But Facebook offers comprehensive controls that let you decide who appears on your news feed and who does not. You just need to use them.
Can you block sponsored stories? Besides, what good are controls if they keep 'evolving' and force you to actually maintain those settings. Settings and prefs should be fire and forget. I should not have to revisit settings in response to some new feature. For example, that jackass new @facebook email thing. Facebook is circa 1999 Windows.
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Most facebook controls are buried three levels of counterintuitive links down in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".
Or to put it another way, if I can't figure out how to make facebook show me stuff that isn't shite, how are ordinary people going to figure it out?
edit: Also I've figured out that the reason I no longer hear from an awful lot of my facebook friends is that I've probably set at least half of 'em to "ignore" due to 'em posting too much garbage.
Just because someones post isn't "liked" or clicked on in some way doesn't mean it's not valuable. It's a passive form of communication.
I don't know if this is just my perception, and maybe Facebook doesn't prioritize things in the news feed. Regardless, it's a UX question that needs to be asked by their team.