Facebook To Punish Posts That Ask For Likes Or Shares

Users are constantly bombarded with information on their Facebook News Feed and many of them are posts that are constantly fishing for Likes, Shares, or Comments. A lot of users have found this practice to be irksome and the social network has finally decided to act on it. From now on, posts that ask for Likes or Shares on Facebook are going to be demoted.

Facebook made the announcement in a blog post, stating how it was going to start fighting content that baits users to engage. Apparently, users have had enough of this kind of behavior and want the contents gone from their News Feeds.

“People have told us that they dislike spammy posts on Facebook that goad them into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions. For example, ['LIKE this if you’re an Aries!’] This tactic, known as “engagement bait,” seeks to take advantage of our News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement in order to get greater reach. So, starting this week, we will begin demoting individual posts from people and Pages that use engagement bait,” the post reads.

Basically, if Facebook determines that the post, image, video, or link is actively asking for users to engage with it instead of letting the engagement occur naturally, it will appear less often on the News Feed. An artificial intelligence will also be responsible for detecting these kinds of content, which is currently learning from the reviews being done by human employees.

The changes will not take effect immediately, CNN reports. Publishers will have several weeks to adjust to the new policies. This move will go a long way towards ensuring only quality content can be found on users’ News Feeds. It’s also worth noting that posts that ask for engagement in the form of Advice, Help, Assistance, or Recommendations will not be punished.