Those chain-letter makers are getting smarter… or maybe they just got lucky. Status updates that mention "death" or "dying" seem to be categorized as top news for the new Facebook.
In some ways this could be very helpful. It would be important to know if someone I knew passed away, but that hypothetical puppy was hypothetically killed as part of a very melodramatic chain letter? It just doesn't say "top news" to me.
I hope the collective genius of Facebook's hired hacker help can fix this algorithm, or soon none of us will get relevant social news from Facebook regarding our friends lives, it will be buried by chain letters.