
"I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions", he wrote. "It's good for your well-being".
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook users complained that public content is crowding out personal moments. But Thursday's shift goes beyond previous changes by prioritising posts that spur substantive interactions between people.
The Facebook CEO's latest announcement is nearly a total reversal from a deal he offered publishers in 2014, whereby they could host articles directly on its mobile app, giving them easy access to Facebook's 1.37 billion active users.
News Feed will be the first feature that will see the first changes, "where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups".
With social media under pressure for allowing the alleged Russian meddling, Facebook announced a new project to combat such efforts in November 2017.
Although Zuckerberg said the changes will take time to roll out, users will start noticing they see fewer posts from publishers and businesses and more content from their friends and family. The company has long pushed users to spend more time on the social network.
Facebook is radically altering the formula that determines what bubbles to the top of people's news feed, part of sweeping changes the giant social network has planned to address growing controversy over the role it plays in people's lives and in society. The company has been dogged by questions about how its algorithms may have prioritized misleading news and misinformation in News Feeds, influencing the 2016 USA presidential election as well as political discourse in many countries.
Facebook's head of news feed Adam Mosseri said businesses will feel the biggest impact of the changes.
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"This update is more about amplifying the things people value".
Zuckerberg added that his way of running Facebook has shifted since the birth of his two daughters, Maxima and August, in recent years. The social network wants to reduce what Zuckerberg called "passive content" - videos and articles that ask little more of the viewer than to sit back and watch or read - so that users' time on the site is well spent.
The ultimate goal, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post, is to make people feel more positive about the time they spend on social media.
On Thursday, he said numerous discussions about Facebook's responsibilities had prompted the company "to get a better handle on some of the negative things that could happen in the system". "You pick a friend for lots of different reasons", he said.
There will be fewer posts from brands, pages and media companies and more from people.
Pressure has been building on Facebook and its CEO as the toxic content flowing through Facebook - violent live videos, fabricated news articles and divisive messages from Russian operatives to influence the 2016 USA presidential campaign - has been blamed for ripping holes in the social fabric.
In a lengthy post on Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote: "We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us".