As many of you helpless avatards know, facebook has recently made some changes that has sent a ripple of unrest throughout the flock as it always does. What is the purpose of these changes?

Facebook says its based on user feedback. Their excuse is that people who are too lazy to paruse their newsfeed wanted a more concentrated version of the mundane activities of their fellow slaves. Youll notice that if you dont check your page for a few days and are an avid facebook friend collector, you will be back logged with a few hundred bits of information which is cumbersome to catch up on. So they have taken the liberty of chosing what they feel is most relevant to you based on the following:

The principle of concensus validity. "If the content has comments or 'likes' by 10 of your mutual friends, it's something that is important to you," said Peter Deng, a Facebook product manager.

Or is it that this 'personalized' news feed will work to reinforce peoples viewpoints? Denying them access to information which may run counter to those.

Likely. The purpose of this gradual concentration of information is to ensure that no wires get crossed, that is, to ensure that all those 'crazies' on your lists who post interesting stories dont interrupt your erudite tweets that are only comprehensible to high-brow aesthetics and business types.

A message has been circulating by facebook soldiers explaining this:

FACEBOOK IS BLOCKING ALL YOUR FRIENDS NEWS FEEDS EXCEPT 250 THEY CHOOSE. TO UNDO BLOCK: Go to your HOME page. Make sure your news feed shows LIVE FEED. Then scroll to the bottom, click " Edit Options, You will then see your NEWS FEED SETTINGS. C...hange the 250 to 5000 for Facebook's friend limit and your feed will work right again. COPY & PASTE THIS & PASS IT ON.

I too have succomb to the trend.

But what is the tragedy here? Well for one, anyone of those friends who already has had facebook trim you from their big 250 will never see it :( eventually it will get around to them, but the fact is they are probably people tiring of your endless ranting anyway and would rather keep shopping while they still can. Fair enough.

The purpose
The endgame if you will is to have the live feed removed altogether, so that eventually the only information you will have at your disposal is what facebook feels is relevant to you (i.e. that which used to show up in your highlight reel). So you may be thinking "Why dont you get off facebook and get a life" mr. Human. Point taken, but bear in mind that facebook is growing exponentially and will someday (and by and large already is) the commoners only way to communicate with large amounts of people. Not like its amounted to much other than a nation on the edge of their seat, considering no meaningful social upheaval has occured using the internet, asides from botched rebellions like the 1999 battle of Seattle which was clearly a huge success :(

You will also notice that the live feed is now cluttered with all the extra little bits about friend adds, and who posted on what group wall, all the more incentive to become hopelessly dependent on Facebooks modified version of your news feed...

Here is some instructions on how to change your newsfeed back to normal, disregard this guys motive for doing so (i.e. so he can keep tabs on his mafia wars application) *pukes

Also see:
Advertisers love new facebook feed