Facebook cracks down on like-baiting in posts
Facebook has announced an update that will see link-baiting posts – those which explicitly ask for likes, shares or comments – appear less on the News Feeds of followers.
Repeated content and spammy links are also set to see a crackdown in the new changes to Facebook.
“The improvement we are making today better detects these stories and helps ensure that they are not shown more prominently in News Feed than more relevant stories from friends and other pages. This update will not impact pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans, and focuses initially on pages that frequently post explicitly asking for likes, comments and shares,” Facebook said, announcing the news.
The same photo or video being shared repeatedly by a page will also be de-emphasised, as well as posts that link through to a website that contains only ads or a combination of frequently circulated content and ads.
This will not affect the majority of users, Facebook insists, adding “the vast majority of publishers on Facebook are not posting feed spam so they should not be negatively impacted by these changes, and, if anything, may see a very small increase in News Feed distribution”.
This is the latest in a string of algorithm changes for Page content being posted on Facebook News Feeds, which has led to some claiming that Facebook is becoming ‘all about the money’.