‘Engagement bait’ is the tactic that prompts users to engage with posts, taking advantage of newsfeed algorithms to gain a greater reach.

We’ve all seen it; like this, share now, comment below, however changes are gradually being phased in which will see these kind of post spamming newsfeeds decrease.

Facebook is starting to demote individual posts from people and pages that use engagement bait tactics. Not only will posts that use these tactics be shown less in the news feed, there will be strict demotions for pages that repeatedly use engagement bait tactics.

They state, “Teams at Facebook have reviewed and categorised hundreds of thousands of posts to inform a machine learning model that can detect different types of engagement bait.”

Posts that ask people for help, advice, or recommendations, such as circulating a missing child report, raising money for a cause, or asking for travel tips, will not be adversely impacted by this update.

This is all with the aim to make news feeds more ‘authentic’ which Facebook state to be one of its key values.

Similar to this, links to low-quality web pages will also be reduced as well as misleading posts with the aim to promote more meaningful conversations on the platform.

Page admins who use engagement bait tactics will now have to focus on posting relevant content and it will be interesting to see how certain companies will adapt to such changes.

You can learn more about engagement bait and how to avoid it here by contacting us today or visiting https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/newsfeedguidelines