Engagement bait posts that ask for like, share and comment are abundant on the Facebook news feed and they are an indirect way from pages, people to gain reach. In order to tackle the issue, Facebook today announced that it will begin demoting individual posts from people and Pages that use engagement bait.
The Facebook reviewer team have categorized the hundreds of thousands of posts for Machine learning algorithms to quickly detect different types of engagement bait and block them from appearing on the timeline. Additionally, the company also said that it will strengthen the policies on pages and groups that systematically and repeatedly use engagement bait to artificially gain reach in News Feed.
Facebook said that it will roll-over the updates gradually giving enough time for pages and groups to adapt to the change and avoid the usage of engagement Bait posts any further. However, posts such as recommendations, raising money for a cause, asking for tips stay unaffected. With an aim to reduce the amount of spam, or misleading clickbait content, Facebook said that it will be taking severe actions on those pages or groups that go against company policies.
Pages or groups that continue the usage of any engagement Bait posts can expect the reach of such posts to decrease which will also have an affect on page reach as well.