Facebook has said they are out to make things a bit more difficult for ‘clickbait’ sort of articles that blatantly asks for user engagements in the form of likes, shares or making comments. Facebook said they are in the process of making the necessary changes to the Newsfeed algorithm to single out such articles and demote them to a lower priority in the Newsfeed.
The social media company didn’t say when the changes are likely to take effect but said it’s coming within the next few weeks itself. So that is the time companies, or individuals have to alter their marketing tactics to prevent seeing their pages showing lower down the order in the news feed. Facebook also said they would be clamping down harder on repeat offenders.
Facebook earlier stated they have already identified thousands of pages that regularly resort to such tactics and would be facing the heat for this soon. From the user’s point of view, this should lead to lesser articles clamoring for space in the news feed as many of those have likely already been liked/shared or commented on by their friends or relatives.
Several publications make it a point to seek user’s engagement as a means to let their articles reach a wider viewership in the friend circle in Facebook. In fact, this happens to be a new style of writing that specifically applies to articles meant for circulation in Facebook. After all, everyone is on the lookout for creating the next viral content and several thousand user interactions can itself make it to feature in the news.
Facebook, however, is keeping both sides open, saying they aren’t entirely against engagement seekers and are willing to let publishers regain their original reach once they let go of this habit. On the firing line will be articles with such content like ‘Share to win assured gifts’, ‘Like if you are an Aries’ and such.
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In any case, all of the above is going to be pursued by AI backed algorithms which should be enough to pick up repeated or direct offenders. However, while the above can no doubt be considered a positive development, it isn’t likely to pick up those articles that announce a material gift as an incentive that users stand a chance to win given they have liked, shared, commented upon a particular articles besides liking the publication as well. Such articles often do not openly seek for user’s interactions.
