Facebook Has Updated Its Newsfeed In Order To Clean Up Low Quality Posts

The Facebook newsfeed is central to the Facebook experience. Over the years, Facebook has been tweaking its algorithms to deliver relevant content to users. However, there have been repeated instances of poor quality and irrelevant content that makes it there. The reason this happens is unfortunately, because of the users themselves. Some Facebook pages use multiple techniques to drive up engagement and then subject those who clicked to poor quality content.

Today, the social network has announced that it will be actively screening for such instances and weeding them out. In it’s blog post, the company outlines the kind of post types that could end up being removed from the newsfeed.

1. Like Baiting:

Like baiting refers to the practice of a page asking its readers to like, comment or share its post. Once users do any of these actions, the post gets higher visibility in the network and ends up reaching a far greater distribution than it normally could. While some years back, many brands engaged in this behavior while exploring the medium, today it seems to be the domain of low quality content distributors, according to Facebook. However due to the way the newsfeed works, they frequently end up in a user’s feed.

The reason like baiting works is because when you put up a call to action in a post, many users who see the update end up following the call. When there is good quality content, there might be no issue with this sort of behavior, but Facebook’s main issue is with mediocrity of the content being posted using like baiting. This ends up spoiling the experience for Facebook users in general. According to Facebook, these kind of posts are estimated to be 15% less relevant than other stories which are on the similar league when it comes to likes, shares etc.

The newsfeed will now automatically detect low quality content posts and make sure that these posts are not prominently displayed on the newsfeed. The company was quick to point out that Facebook pages which are genuinely looking to engage with fans, will not be affected by the update.

2. Frequently Circulated Content:

Frequently shared content refers to multiple instances of the same content being uploaded and shared thus leading to decrease in relevancy among users who have already seen the content before. Pages may do this in order to maximise engagement with the content they have or can link to. However, this practise negatively impacts the user experience and Facebook will de-emphasise such posts with repeated content.

3. Spammy Links:

Spammy links refer to the practice of deceiving users by crafting post communication which is designed to trick people into clicking a link.  Normally, this leads to shady places.. such as a website with ads and even a mixture of frequently circulated content and ads.  Facebook now detects spammy links better by studying the how frequently people who visit links in a post, share or like the original post. With this knowledge, the company will limit distribution of these posts in the newsfeed.

These are some welcome changes to the newsfeed which has traditionally offered very little control to users when it comes to deciding what they would like to see. Even though you have very little control even today, these measures can at least remove questionable and poor quality content from your feed. Facebook says that a vast majority of publishers do not use the tactics mentioned above and this change will actually affect them positively as it will seek to remove the posts which drown out actual relevant content.

Source | Facebook

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