Facebook Cracks Down on Engagement Baiting

What you see on Facebook greatly depends on what Facebook thinks you want to see. It’s a complicated algorithm of past behaviors, your own demographic info as well as what people who you interact with often are liking or sharing. “Likes” and “Shares” on a post can greatly amplify the number of people who see it.

However, you shouldn’t be blatant and ask for likes or shares in a way that can be perceived as annoying or “spammy.” Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google have all been throttling this sort of “engagement behavior” in small ways over the last year or so on their respective platforms. We’ve been encouraging clients to not use those terms regardless of how much goodwill might be behind a post.

But it’s great to see Facebook publicly discouraging people from asking for likes and shares:

Facebook is cracking down on a new type of clickbait: Posts that ask people to Like or share or comment to goose engagement numbers, what Facebook is calling “engagement bait.”

You’ve probably seen posts like this in your feed before. Like if you think cats are best. Share if you think dogs are best. It’s a tactic that publishers will use to game Facebook’s algorithm, which rewards posts that get better engagement and shows them to more people.

via Facebook is clamping down on posts that ask people for Likes or shares – Recode

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