Facebook taking action against spammy posts in your News Feed

Get ready to see fewer spam posts in your Facebook News Feed. Taking to its official blog, Facebook is letting everyone know that it's taking a harder stance on not showing posts that people deem "spammy." The new effort comes down to blocking out three main types of posts: Like-baiting, Frequently Circulated Content and Spammy Links.

Like-baiting, as it sounds, are posts that explicitly ask for readers to "like" or share the post — we've all seen the "like if you agree, share if you disagree" kind of posts, and they're pretty awful. Surveys show that these posts are on average 15 less relevant to people than a post with the same likes gained organically.

Facebook defines Frequently Circulated Content as pictures or statuses that are re-shared over and over again to try and generate engagement, often from official Pages. Spammy Links are, well, spammy links — they intentionally try to mislead readers into clicking through links to questionable websites.

As Facebook moves further towards mobile with less screen real estate to work with, it becomes even more important to keep the News Feed clean. Any reduction in spam and questionable posts is a win in our book.

Source: Facebook

Andrew Martonik
67 Comments
  • FINALLY! Looking forward to this.
  • Seriously. Such a turn off
  • Yeah. Almost as much as low standards.. I'm just being facetious! Honestly this is what pushed me to Twitter. I'm glad to see some action finally taking place.
  • I agree this is why I don't use Facebook anymore.
  • Funny cause Twitter has the same kind of BS except they say retweet and favourite instead of share and like, The social media isn't the problem it's the kind of people using it.
  • Yeah, but I can turn off retweets for individuals who abuse it, and if they just post links, at least it's not "in your face" with previews, and you just unfollow them without much drama. You unfriend someone on FB, and you have to hear about it, lol.
  • If you press 'Unfollow' in someone's profile on Facebook, His posts won't show up in your feeds and basically if you block someone on Facebook, He'll never be able to view your profile or know you exist on Facebook. I'd just go ahead a guess you didn't visit Facebook for the past 2 years.
  • You do know twitter is all about Spam and sharing stupid stuff! Even business people or following people you like for their work spam useless stuff pretty much all the time.
  • And Facebook could go a long way fixing the problem by (1) not injecting ads into the feed, and (2) having the APIs respect block/hide preferences, so mobile users don't have to see game statuses and posts from people you want to be less friendly with by not seeing all their extreme left/right political posts.
  • They're faster. Lol. Lots of spam in my peep hub. Hope they clean it up without me having to do anything.
  • Spam Hub, now with people! ;-)
  • I reported a fake spam account two years ago, I've probably received at least 20 goddamn notifications from Facebook banning it, then restoring it, then banning, then restoring. Sure as shit taught me not to report again, just block instead. Facebook are useless, and I don't need a notification every time they change their mind! personally I click the little triangle in the top right corner and choose to "never see posts from xxx page" for every page my dumbarse friends share. I also block every game and app my friends use. Result is a clean feed of status updates and pictures. I'm also probably facebooks most hated type of user, because I report every ad I see as offensive until they stop serving me ads for a couple of months :)
  • How about banning Candy Crush invitations?
  • And all game invitations?! :D
  • Mainly Candy Crush for me. (Thanks aunt Michelle) Remember the good days when only people with University emails could sign up? Ah sweet nostalgia...
  • Block candy crush? Then you'll never see another invite. Not hard.
  • you can even turn off Facebook apps entirely.
  • I've done this and at times I still get crap for games in my news feed...lol. So now I just block every game its a pain but it looks like its working
  • Yes. Ban all game invites.
  • You can just block the app yourself if it bothers you that much.
  • O_o I have not tried that...
  • I'm pretty sure you can block people from sending you invites too
  • It always surprises me how many people actually don't know this.
  • it's so annoying, they even get mad at you if you send them something. (i send really really few game shit, only when the time is ending and i'm still far from the 90 uses goal to unlock Tetris Blitz's power-ups) "I don't play tetris, wah wah..." Just Block it, bitch. just like i have blocked your farm mania, ganster war, whatever you send me everyday.
  • Still leaks through to mobile
  • And in the process will further quash small business and legit content...
  • As an avid follower of many underground bands, I can say that the posts usually try to engage the reader: (ex, what's your favorite song from our debut album) this honestly shouldn't affect them too much. At least, I hope not..
  • Still mostly spam. "Buy my shit!" "No!"
  • No more horoscopes?? :D
  • About freakin' time!
  • About time. Specially as an recording artist this is getting out of control my fan page has already many blocks in it and still is getting spammed.
  • Fb. Good Luck.
  • Fucking finally !!! Fucking took you forever !!!
  • grow up, you should be able to vocalize your thoughts a but better than that
  • Yo man, calm down. That's what's actually running on my mind when you spend a few years reading spam posts. And im not being being inappropriate or anything im just expressing what everyone on this forum wants to say but thinks its inappropriate to say it
  • Rationalize much?
  • not only is your comment inappropriate, but its directed at the wrong people; you really think cursing your immature mouth off in the wpcentral comment section and forums is going to make its merry way to facebooks personnel? im amazed your comment managed not to get deleted by mods, but they have enough stool to sift through
  • Listen Mr. inappropriate, when I first posted my comment I had no intensions or hope for it to reach anyone and im not addressing the wpcentral admins or any member on the forum. The word that you're describing as inappropriate which is fucking isn't really inappropriate. If you came up to me 10 years ago and told me that this word is inappropriate I would say "yeah sure , im so sorry" nowadays life is being really annoying and its pissing every single one of us. This ultimately led humans to use "fucking" as a way to exaggerated things when words like "very" or "so much" fails to do so. So I personally think that writing "fucking" in my comment TWICE doesn't hurt anyone and is simply expressing my emotions. Thank you
  • Get over yourself.
  • Please tell me you're not addressing me
  • Yes f*cking,it f*cking took them a f*cking long f*cking time.i don't f*cking understand f*cking why this f*cking happened .
  • Thank you ! You're the man
  • Like
  • Yep, had to delete friends because of that crap!
  • A reduction in spam?  Yeah right.  Just as they get ready to push unwanted advertisement videos on us soon.
  • Exactly. I bet this will work just as good as when they introduced sort by highlighted stories. This basicly started the death of my fb friends. 50% has basically stopped posting since then.
  • Even auto playing my friends video is annoying enough. Why waste my bandwidth playing a video I don't want to watch? Then if I choose to watch it i have to pause play it to get sound, and its already half way through. Such a dumb feature.
  • Good move....Facebook
  • I'm mostly sick of the ads in my news feed. Fix that Facebook!
  • Exactly
  • Like if you'd like WPCentral to block all comments with the word "faster"!!!
  • +920
  • Can I turn in a friend who is a serial "like if you agree" poster? Basically digital bumper stickers: "Honk if you love Jesus."
  • Finally facebook took action against these pathetic activities. I'll be glad to not see another "Like if you have compassion for human beings/animals/sad situations, Ignore if you're a sadistic douchebag who has no soul" post.
  • +925 hope so!
  • That great. Less spam to go with the extremely reduced legitimate content they've already removed. Facebook sucks. I hate you.
  • Finally, I've had to unlike several pages because of that. It's great to know that they are finally taking action on this issue.
  • I'm going to wait to see this in action before I make a final call, but I'm suspicious.  We'll still see FACEBOOK's spammy messages. What could easily happen is that a meme that is being passed around gets blocked because it has spam-like activity, which most things that are viral are going to have.  My friend just asked me to vote for something for her kids' school on an external link.  Will those get blocked? This is a big undertaking and I can see Facebook overreaching in the name of spam protection.
  • I'll be glad to not see another "spam news post if you have compassion for human beings/animals/sad situations, Ignore if you're a sadistic douchebag who has no soul" posts. cause that's seriously what http://www.bidnessetc.com/company/fb/
  • People still use Facebook? Lol
  • I always report whenever I see a spammy, misleading, nonsense, or violent post, but there has never been any takedown. C'mon Facebook, why even make the report button when you're doing nothing to fix it?
  • Meanwhile, Facebook disables link sharing. Yeah, now I can't share a WPC article unless in the app or by C&Ping the URL. Asshats.
  • Deactivate Facebook.
  • I don't get spam I get fucking ads, what are Facebook going to do about them? Oh, that's right, nothing.
  • If FB can't stop annoying ads that I don't want, I would like to stop posting on Facebook.
  • The only one I don't agree with, is the frequently shared. If my band makes a post about a show, and all my fans share it, and so on, and Facebook blocks those posts, doesn't that defeat the purpose? Or am I misunderstanding? The other two, I totally agree with.
  • Add the stupid game requests to the list.