Despite rumors, Facebook says it's not limiting your feed to 26 friends

You might have seen the latest Facebook hoax on your news feed. As quickly as it's spreading, you might soon see it posted by more than 26 friends.

But if the hoax were true, you'd only be seeing posts from about 26 people on your friends list. The post is usually some variation of this, sometimes encouraging readers to copy and paste.

"How to avoid hearing from the same 26 FB friends and nobody else: Here is a post explaining why we don't see all posts from our friends...
Newsfeed recently shows only posts from the same few people, about 25, repeatedly the same, because Facebook has a new algorithm.
Their system chooses the people to read Your post. However, I would like to choose for myself, Therefore, I ask you a favor: if you read this message leave me a quick comment, a "hello", a sticker, a quick GIF, so you will appear in my news feed."

The post began circulating in December, myth-busting site Snopes.com reports, but gained traction after recent changes to the Facebook algorithm. While it's true the changes affect what shows up in your news feed, it downplays businesses and other publishers in favor of seeing more posts from your friends.

A blog post about the changes does not mention the limiting the number of friends you see or the number of friends that see you.

"The first changes you'll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups," founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote.

A Facebook representative told ABC:

"Friends don't let friends copy and paste memes, and this one simply is not true. We rank News Feed based on how relevant each post might be to you, and while we've made some updates that could increase the number of posts you see from your friends, your News Feed isn't limited to 25 of them."

The moral of the story? Do some research before you copy and paste.