Facebook wants to shrink

Over the next year, we'll start spending less time on Facebook. Many of us who used it to read the news will find fewer of them to read. We'll watch fewer videos, and we'll see fewer ads. In theory, Facebook will make less money than we do or, at least, the degree in which the social network makes more and more money will slow down.

If you presented this scenario to Facebook leaders a year ago, it would have been a cause for alarm: evidence that something had gone deeply wrong on the platform and a situation that requires immediate solutions. And yet, from today, this is now the company's declared ambition: Facebook wants to shrink.

Facebook researchers have found that when people are actively commenting on posts, they tend to feel better about using social networks and feeling better about themselves in general.

The change may sound relatively small, but it is likely to have significant consequences for the wide range of Facebook users who are not individual people, different companies, media, small businesses, large brands and all the others who have targeted that through Facebook in an essential way reach audiences and clients, respectively.

In a post yesterday, company executive director Mark Zuckerberg said the pages managed by those businesses are likely to reach many fewer people in 2018.