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In December 2017, rumors that a new Facebook algorithm was restricting the number of friends whose content appears in users' newsfeeds hit the social media network: Although the content and claim were largely the same, another version of this rumor that spread a month later held that the algorithm specifically pared down the content in a user's newsfeed to posts from either 25 or 26 friends: Some versions even claimed, inaccurately, that we had verified the purported new Facebook algorithm (Does Facebook limit friends to 25?) exists: The truth is that no one seems to know exactly how Facebook's algorithms work. Slate described the manner in which the social media network determines the order of content in any feed as surprisingly inelegant, maddeningly mercurial, and stubbornly opaque. The rumors followed on the heels of an 11 January 2018 Facebook blog post that addressed changes to the service related to changes in the content mixture that users could expect to see in their newsfeeds: However, these changes were described as affecting content generated by businesses and publishers, not individual friends and family members, and the only disclosures made about those changes were that they were intended to increase (not limit) interactions with friends and family: We contacted Facebook to ask whether the claim of limiting personal interactions had merit, and a representative told us that the rumor held no water (which is in keeping with our own observations). As with other viral posts aiming to trick Facebook's algorithm, this rumor is both misguided and ineffective.
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