Starting this week, Facebook has announced it will begin demoting any post that begs users to take actions like sharing, tagging, liking, or commenting.
Currently, posts that prompt users to ‘Tag your bestie!’ or ‘Comment someone who this reminds you of!’ are dominating news feeds globally; and it appears that this behaviour (that Facebook has dubbed ‘engagement bait’) has tired enough users that the social media giant is taking action.
Facebook is also implementing stricter policies for pages that "systematically and repeatedly use engagement bait to artificially gain reach." These rules will roll out over the next few weeks, so publishers should keep them in mind as they create new posts.
Pages that consistently use engagement bait tactics will see the reach on those posts decline as these new rules are put into effect.
The social media monolith has taught a machine learning model how to detect the different types of engagement bait, and has noted that posts that ask people for help, advice, or recommendations like raising money for charity or asking for travel advice won’t be affected by the update.
“Moving forward, we will continue to find ways to improve and scale our efforts to reduce engagement bait,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We want to reduce the spread of content that is spammy, sensational, or misleading in order to promote more meaningful and authentic conversations on Facebook.”
