explosion. Despite frequently disclaiming that it is not a publisher or media company, Facebook has paid media outlets to produce videos for the site. About two-thirds of Americans rely on social media for news, according to a survey by Pew Research Center. 
 
 The changes to News Feed will likely have a significant impact on the news media. As Facebook grew to dominate users’ attention time, many publishers adjusted their editorial strategies around the type of content the News Feed algorithm was promoting. 
 
 Facebook, Google and Twitter to testify in Congress over extremist content Read more 
 
 Facebook sparked outcry from publishers in six countries in October when it removed all public content from the News Feed to a separate “Explore Tab”. In a blog post accompanying Zuckerberg’s announcement, Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of News Feed, said that the current changes would not be as extreme as those “tests”, and some public content will still appear in users’ feeds. 
 
 But Mosseri conceded: “As we make these updates, pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from page to page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it.” 
 
 Zuckerberg wrote that the changes will likely result in people spending less time on Facebook – a change that may have negative impacts on the company’s bottom line. 
 
 “If we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too,” he wrote. 
 
 In an interview with the New York Times, the father of two put a finer point on his concerns about doing the right thing, saying: “It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world.” ||||| CLOSE Two billion users will see major changes as part of what the social network has planned to address growing controversy over the role it plays in people's lives and in society. Time 
 
 Facebook News Feed on mobile (Photo: Facebook) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is radically altering the formula that determines what bubbles to the top of people's news feed, part of sweeping changes the giant social network has planned to address growing controversy over the role it plays in people's lives and in society. 
 
 Soon, Facebook says you will see more status updates from friends and family that spark meaningful social exchanges — parents discussing what bedtime stories to read to children, a friend seeking advice on places to travel or a newsy article or video on a topic you care about. What Facebook wants you to spend less time doing: passively scrolling through updates on your timeline, reading articles and watching videos, but not interacting with others. 
 
 "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," Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. "I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions." 
 
 Zuckerberg has been laying the groundwork for making that fundamental shift in all of Facebook's products. He recently told investors he wants Facebook to encourage "meaningful social interactions" and downplayed the importance of how much time people spend there. 
 
 That's because the move could come at a high price. Zuckerberg anticipates Facebook's 2 billion-plus users will spend less time on and be less engaged with the social network — including watching videos, a lucrative new revenue stream. But, he says, "if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term, too." 
 
 CLOSE According to researchers, if you use social media heavily, it can negatively effect your mood. Buzz60 
 
 Pressure has been building on Facebook and its CEO as the toxic content flowing through Facebook — violent live videos, fabricated news articles and divisive messages from Russian operatives to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign — has been blamed for ripping holes in the social fabric. 
 
 Another wave of criticism pummeling Facebook: that the company's products exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology to hook people on social media, hijacking their time and attention and undermining their well-being. 
 
 Facebook has begun to acknowledge that some social media use can be harmful to mental health, a backflip for the Silicon Valley company which, until recently, rejected a growing body of research showing that Facebook use can spur negative feelings. Last month, Facebook released its own research demonstrating that when people connect with each other on social media, it has a positive effect. On the other hand, passively scrolling through social media does not. 
 
 The concession did not happen in a vacuum. In November, Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, took aim at Facebook in an interview with Axios, saying he and other executives created a "social-validation feedback loop" to make Facebook psychologically addictive. 
 
 Early Facebook executive and former vice president of growth, Chamath Palihapitiya, also accused Facebook of creating "short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops" that are "destroying how society works." He later softened his remarks. 
 
 But that negativity may already be showing up in Facebook's numbers. 
 
 Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser says his analysis of recent Nielsen data shows consumption of Facebook declined in August and September. It's unclear if that's because Facebook already accounted for such a big chunk of our digital lives or because people are growing increasingly frustrated with it. 
 
 "Facebook is responding to a decline in consumption, not just encouraging a decline in consumption," Wieser says. 
 
 Satisfaction with Facebook has slipped among users, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney. His research shows 11% of Facebook users are extremely satisfied with the service, down from 15% a year ago. 
 
 "We see Facebook’s News Feed change as Facebook reacting to greater public scrutiny of its value proposition," Mahaney wrote in a research note. 
 
 One of those users not feeling Facebook these days is Tracy Garza, a neurodiversity consultant in the Bay Area. She says she's using Facebook a lot less than before because she's turned off by its unrelenting push to make money off, well, everything. 
 
 "They don't realize there comes a time when many or us are going to say 'I'm just tired of being the product here,'" Garza said. 
 
 The company's mounting difficulties prompted Zuckerberg to declare last week that his personal challenge for the year — which in the past has run the gamut from learning Mandarin to slaughtering his own meat — would be to fix what ails Facebook. A big part of that effort would be "making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent," he said. 
 
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 Facebook constantly tweaks its computer algorithms to maintain interest in its news feed, the company’s main attention-getter. It uses a process called ranking to determine which posts show up in people's news feed and in what order based on what Facebook thinks they will be most interested in. In recent years, the company made a series of changes to its news-feed algorithm to surface more content posted by friends and family. 
 
 Those changes undercut publishers, businesses and celebrities who come to the giant social network to gain new audiences and revenue streams but have seen their ability to reach Facebook users continue to decrease. Facebook says these pages may see another decline in traffic being referred and videos being watched, though the impact will vary depending on the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. 
 
 "It's gotten to the point where there is so much content in news feed — media content, things that aren't necessarily from your friends or from people you care about — that you end up being less engaged in it," said Debra Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer. "I see that in myself. I see my news feed and say, 'Where's all my friends' stuff?'" 
 
 Facebook News Feed on desktop and mobile. (Photo: Facebook) 
 
 Zuckerberg says people can expect to see less public content such as posts from businesses, brands and publishers. And the public content they do see more will be held to the same standard. "It should encourage meaningful interactions between people," he said. 
 
 Fewer videos watched could crimp Facebook's aggressive push to become a major hub of video content. It is spending hundreds of millions on original programming and mounting a major live video push to fulfill Zuckerberg's mission of turning Facebook into a "video-first" platform. The lure: the billions of dollars in advertising that are expected to migrate to digital video from television that could help make up for an expected slowdown in Facebook's core business. 
 
 John Hegeman, vice president of product management for Facebook's news feed, shrugged off the business implications of people watching fewer videos. Facebook displayed its willingness to sacrifice profit to tackle big problems when it announced late last year a plan to hire thousands of content moderators to deal with Russian interference and misinformation on the platform. 
 
 "We continue to think video is a great format to share what's going on in your life with friends," Hegeman said. "At the same time, we also want to make sure the video we watch on Facebook doesn't interfere with the primary thing that Facebook is about." 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2mmVVaz ||||| Ryan Tate — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken some fierce criticism for compromising his users' privacy. Today he issued a clever response, taking the primordial tendency of humans to form groups and rolling it into his product as a feature. 
 
 At a press conference and in a blog post titled "Giving You More Control," Zuckerberg rolled out two big new features, both clearly designed to assuage criticism from Facebook users that the site doesn't offer users enough control over the privacy, makes privacy settings too hard to navigate and even cynically manipulates settings to advance its own interests. 
 
 One, a simple exporter, allows users to download "everything you've ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends," although it doesn't sound like the downloader will export your actual list of Facebook friends or their public contact information, a feature that would be crucial in allowing people to move to other social networks. 
 
 The other, bigger new feature is a new version of Facebook's groups functionality, one that lets people segregate their conversations more easily, keeping, say, relatives from seeing pictures meant for a wild group of friends, or church pals from seeing a political rant intended for like minded campaign volunteers. Where Facebook's old groups system was cumbersome to set up and bereft of functionality, the new one is designed to be used in an ad hoc and flexible manner. Groups can be "open," with membership and posts made public; "closed," with membership public but communications kept private; or "secret," with both membership and content walled off. Groups feature live group chat, a shared wal and an optional email list. Friends can easily be added with one mouse click (there seems to be no process of having to invite members or accept invitations). 
 
 Wrote Zuckerberg: 
 
 We approached this problem as primarily a social one. Rather than asking all of you to classify how you know all of your friends, or programming machines to guess which sets of people are likely cohorts, we're offering something that's as simple as inviting your best friends over for dinner. 
 
 Facebook's new groups have already been compared to real-world in-groups and clubs. "This is the high school cafeteria clique model of human interaction," wrote former Google social networking staffer Kevin Marks. CNET's Caroline McCarthy predicted they'd become a new hub for the social maneuvering and humiliations of junior high school. 
 
 That's exactly right, but not a knock. For all the privacy they've taken from users — and they've taken plenty — it's nice to see that Zuckerberg and his team have come up with at least one good way of helping users take some of it back. Facebook's new groups feature is fairly basic. In fact, at its essential core it's downright primitive, drawing on one of the most basic of human instincts. And that's exactly why it will be such an effective tool. 
 
 For more from the announcement, see Gizmodo's detailed coverage. 
 
 [Photo of Zuckerberg with two Facebook employees at today's announcement. Getty Images.] ||||| Today at Facebook HQ, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new look for news feed that uses a “mobile-inspired” consistent design across devices, lets you drill into specific content-type feeds, and offers larger images. Photo albums have gotten a facelift as well to be more immersive, and links shared will have longer blurb to preview what you’re about to click to. 
 
 The changes will start to roll out today and you’ll see them over the next few weeks. The roll out will be slow and careful so Facebook can get feedback about what’s working and what’s not. Here’s our quick hands-on video of what the redesign looks and feels like. 
 
 Some other news feed design changes: check-ins to places now have a larger map to show people exactly where you are; Pinterest posts to Facebook are now more vivid, so what you see on Facebook “better reflects what you see on Pinterest”; videos appear larger; and if multiple friends share the same post, you’ll see their faces to the left of the post. 
 
 Facebook is also trying to better surface trending content. So you’ll see “Recent Articles About Taylor Swift” that come from different news sources if you Like her. 
 
 Chris Struhar of Facebook’s news feed team showed off the special topic feeds users will now be able to choose from in the top of the right sidebar. The feeds are sorted by how often you check it so it’s easy to get to your most visited feeds. They’re all available on both the web and mobile. They include: 
 
 All Friends: Shows only posts from your friends in reverse chronological order. 
 
 Music: Shows what friends are listening to, new albums being released, and recommendations of artists you might like. 
 
 Photos: Just photos, including those uploaded straight to Facebook, but also photos shared from Instagram or other photo apps. 
 
 Following: A revamp of the Pages feed that shows every post by Pages you Like. 
 
 Games 
 
 Close Friends 
 
 Any of your Interest Lists or Friend Lists 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg explained: 
 
 At a personal level we built a service that lets you see and feel the people and friends you care about. What we’re trying to do is give everyone in the world the best personalized newspaper. It should have quality public content from friends. It should have a front page and it should let you drill down into any topic you want. It should be visual, rich and engaging. It should be displayed with more than just text. From the beginning our goal with news feed was different than what any service was trying to provide. You should be able to share any type of content you want…and with any audience you want. The types you tell with photos are totally different. Now that we all have cameras in our pockets, news feed has become primarily about visual content. Almost 50 percent of content in the news feed is visual. Now the average news feed Pages posts are almost 30 percent of the content. How we’re sharing is changing. We all want to share with friends, but want updates from publications we care about, and artists, and world leaders. 
 
 The updates closely match with what I wrote a few days ago about what Facebook would launch.When you receive the web rollout of the redesigned news feed, you’ll see a button to switch to it at the top. That rollout starts today but will slowly proliferate over the coming weeks and months. New versions of Facebook’s mobile apps will become available in the next few weeks. 
 
 Overall, the updates should make sure there’s always something new to look at on Facebook. Rather than scrolling to the bottom of your main feed and then leaving the site, you might go check out the Photos or Music feeds. Facebook saw cleaner, mobile-first designs like Instagram and Twitter gaining traction, and is now attempting to strip down its UI while making sure people spend even more time browsing the feeds, seeing ads, and feeling connected to their friends. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Facebook’s Riskiest Bet Yet. Can It Uproot A Billion People’s Behavior? 
 
 Hands-On With The New Facebook And Its Boredom-Killing Feeds [TCTV] 
 
 For Businesses, Facebook’s Redesign Means Bigger Ads, A Pages Feed, But A Friends-Only Section Too 
 
 Facebook’s Focus On Mobile-Inspired Consistency Is All About Getting Facebook “Out Of The Way”
– 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.