This brings to mind my experience as an early facebook adopter (when it was still college email invite-only), to some point a while ago when they went from a chronological timeline/feed to a "curated" one. Users overwhelmingly did not want or like this, because the main use of facebook at that time was to connect and chat with people you knew in real life. However, that does not drive ads as well as what exists currently, so here we go.
If users were pickier about what they consume things would probably be better - that's also an issue (and I admit I am part of the problem). I can't even remember the last time I saw a close friend's post on my feed.
I have found a hack around facebook that partially works: remove yourself from all groups. So only friends are in your feed. Then every time a friend shares something from one of their group go hit "block all from [group]". Facebook now has less junk to show me as I've blocked most of it, and so I see my friends. I've also set a rule that when I block two groups I'm done for the session. Anytime I share something on Facebook I make sure the privacy settings is "friends of those tags only" - if I'd want more or less than that it is either too private to share at all, or it should be on a better public forum.
I hope more of you start doing the same. There is value in a Facebook type private place to communicate with friends and family (this need not be facebook, but that is where my friends are), and everything else clutters it. The more people who follow similar rules to me the more likely Facebook is to notice in their metrics that people only want Facebook for personal friends, hopefully they adjust to enable that better.
If users were pickier about what they consume things would probably be better - that's also an issue (and I admit I am part of the problem). I can't even remember the last time I saw a close friend's post on my feed.