Facebook began lowering the scope of accounts that share spammy content, making them unqualified for monetization, Meta announced on Thursday. The company also says it is increasing efforts to adjust fake engagements and remove Facebook accounts that are pretending to be others.
The move comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has promised to return to “OG Facebook.” Social network plans to crack down on spam content can be seen as an attempt to return to Facebook's glory day, where user feeds are filled with authentic content from real people.
Meta acknowledges that some accounts on that platform are trying to game algorithms to increase views and gain the benefits of unfair monetization. To remedy this, we are cracking down on accounts that show certain types of spammy behavior.
This type of behavior includes accounts that share content with long captions, along with an excessive number of hashtags. It also includes accounts that post content with captions that are unrelated to the content, such as images of dogs with captions about plane facts.
Image credit: Facebook
Meta says the intent behind these types of posts isn't necessarily malicious, but it leads to spam content that obscures original content from creators.
Facebook also targets spam networks that create hundreds of networks to share the same spam content, making them unqualified for monetization.
The crackdown on Spammy content is because AI Slop has become a serious problem across social media platforms, including Facebook. The company told TechCrunch that the crackdown does not directly target AI slops, but accounts engaged in spam behaviors will affect that type of content. Facebook is aware of concerns about AI slops that clutter users' feeds, and says it will address the issue as part of a broad focus on improving users' feeds.
As part of today's announcement, Facebook also said it would reduce the reach and visibility of comments detected as fake engagement. Additionally, Facebook will begin testing its commenting feature that allows users to signal which comments are irrelevant and which ones are not compatible with the context of the conversation.
Image credit: Facebook
Additionally, Facebook has announced that it will be updating its comment management tool that detects and automates comments from people who may be using fake identities. Creators can also report spoofing in comments.
Today's announcement comes weeks after Facebook introduced the Friends tab, which only introduces updates from friends without any other recommended content. The crackdown on The New Friends Tab and Spammy content shows that Facebook is trying to improve its users' feed and show what they want to see.
It's no surprise that Facebook is considering returning to “OG Facebook.” In particular, a recent discovery from 2022 shows that Zuckerberg is concerned that social networks are losing cultural relevance.