Facebook's new mission may be impossible

IF Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg is sincere in a recent post - about gradually taking the media element out of "social media" - he is striking a powerful blow for tech self-regulation, as well as preparing to pay a heavy price for the evolution of his vision.

But getting the genie back into the bottle may be too difficult even for him, and, in any case, his creation's problems go far beyond his proposed fix.

The gist of his criticism of Facebook is that "video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years". "Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do - help us connect with each other," he wrote.