Measures such as showing fewer viral videos cut time spent on the social network by about 5%, or roughly 50 million hours a day, in the last three months of 2017.

However, Facebook reported better than expected results despite the fall.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the priority was encouraging more personal interaction among users.

“Helping people connect is more important than maximising the time they spend on Facebook,” he said.

“We can make sure the service is good for people’s well-being and for society overall.”

In January, Facebook said it would make changes to news feeds to prioritise posts from friends and family and make content from businesses and news outlets less prominent.


In the US and Canada, which generates a sizeable proportion of Facebook’s advertising revenues – the number of daily users fell about 700,000 to 184 million in the quarter.

Facebook said annual revenues soared 47% last year to more than $40bn (£28.2bn), while profits jumped 56% to nearly $16bn.

The gains came despite a $2.3bn payment triggered by recent changes to US tax law.

Analysis: Dave Lee, BBC North America technology reporter, San Francisco
There are politicians, academics and even former executives lining up to tell Facebook what’s wrong with it, but Mark Zuckerberg has only ever trusted his own data.

And so these tweaks to the News Feed, above all else, are a result of what Facebook’s engineers have seen for themselves.

Mr Zuckerberg’s (pretty convincing) argument is that by not fixing the News Feed, the long-term health of the company could be in jeopardy – not because of Russian propaganda or fake news, but because it just won’t be fun or useful to use.