Facebook Limiting News Updates to Only 26 Friends? Rumors Proved False
Recent rumors point out to Facebook potentially limiting a user's newsfeed to up to 26 friends only. The rumors circulated all over social media, most especially Twitter. Facebook has since dismissed the rumors as "false."
"We rank News Feed based on how relevant each post might be to you, and while we've made some updates that could increase the number of posts you see from your friends, your News Feed isn't limited to 25 of them," said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement obtained by Cnet.
The rumors were backed by a claim that Facebook is working on a special algorithm that contains a user's account to about 25 friends, regardless whether the user has 100 friends or 2,000 friends.
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These speculations caused many users to be furious about the potential upcoming update, which is a big reason why it spread rapidly across the internet and social media. The rumors also were eventually made into "memes," creating an even bigger influence digitally.
One of the other claims of the news is that it will only show a preselected number of people in one's friend list. This preselection is claimed to be totally random and out of control the user. In other words, the rumors claim it to be entirely dependent on the algorithm that Facebook is using.
Facebook's prior announcement last January did not help the social media platform in this regard either.
One of the main reasons why the rumor gained traction is due to Facebook announcing that it will "lessen news" in a user's account. While Facebook announced this, a lot of misunderstandings spread afterward.
While the initiative of Facebook is to lessen the influence of certain news publishers, most especially ones focused on propaganda and biased reporting, this became widespread misunderstanding to a lot of people. In the same announcement, Facebook also indicated that they will use a new algorithm to make this work.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said that these algorithms are to prioritize posts from family and friends instead of news publishers and brands.
