Facebook Once Again Turned to User Surveys in Tweaking Its News Feed Algorithm

The focus is on friends people might want to hear from the most and links they deem worthwhile

Facebook is turning to a tried-and-true method for the latest round of tweaks to its News Feed algorithm: Surveying its users.

The social network routinely used surveys in the past to collect user feedback on topics including News Feed, the validity of news stories, friends’ reactions to their posts, improvements to Messenger, experiences with pages, the stand-alone Facebook Groups application (shuttered in August 2017), Ads Manager and Facebook Login and apps.

The two changes being introduced to ranking in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm are prioritizing the friends a user might want to hear from the most and prioritizing links they might consider most worthwhile.

Product managers Ramya Sethuraman and Jordi Vallmitjana and technical program manager Jon Levin said in a Newsroom post, “We’ve historically predicted who people might want to hear from based on signals like how often they interact with a given friend, how many mutual friends they have and whether they...

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