Meta finally acknowledges that Facebook has a major spam problem

Meta is lastly acknowledging that Fb’s feed is crammed with too many spammy posts. In an update, the corporate says it plans to begin “cracking down” on a few of the worst offenders. “Fb Feed doesn’t all the time serve up recent, partaking posts that you just constantly take pleasure in,” the corporate writes. “We’re engaged on it.”

Particularly, Meta says it would decrease the attain of creators that share posts with “lengthy, distracting captions” in addition to posts with captions which might be irrelevant or unrelated to the shared content material. These accounts will even now not be eligible for monetization. Likewise, the corporate says it’s taking “extra aggressive” steps to fight “spam networks that coordinate pretend engagement.” This consists of making feedback from these accounts much less seen, and eradicating Fb pages meant to “inflate attain.” Meta can be testing a function that enables customers to anonymously downvote feedback in an effort to flag them as not “helpful.”

The replace comes as Meta is making an attempt to revamp Fb to make it extra interesting to “younger adults.” The corporate not too long ago introduced again a tab for mates content material, in an replace Mark Zuckerberg described as making the platform extra like “OG Facebook.” Notably although, Meta’s replace doesn’t point out one of many extra persistent types of engagement bait that’s emerged on Fb during the last yr: AI slop.

The phenomenon, which has been extensively documented by 404 Media, concerned weird, usually nonsensical AI-generated pictures — just like the now notorious “Shrimp Jesus” — that serve little goal apart from to farm engagement for individuals making an attempt to generate profits on or off Fb. These spammers are sometimes aided by Fb’s personal algorithm, which boosts the posts, researchers have found.

AI slop and engagement bait aren’t the one kinds of low-quality posts which have overwhelmed customers’ Fb feeds lately. I repeatedly see posts from pages that appear to do nothing however screenshot previous Reddit posts from r/AITA, or recycle previous information about celebrities I don’t comply with or notably care about. Meta’s reviews on probably the most widely-viewed content material on its platform regularly feature anodyne posts which might be engineered to rack up tens of millions of feedback, like people who ask customers to remark “amen” or resolve primary math equations. Posts like that will not match neatly into Meta’s newest crackdown, although it’s unlikely many Fb customers are literally having fun with this content material.

The corporate does observe it’s additionally making an attempt to “elevate” the creators which might be truly sharing unique content material, together with by cracking down on accounts that steal their work. However given how a lot simpler it’s to make AI slop than good unique content material, it might be a very long time earlier than Meta is ready to get Fb’s spam drawback beneath management.

This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-finally-acknowledges-that-facebook-has-a-major-spam-problem-175304372.html?src=rss

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