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Study: 33% of Facebook Users Want Less News In Their Feed (businessinsider.com) 95

Posted by BeauHD from the clickbait dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Business Insider: According to a survey of 526 random Facebook users conducted by Spot.IM, 33% of Facebook users in the U.S. want to see fewer news articles in their feeds. The survey comes at a time when Facebook is desperately trying to improve the quality of publisher articles that gain traction on its platform. Here are some important takeaways from the study: Older people are likelier to want less news in their Facebook feeds. While 33% of all respondents indicated there was too much news and shared links in their Facebook feeds, the majority of this group was individuals aged 30 or older. Those 30-44 (37%), 45-59 (36%), and 60+ (36%) said they want less news in their feeds. Young Facebook users enjoy consuming news on social media. While middle-aged and older Facebook users don't like seeing news in their feeds, those aged 18-29 were much more interested and excited to see even more news articles on Facebook. 32% of respondents in this group wanted to see more news, while just 21% wanted less. This is an encouraging sign for publishers who want to reach a new generation of news consumers. The majority of people don't care about how much news they see on Facebook. Overall, 51% of all surveyed said they simply don't care if more or less news shows up in their Facebook feeds. A study conducted in June by Columbia University says that 59% of people don't even read the articles they share.
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Study: 33% of Facebook Users Want Less News In Their Feed More

Study: 33% of Facebook Users Want Less News In Their Feed

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  • Let's drive it to 0%!

  • They've cleaned the response up a bit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @03:53PM (#52798907)
    I didn't say I wanted less news in my feed... I said I wanted less CRAP in my feed!!! Nobody uses Facebook anymore anyway. "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra

  • No news! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vrallis ( 33290 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @03:54PM (#52798913) Homepage

    Facebook is not a news site. I do not go to Facebook for news.

    I go there to see updates from friends. I have absolutely no interest in anything else, period.

    • Re:No news! (Score:4, Informative)

      by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @04:01PM (#52798979) Homepage

      As do I but the thing is FB can't turn the thing they were originally being used for into advertising dollars.

      To turn all of our eyeballs into dollars, they need to show us "news" they've been paid to display given certain demographics. That's why this is happening. Why they've been upping the ante with adblockers. Why they added the autoplay feature to videos and every other stupid move they've made in the past few years. They know their conversion/interaction/bullshit measurement rate is bullshit and their advertisers and stockholders are calling them on it.

      Expect it to get worse before it gets better. Or FB falls off that internet cliff that MySpace went over before them.

      • Re:No news! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @04:18PM (#52799095) Homepage

        It's not just Facebook, though. Honestly, part of the problem is that too many of my Facebook "friends" are under the impression that their social media presence is so influential that they have a moral obligation to post really important "news" to their feed on a regular basis. Aunt Alice wants me to read a story about how Trump is a secret genius while ex-classmate Jeremy wants us all to read a story about how women are mistreated in the workplace. Unfortunately for them, I'm just logging on so I can see pictures of my nieces and nephews. For everyone else, I'd be happy to read about what's going on with your lives, but I'm completely disinterested in your political views.

        Maybe it's just me?

        • Yes, it's just you. Facebook is hugely popular among people like those you mention. If you're not like that, and you don't want to read their political articles about FEMA death camps and how Hillary is a secret Satanist and how important Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings are, and you don't like all the news articles Facebook itself presents to you in its feeds, then maybe you shouldn't be using Facebook.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          The political stuff is the worst. Every wingnut in your feed wants to spread their particular gospel. It's even worse than the blatantly religious stuff. The problem is probably what some people consider "news". Plus you've got idiots that start foaming at the mouth because they stumble onto something that feeds into their favorite narrative. It doesn't occur to them that it's an obvious satire site. It's sad, hilarious, and annoying all at once.

          All memes are bullshit.

          Someone may have a valid observation bu

        • It's not just you.

          I'd love it if my FB friends just posted what they do rather than what they think or believe. When you tell me what you do, you come across as interesting, funny, generous, creative, kind. When you tell me what you think, you come across as illiterate, innumerate, and unreasonable.

        • Re:No news! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @08:43PM (#52800497) Journal

          Every time one of my friends on facebook shares something from some crap aggregator site like "SuperInterestingCoolFunFacts", I go to the little drop-down menu on that post and select "hide all from SuperInterestingCoolFunFacts".

          Turns out that most of my friends only get their daily dose of drivel from a few sites, so after a couple of rounds of that the signal to noise ratio improves considerably.

          • You forget your place. Your practical solution using a simple menu has absolutely no business being shared amongst the hyperbole here!

    • Re:No news! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @04:17PM (#52799093)

      Wish I had mod points. I never seem to have them when I want to use them.

      I'm like you, I want to see pics my friends post and hear about what they're doing. I have a few friends who have never mastered email or sharing pics, but fb works pretty good for them.

      And in the mean time I'll wait for a better version of AdBlockPro.

  • 100% of Slashdot Readers... (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @03:56PM (#52798937)
    ...want less Facebook stories in their feed. Work on that for me, Beau, wouldja?
    • Couldn't agree more. I don't use facebook, and I don't care to be kept abreast with every little thing that goes on at facebook.
    • In this election year, I would not be surprised to learn that 30% of everyone wants less news in their whatever.

    • And less facebook in my news. I can't remember my facebook password and don't feel like e-mailing them a copy of my drivers license so facebook is pretty well dead to me.

  • Or do you mean more of the propaganda and gossip that doubles as news today? Then I can well understand why people want less of that garbage in their feed.

  • I'd prefer if facebook (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @03:58PM (#52798955)
    allowed me to configure my newsfeed the way I want it to look, and have it stay that way.

    .
    I'd configure it for no news, and most recent posts first.

    Such a simple request, it amazes me why facebook doesn't allow it.

    As things stand now, I find myself using facebook less and less because it has become annoying to use it.

    • It's easy. I got rid of 100% of facebook news by deleting my facebook account. Works like a charm!
    • I've pretty much stopped looking at FB. They won't let me configure it the way I want. As it is now, it wastes too much of my time. I'd use it if they let me just get friends' posts. No news. No suggested stuff, not added content. I'd even watch a properly identified ad if that was the compromise to see only the few other things I want to see.

  • 33%? That's easy.

    Any story that doesn't call Trump a racist? GONE.

    Any story form what's left that isn't pre-approved by the Hillary campaign? GONE.

  • get rid of the fake news / ad's that look like n (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @04:00PM (#52798965)

    get rid of the fake news / ad's that look like news

  • yes please. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cmiller173 ( 641510 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @04:00PM (#52798969)

    I want less "Suggested" posts. I don't mind news that one of my friends shared and thinks is important, I do dislike algorithmicly chosen junk that I might like, because usually it is wrong.

    Really I just use facebook to keep up with long distance family and friends. And really, I don't accept friend requests from all of my family either.

    • Actually, their algorithm doesn't even have to be wrong to be junk. If they successfully posted stuff that I would want to click on, it would still be noise; it would still not be what I was there to read at the time, and if I found myself clicking on it, it would just make me less likely to go there in the first place.

      Pulling in activity that otherwise would have gone to an organic search is nice and all, but it also dilutes their core purpose of connecting humans to other humans.

  • Facebook wants to stay relevant? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They need to do these things.

    1) Stop fucking with the sort order. Leave it however I set it last.

    2) Stop showing me every single thing that anyone I'm friends with liked. Also, stop sharing every thing I like with everyone on my friends list.

    3) Stop randomly hiding posts from my feed that you don't think I'll find interesting. If I followed a page, I followed it because I want to see their posts.

    4) Don't force me to install your messenger app on my phone to see messages. I only get a handful of messages on

  • I'm part of the majority that wants more news. Most individuals don't have anything interesting or useful to say, so I use Facebook as a personal news aggregator.

    • I use Facebook as a personal news aggregator

      This may explain why you're unaware that facebook should notbe used as a source of news.

    • I don't doubt that you want more of something, I just doubt that it is news, and that you would know the difference.

      You'd have to actually read the story to find out what percent said they want more. Just from 33% want less, you don't know how many want more. There is no reason to believe that you could simply subtract 33 from 100 to get that number.

      If you read the article, (I don't recommend it, it isn't news and isn't even interesting) you'll find a substantially different number than you supposed. And th

  • in related news (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    99% of slashdot users wanted less facebook news in their slashdot page.

  • Why are you naming the small portion? This should be titled "51% of FB users don't give a shit about the amount of news in their feed." And then it should not be posted, because this is a completely uninteresting statistic.

    • Or phrased another way, less people understood what was meant by the marketing term "news" than actually care one way or the other, whatever it was.

  • My two biggest complaints about Facebook is that I cannot get my stories ordered by time to be remembered and that it insists on telling me when a friend of mine does something to one of their friends - who, in the majority of cases, I don't know and don't care about.

    News in my feed is pretty low down my list of gripes.

  • I get my news here on /.

    Best news aggregator on the web.

    Even the arrant bullshit is interesting!

  • If they don't want news, then what do they want? More cat pictures? More pictures of meals about to be consumed? More photoshopped pictures with goofy captions? More pictures of drunks about do something that they wouldn't do sober?

  • What I want is Kill Files, as in Usenet/trn4.0

    /Hillary/k

    /Trump/k

    /Clinton/k

    /Kardassian/k

    Just for starters.

    Also, I want to add to the kill file Every. Single. Damn. Web page... that does that click-bait abomination

  • They need to get rid of all those annoying posts from so-called friends too.
    All I want is a continuous stream of pop-over ads.

  • But it does not depend much also of pages and groups that person participates? Let her choose what you want to see or not. [vesteprata.com.br]

  • What people consider news.... (Score:3)

    by Ranbot ( 2648297 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @07:01PM (#52800015)

    59% of people don't read the articles they share (which is bad enough by itself), and then a percentage of people like news in their Facebook feeds and/or want more. So, I wonder portion of people consider a reading a catchy headline as the equivalent to reading a full news story? Furthermore, what does it say about the news reading habits of 18-29 year olds [millennials] who are most likely to prefer or want more news in the Facebook feed?

  • I [youtube.com] think [youtube.com] if [youtube.com] they [youtube.com] don't [youtube.com] like [mediamatters.org] the [youtube.com] news [youtube.com] they [youtube.com] are already informed [youtube.com].

  • More than half of the 'news' is sponsored ad bullshit, stated or not. It's anything BUT news.

  • I guess it comes down to the definition of News. Most of the time FB has "Entertainment Tonight" style news - e.g. what did Lindsay Lohan upto? Britney Spears did it again! Not news by my definition --- so I'd say "give me less news"

    Granted the current election cycle is Entertaining. FB "news" is a lot like grocery store checkout tabloids. All the crap not fit to read.

    Sure I've seen more Washington Post and NY Times sneaking in. Many articles though are...short...and tell nothing more than reading

  • While middle-aged and older Facebook users don't like seeing news in their feeds, those aged 18-29 were much more interested and excited to see even more news articles on Facebook.

    This is the segment marketers and advertisers covet the most. The early years of independent adulthood is when habits that will endure for decades are formed. The party a young person votes for in his first two or three elections becomes the party he will vote for for the rest of his life. If he buys ACME brand rocket roller skates, chances are he'll never buy another brand of rocket roller skates.

  • I didn't expect much when the whole news broke over the liberal slant by Facebook trending. But instead they took a route no one had done before: go neutral by removing the always present human bias. Obviously the biased media was abuzz as the bots first baby steps were stumbles (I won't even touch the Atlantic pushing their dream that Megan Kelly would sue them for libel). But they are scared. This bot is a danger to them. Their golden podiums from up high are in danger.

  • "Study: 66% of Facebook Users Want More News In Their Feed." TIFIFY.

  • It should read:

    2/3 of Facebook users want the same number or more news articles...

    But that would mean there wasn't a story. Ho Hum.

  • Facebook has immense amount of user data and it has no clue how to use it precisely to its advantage. The targeting of its advertisement is improving but the newsfeed suggestion still suck! Contributor at Digital Quark - Learn Practice Master [digitalquark.com]

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