Facebook’s news feed u-turn is all about happiness (and advertising)

The update will prioritise posts that

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trigger “conversations and meaningful interactions between people”. But how will this actually change what you see when you scroll down your feed? Essentially, it means you will see more posts from people that Facebook considers to be your friends and family, and less from public pages and publishers. To do this, Facebook will predict which posts you want to see when you login.

These predictions will aim to boost interaction – with the assumption that you are more likely to like or comment on a post if you know the person. One of the problems Facebook is trying to solve, amongst others, is to stop people being so passive when they use the network. It’s hard to gauge where Facebook draws the line between passive consumption and engagement, or what Facebook means when it says it wants to increase the amount of “meaningful interactions”. A like or a comment doesn't necessarily mean meaningful – although tagging friends in a #relatable meme most likely doesn't count. Crucially, Facebook will favour live video, which it says generates more engagement.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-news-feed-change-interaction-publishers