Facebook is re-tweaking its News Feed again.
This time it wants to bring it back to friends and families instead of viral videos and media posts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a 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," he wrote.
He said the change should make everyone feel better: "The research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long term measures of happiness and health."
With fewer posts from businesses, brands, and media, expect to see more of what your "friends" are sharing and liking.
A key difference between this and the change from 2016 is this is a refocus on meaningful interactions between people – things like friends commenting back and forth about anything, including media – whereas in 2016 we were focused on people seeing more stories from friends.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) January 12, 2018
Zuckerberg didn't mention Facebook's role in the 2016 election or Russian meddling through the platform as motivation to change what shows up on the social network.
A breakdown of the "closer together" initiative (also outlined in a video above) indicates news stories will get de-prioritized, while conversations that Facebook thinks will spark a lot of engagement will get a boost.
In other words, publishers will almost certainly see traffic drop and video views decrease.
Zuckerberg rationalized that the changes will ultimately make for a better Facebook experience, naturally, but might actually cause people to spend less time on the social network.
"I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable," he wrote.
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