If you are a Facebook user that was shamelessly begging likes, shares and comments, then this news is for you. Facebook is now hunting down posts that are shamelessly begging for engagement, a report from Techcrunch said on Monday, December 18.
Facebook to penalize page owners?
The company said that Facebook users caught asking for people for engagement will be penalized. This begs the question: Who will Facebook penalize? The social media giant said that Page owners or Page administrators would receive an appropriate sanction. The social media giant, however, did not clearly indicate what penalties it will sanction to Page owners.
What is certain now is that only Facebook users who always resort to “engagement bait” will definitely receive such penalty. Facebook users who seek wider visibility of their contents will be a target of Facebook’s policy.
Engagement bait
Facebook posts that offer any sorts of incentive such as foreign trips, getting discounts, win a gift certificates and other similar post are deemed as engagement bait. To combat such practice, Facebook claims it will introduce a new tweak in the Facebook newsfeed algorithm. Any engagement bait type of post will be demoted as pages including individuals who support engagement bait tactics.
Accordingly, those people who will be caught in engagement bait approach will have a reduced content and wider reach may be unlikely to happen. But those who are penalized will be able to recover back their content if they are in good behavior.
Also, the social media giant has yet to clarify if there will be some exceptions. It is not clear if Facebook will include posts asking for travel tips, raising funds for a case, charitable works, among others.
