Why do you think ranking is important? A simple chronological news feed should be perfectly fine.
Sure, rank search results based on how many users a given group has, and put the most popular ones at the top. That doesn't require violating anyone's privacy.
And they are certainly allowed to do ranking. But they can only do it on non-PII data, on data that has been deliberately made public, and on data which people have consented to its collection and storage with unequivocal opt-in.
Sure, rank search results based on how many users a given group has, and put the most popular ones at the top. That doesn't require violating anyone's privacy.