Facebook alters algorithm to favor posts from friends over companies


Facebook said Thursday that it plans to change its algorithm to give its two billion users more content from friends and families, favoring it over news and brands. "We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us," Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. "But recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments."
The change marks a major shift from Facebook's long-held focus on user engagement, which has been credited with pushing its revenue to a record $34 billion last year. The change follows complaints that the old strategy spotlighted too much inflammatory and misleading content.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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