“Be selective in your battles. Sometimes peace is better than being right.” ~ FB.Com/Life Learned Feelings

1. FACEBOOK JUST UNFRIENDED US
Your News Feed will soon show more posts from friends and family and fewer from news outlets like Civil Beat
By Anthony Quintano Honolulu Civil Beat
January 12, 2018, accessed January 13, 2018
http://www.civilbeat.org/2018/01/facebook-just-unfriended-us/
Facebook announced Thursday that it’s changing the formula for what users
see on their News Feeds because the social media giant wants people to come
away with “… more meaningful interactions,” according to a post by CEO and
founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg
January 11 at 2:28pm · Menlo Park, CA
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571
One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on
Facebook is time well spent.
We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together
with the people that matter to us. That's why we've always put friends and
family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our
relationships improves our well-being and happiness.
But 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.
It's easy to understand how we got here. Video and other public content have
exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years. Since there's more public
content than posts from your 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.
We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but
also good for people's well-being. So we've studied this trend carefully by
looking at the academic research and doing our own research with leading
experts at universities.

2. 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. On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos --
even if they're entertaining or informative -- may not be as good.
Based on this, we're making a major change to how we build Facebook. I'm
changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you fnd
relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.
We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months
for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The frst changes
you'll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your
friends, family and groups.
As we roll this out, you'll see less public content like posts from businesses,
brands,
and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same
standard -- it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.
For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and
sports teams. We've seen people interact way more around live videos than
regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too
often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a
passive experience.
Now, I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people
spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also
expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do
the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business
over the long term too.
At its best, Facebook has always been about personal connections. By focusing
on bringing people closer together -- whether it's with family and friends, or
around important moments in the world -- we can help make sure that
Facebook is time well spent.

3. FACEBOOK, INC.
FORM 10-K ANNUAL REPORT
For the fscal year ended December 31, 2016
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/fles/doc_fnancials/annual_reports/FB_AR_2016_FINAL.pdf
Our mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more
open and connected.
Our top priority is to build useful and engaging products that enable people to
connect and share through mobile devices, personal computers, and other
surfaces. We also help people discover and learn about what is going on in the
world around them, enable people to share their opinions, ideas, photos and
videos, and other activities with audiences ranging from their closest friends
to the public at large, and stay connected everywhere by accessing our
products, including:
• Facebook. Facebook enables people to connect, share, discover, and
communicate with each other on mobile devices and personal computers.
There are a number of diferent ways to engage with people on Facebook, the
most important of which is News Feed which displays an algorithmically-
ranked series of stories and advertisements individualized for each person.
[Emphasis Supplied]
_______________________
CHANGES APPLY TO SOME, BUT NOT ALL
CHERRY PICKING1
The changes are set to take place sometime next week but many
news organizations have already seen some of the efects. Facebook
says that this is not a complete cutof for some news pages, which
has been tested in other countries. Source: Civil Beat, cited above.
1 Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to
individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of
related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most
common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or
unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate. [Citations Omitted]
Source: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking

4. Oct 23, 2017
CLARIFYING RECENT TESTS
By Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed
There have been a number of reports about a test we’re running in Sri Lanka,
Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia. Some have interpreted
this test as a future product we plan to deliver globally. We currently have no
plans to roll this test out further.
We always listen to our community about ways we might improve News Feed.
People tell us they want an easier way to see posts from friends and family. We
are testing having one dedicated space for people to keep up with their friends
and family, and another separate space, called Explore, with posts from pages.
The goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places
for personal and public content. We will hear what people say about the
experience to understand if it’s an idea worth pursuing any further. There is no
current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries or to charge pages on
Facebook to pay for all their distribution in News Feed or Explore.
Unfortunately, some have mistakenly made that interpretation — but that was
not our intention.
It’s also important to know this test in these six countries is diferent than the
version of Explore that has rolled out to most people. Outside of the above
countries, Explore is a complementary feed of popular articles, videos, and
photos automatically customized for each person based on content that might
be interesting to them. We’ve heard from people that they want an easy way to
discover relevant content from pages they haven’t connected with yet. While
Explore includes content from relevant pages, posts from pages that people like
or follow will continue to appear in News Feed.
As with all tests we run, we may learn new things that lead to additional tests
in the coming months so we can better understand what works best for people
and publishers.