Facebook has declared it will begin demoting posts with engagement baits that goad people into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions.
Facebook, in a statement on Monday, said posts similar to “God has seen you suffering, comment ‘YES’ if you don’t want to suffer anymore,” and also similar to what is on the featured image on this post, known as engagement bait, seek 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 social media giant said.
Facebook said to help foster more authentic engagement on its platform, teams have reviewed and categorized hundreds of thousands of posts to inform a machine learning model that can detect different types of engagement bait.
“Posts that use this tactic will be shown less in News Feed. We will begin implementing stricter demotions for Pages that systematically and repeatedly use engagement bait to artificially gain reach in News Feed,” said Henry Silverman, Operations Integrity Specialist at Facebook.
The social media firm said “Posts that ask people for help, advice, or recommendations, such as circulating a missing child report, raising money for a cause, or asking for travel tips, will not be adversely impacted by this update. Instead, we will demote posts that go against one of our key News Feed values – authenticity”.
Publishers and other businesses that use engagement bait tactics in their posts should expect their reach on these posts to decrease, as Pages that repeatedly share engagement bait posts will see more significant drops in reach.
“Page Admins should continue to focus on posting relevant and meaningful stories that do not use engagement bait tactics,” Facebook advised.