Facebook demotes content from media and companies

Mark Zuckerberg has announced far-reaching changes in Facebook's newsfeed. The CEO wants his network to be "good for well-being". This should not have anything to do with politics.

More contributions from friends and family in the newsfeed, but less by companies, celebrities, the media and political groups: So Facebook should be more focused on the original goal to enable personal connections, wrote founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post at Friday night. The change is backed by user requests.

Facebook changes the algorithm it uses to sort and prioritize posts in the news feed, every now and then. So the company is trying to figure out how it can increase the activity and retention time of its users in the network and thus show them more advertising. Some changes are subtle, others are withdrawn, but some have more impact. "This will be one of the more important updates," said product manager John Hegeman.

The contributions of companies and media should be prioritized "if they encourage meaningful interactions". Content likely to be shared by a user and their friends should be placed higher in the newsfeed. This means that contributions from Facebook pages will continue to find their way into the newsfeed - but preferably when the circle of friends discusses it. However, content providers can continue to buy space in the users' message stream via Facebook's advertising platform.

For many companies and media, the changes should be a cut. In recent years, Facebook has tried to become more of a platform for media content. Many media and brands rely on reaching people on Facebook - after all, the network has more than two billion members worldwide.

"It is true that the distribution of this content will decline, and this will have a significant impact on the ecosystem," said Product Manager Hegeman. The number of ad slots in the news feed will not be increased at the same time. This could fuel the competition for existing advertising slots. At the same time, even in the settings, users can ensure that the posts from pages they follow appear at the top of the newsfeed - hence canceling out the change.

"I change the goal for our product teams: instead of focusing on helping the users find relevant content, they should help you have more meaningful social relationships," Zuckerberg said. One of the reasons for the changes was that, according to studies, social media contacts with people of concern could be good for well-being. "On the other hand, reading reviews or watching videos - even entertaining or informative - may not be that good." Facebook feels a responsibility that network services are good for well-being, Zuckerberg wrote.

He expected that with the changes people would spend less time on Facebook, admitted the CEO. "But I also expect that the time spent on Facebook will be more valuable." Thus, the decision will be good for the business in the long term. "We need to refocus the system," Zuckerberg told The New York Times.

Facebook manager Hegeman said that behind the step is by no means an attempt to defuse political controversy over Facebook content. In particular, Facebook has recently been accused of not effectively combating problematic content, such as hate speech, defense of terrorism or targeted false news. This coincided with allegations that Russia had interfered with the US presidential campaign via Google, Twitter and Facebook.

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