How Meta revamped Facebook's feed to show more posts from outside a person's network of friends and family, in a move to fight TikTok and win back younger users
- Feed now features a broader array of posts based on interest — More young adults are back on Facebook after years of declines Threads: @simondowens , @davemolloy , @alexcartaz , @kurtwag8 , @kurtwag8 , and @mscottbrauer X: @kurtwagner8 and @kurtwagner8 . Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg Threads: Simon Owens / @simondowens : I absolutely hate Facebook's recommended posts from pages I don't follow — so much so that I actually installed a Chrome app that removes all of them — but apparently its introduction of non-friend content caused young people to start using the platform again. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Dave Molloy / @davemolloy : “The best way to revive Facebook's status as an online destination for young people was to start serving up more content from outside a person's network of friends and family.” Facebook showed people *anything* from their friends and family at any time in the past several years? Huh. … Alex Carter / @alexcartaz : Twitter being cratered certainly makes their window of opportunity bigger. Who knows what will happen but I think a lot of us for years viewed FB (friends and family) different from Insta (uhhh memes, pictures, friends) different from Twitter (social interest graph) … Kurt Wagner / @kurtwag8 : I think it's possible that young adults are also going to Facebook more often because of products outside of Feed — Marketplace and Groups being the most notable. Question will be whether Facebook can shift those people to spend more time in Feed, which is where the company makes most of it money. Kurt Wagner / @kurtwag8 : one final thought here: Right now most of Meta's ranking algorithms are siloed and very focused on individual features (Feed, Reels, Marketplace) The company is working on a “universal” ranking algorithm that would work across all of those products. … M. Scott Brauer / @mscottbrauer : On the record interview that facebook is prioritizing recommendations instead of posts by social connections; wouldn't be surprised if instagram is officially on the same trajectory, making it harder to see people you specifically opted to follow. X: Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : New: I wrote about Facebook's years-long pivot toward “recommendations” — showing people more posts about their interests, and fewer posts about their friends and family. It's been a slow but deliberate move to fight TikTok and win back younger users https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image] Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : one possible result of this move: Facebook is having a mini resurgence of “young adult” users ages 18-29. That user group, which was declining for years, has been growing for five straight quarters. Facebook has more YA users today in the US and Canada than it has in 3 years. [image] Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg : One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook’s shift follows documented declines in teen and young-adult engagement and a 2022 plan to make the service more TikTok-like through recommendations from unconnected sources. The reported five-quarter young-adult rebound suggests that the earlier recommendation-first strategy is becoming central to Facebook’s retention effort.
The move also creates a tension within the product: later, Meta introduced a friends-only Feed option without recommendations, underscoring that discovery and social connection now serve different user needs.
First-order effects
- Facebook users are shown more interest-based posts from people and pages outside their personal networks, making Feed ranking less dependent on friend activity.
- Meta can apply the same recommendation logic across Feed, Reels, and Marketplace through its planned universal ranking system, rather than maintaining separate ranking approaches.
Second-order effects
- Publishers, creators, and businesses can compete for Facebook distribution through content relevance rather than relying primarily on existing followers; this raises the value of signals that help Meta infer user interests.
- TikTok faces a more direct challenge for younger users’ attention, while Facebook’s social-graph experience becomes less differentiated from algorithmic entertainment feeds.
Third-order effects
- Facebook is evolving from a network-organized product into a recommendation-led distribution surface, where the algorithm increasingly determines what reaches users and creators.
- The later return of a friends-only option suggests a durable two-track model may emerge: algorithmic discovery for engagement alongside explicit social-graph controls for users who resist it.
The trend: Major social platforms are replacing follow- and friend-based feeds with cross-product recommendation systems, then adding controls to manage the resulting loss of social context.