Well, congrats, Facebook. You finally clogged my news feed with so many ads and grime from friends of friends I've never heard of (otherwise known as total freakin' strangers), that, after several instances of considering doing so but backing off, I've finally resorted to installing Firefox add-ons to nuke all that stuff. Since these add-ons (Facebook Friends Feed and FB Purity) almost certainly don't know who my FB Friends are or aren't, this may eliminate instances of Friends commenting/liking stuff other Friends post, but, at this point, that's a more than acceptable loss to get rid of all the noise.
Heck, I remember not too long ago, the news feed was clogged with Friends posting links to outside articles, making it more like Currenteventsbook (amirite?). Maybe it's just me, but it seems as though the deluge of third-hand posts has dissuaded people from doing that, and intentionally lax and shifting privacy settings discouraged people from posting much original content before that phase kicked in. So now, because a large chunk of users aren't sensible enough to take the blindingly obvious step of making their posts visible to friends only by default, the site has resorted to slurping up more and more distant content to make up for the Web 2.0 Sharing bust. FB may have profited in gaining the whole world, making billions and deepening our national socio-political divide by building one of history's most effective echo chambers, but it looks as though the cost was its own soul. :dodgy: