Facebook is starting its fight against engagement bait; as announced, it is expanding to the Polish version of the service the mechanisms that mean posts aggressively pushing users to interact will no longer be as visible.
The desire to rid the service of the engagement bait tactic was already discussed in December 2017.
How do you detect engagement bait?
It turns out that an effective fight against engagement bait lies in the hands of Facebook employees, who use many thousands of examples to teach artificial intelligence systems and machines how to distinguish valuable content from publications aimed primarily at generating engagement among users.
Algorithms combating engagement bait have already been used in many local versions of the service around the world. In April 2018, they began operating in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, among others, and a few weeks later they were introduced in selected Asian countries.
Engagement bait in Poland
Efforts to combat engagement bait have also been undertaken in Poland. As it turns out, posts that insistently call on recipients to take specific actions, such as likes, comments, and sharing content, are to be less visible in the news feed.
How will publishers react?
Facebook announces that introducing algorithms to combat engagement bait in the Polish version of the service will contribute to a significant decline in reach for publishers and many pages using this tactic.
According to Facebook, the newly introduced changes will not affect posts by ordinary users asking other internet users for any help, advice, or guidance.
Summary
Facebook is expanding to Poland its efforts against engagement bait, meaning content that pushes for interaction. Special algorithms, trained on thousands of examples by employees, are meant to reduce the visibility of such posts in the news feed, which will hit publishers using these tactics.
The changes will not harm ordinary users asking for help or advice. The mechanisms were previously implemented in Germany, France and Spain, among others, and now the time has come for the Polish version of the service.
