Facebook to prioritize posts from friends, family over publishers

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is planning to bring a big change to the social network's news feed. The company said that it will be changing the News Feed to prioritize more posts from friends and family members over local publishers and brands. Facebook will promote posts that ignite meaningful conversations between friends while demoting news articles, videos, business posts that users consume.

In a " target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook post, Zuckerberg said the change was informed by research that shows the "well-being" of users is better served by connecting with friends and family than by "passively reading articles or watching videos". "As we roll this out, you'll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media," Zuckerberg added.

"We will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in news feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to — whether that’s a post from a friend seeking advice, a friend asking for recommendations for a trip, or a news article or video prompting lots of discussions," Adam Moserri, head of News Feed, said in a blog post.

The announcement comes after a shift in Facebook's strategy to focus on the quality of connections and content on its platform after a dismal year of fake news stories and US election meddling.

Facebook says the new feature will be available very soon.