In December, Facebook announced yet another tweak[1] to the News Feed. This time, the social network would begin prioritizing “meaningful” conversations between friends and family over stories from publishers, brands, and businesses. If this all sounds familiar to you, that’s because Facebook has made a number of similar changes[2] in the past.
I was skeptical about the latest shift. Over the last decade, my News Feed has increasingly begun to clog with life updates from hundreds of people I haven’t seen in years. Meanwhile, my closest friends—like many people’s[3]—share less on the platform than ever. After Facebook’s announcement, I deleted the app from my phone, less in protest than in resignation to it having become more of a phone book than a social network.
Going nuclear seemed hasty though, especially given the thousands of hours I’d invested in Facebook over the years. It also occurred to me that the social network—more so than platforms like Instagram and Twitter—gives its users significant control over what they see in the News Feed, including several levers I’d never bothered to pull. So rather than quit outright, I decided to conduct an experiment.
Over the course of about 10 days, I used Facebook’s built-in features—as well as several third-party tools—to see if I could make the platform fun and “meaningful” again. Some of it worked, but a lot of it didn’t. Mostly it was a reminder that you have more power over your News Feed than Facebook often lets on—for better or worse.
Phase One: See First
My first change was to prioritize pages and profiles to “see first” in my feed. When you click News Feed on the left-hand side of the Facebook desktop...