Facebook to Start Demoting Engagement Bait Posts on Platform

engagement bait posts

Anyone who regularly scrolls through their Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) news feed knows that it can get muddled at times, especially with the number of clickbait posts that are on the platform. However, it seems like enough people have told the Menlo Park, California-based company about these sorts of posts because Facebook announced on Monday that it will start to demote these posts – Facebook calls them engagement bait posts – starting this week.

For those who don’t know, engagement bait refers to any post that promotes interaction to “artificially boost engagement.” For example, an engagement bait post would say something like, “Like this post if you are a fan of TV” or “Share this post if you’re a girl”.

In order to tackle this problem, Mark Zuckerberg’s company has reviewed thousands of posts that follow this pattern in order to create a news feed algorithm that will locate engagement bait posts and oust them from an individual’s news feed.

Ever since last year’s election, Facebook has been under fire for the way their platform is used, so Facebook’s aim in regards to engagement bait posts is to make these spam posts not appear on your news feed as often as they do right now.

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About the author: Caroline Harris is a third-year student at Capilano University in North Vancouver, Canada. Having already completed an Associates Degree in Psychology, Caroline is now finishing her Bachelor's degree in Communications. In preparation for working in the advertisement sector, Caroline is writing financial content and analysis. On a daily basis, Caroline works on articles regarding the following topics: finance, cryptocurrency, technology, and politics.