Says news feed has "far too much information," will downgrade content from "pages."
Longtime Facebook users know better than to get comfy with how the site looks or works, as the service's decade of longevity has come in part due to constant refreshes—for better and for worse. The same might not be said for major news outlets who've grown to rely on Facebook as a source of traffic, and they may very well not care for the social network's latest site-tweak announcement.

In a Wednesday announcement, Facebook VP of Product Management Adam Mosseri declared that the site's algorithm would now shift towards "friends and family" content—a pledge that seems to appear every time Facebook talks about its algorithms. In today's case, however, Mosseri tucked the announcement's real meaning into a linked clarification: that all "pages" content would be pushed down in the general rankings. Meaning, if content is posted by a news outlet, a restaurant, or another establishment with its own "page" presence on Facebook, those posts will officially see "less of an impact."

Neither announcement touched upon "instant article" publication, a May 2015 initiative that saw multiple major news outlets—which all range from middle- to left-leaning—ally with Facebook to have stories directly publish on the social network as opposed to being hotlinked from their original sources. However, the announcement hinted at these kinds of stories possibly being deprioritized in the future. And the reasoning isn't hard to suss out: that whole conservative news-suppression mess from this May.

Mosseri dedicated three paragraphs to "a multitude of viewpoints" and Facebook's mission of "not picking which issues the world should read about." Those sentences read almost like direct responses to allegations that the site suppressed "trending" stories with conservative viewpoints—and since Facebook has yet to announce a similar instant-article agreement with a popular conservative outlet (i.e. The Wall Street Journal, Fox News), it's hard to imagine the initiative's current, left-leaning outlets receiving more emphasis in the near future.

Mosseri also figuratively threw his hands up by admitting that Facebook users face "far too much information for any one person to consume." With less "pages" content, Facebook says it will exert its algorithmic energy looking for which friends' content you click "like" on the most and make sure that lands at the top of your news feed.

"We think it’s possible to be inclusive without making Facebook a place where people are subjected to attacks, hate, or other harmful behavior," Mosseri added, but his announcement didn't mention any particular efforts or initiatives that would be employed to hide "harmful" posts or monitor offending users.