Facebook is going to tackle begging for likes and comments

Facebook is going to tackle begging for likes and comments on its site. That has been announced by the social network. Posts that work with these techniques will reach fewer people in the near future.

The company writes that it has trained a machine learning model to detect these types of posts. With this it wants to tackle people and pages that repeatedly post messages that provoke reactions, for example by calling on users to respond with a certain word or tagging friends. The measure will take effect sometime in the coming weeks, Facebook announced.

It should not come at the expense of legitimate calls, such as asking for help or recommendations and raising money for a particular cause. By blocking “provoking” calls, Facebook aims to provide a “more authentic” news feed. The company does not explain exactly what the effects of its measures will be, but writes, for example, that pages that repeatedly break the rules will have a lower reach on its social network.

Owners of Facebook pages regularly beg for likes or comments in order to have more ‘engagement’ on posts. As a result, Facebook’s algorithm rated those posts as more popular and put them in more people’s timelines for that reason.