Nowadays, I love going to Facebook. My news feed is completely empty.
I've probably only unfollowed about 10% of my total friends list, but the difference is immense, a lot of the noise tends to come from a small subset of the people, in my experience.
While I don't log in to Facebook more than once every six months, your observation gives me hope that I might be able to find some utility in it.
Don't get me wrong, I love the News Feed Eradicator, but it doesn't always change the "Facebook experience" for the better.
1) If someone is consistently filling your feed with crap, just unfollow them. It's as easy as clicking an arrow on their post.
2) Go to the profiles of people you want to keep tabs on (family, close friends, etc), click on the "Friends" button up top, and select "Get Notifications". Now you can pretty much ignore your news feed, and only pay attention to Facebook when you receive a notification.
3) I just discovered this and haven't tried it: click the "Following" button (next to the above mentioned "Friends" button) and select "See First". I assume this prioritizes their posts in your news feed. Neat.
Instead, I believe it discourages more focused one-on-one relationship-building in favor of a bi-directional consumption model. People don't interact as much as publish and consume. Knowing what people are doing is not a real substitute for intimacy, but I think the dependence on FB as the medium tends to relegate people to the former (i.e. just keeping up).
In any case, I was responding specifically to an ancestor who stated that he/she was having trouble keeping in touch outside of FB. That makes my point: people tend to be so reliant on FB to manage their relationships, that those relationships evaporate sans FB to the point that people don't even communicate! But, of course, while on FB, people don't generally have meaningful, in-depth conversations.
That pretty much says it all, as it doesn't leave much space for real relationships. Not saying this is absolute, but that it is a net negative.
I wish the News Feed could be modified significantly, though. It's terrible - so terrible.
With that said, what I do regret is missing out on my growing family. My cousins from out of state as well as my siblings are getting married and having kids. I was helping my mom log into her facebook the other day and I saw pictures of my niece's first day of ballet class and my nephew's first day of kindergarden. It made me light up and think "Ah shit, I'm kind of missing out on these things." Although I see them every now and then, stuff like that is the only reason I would even consider getting back on FB. I find it funny that it's for a completely different purpose from when I first joined in college.