This is similar to what I did too but the newsfeed is still polluted with lots of "likes" (e.g. liking a page, liking a post) by my close friends which are irrelevant to me 99% of the time. I wish Facebook let me hide "likes" from my friends.
If it really bothers you, a simple Greasemonkey script can fix that.
Re:Facebook – You are the Product
by mattnewton on Thursday August 17, 2017 @09:37AM
(#15036629)
Or just don't visit the newsfeed ever.
Re:Facebook – You are the Product
by deftturtle on Saturday August 19, 2017 @01:16AM
(#15051812)
Problem solved....
Then I added the few ones I truly wanted to know about to the "Close friends" list which allows you to activate notifications for everything they post.
Now when I log in I only see a bunch of notifications which have a very handy "Mark all as read" link, and I only click further when I see a non-meme status update or an interesting share from them.
I can always search someone and go to their profile, or click on a firend list and see what certain group is up to. And I still find messenger useful, except for the forced "Add to your day" part, from which I daily hide any friends "day" as they post it without opening it (hold click to show that option). I'm about 1 year like this and it has been great, don't feel like I'm missing anything.