In a bold move to revamp user experience, Facebook targets spammy content by slashing its reach and cutting off monetization for offending accounts. On Thursday, Meta announced a sweeping crackdown aimed at cleaning up the platform and restoring its original appeal. CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls this the return to “OG Facebook.”
Meta designed the initiative to discourage manipulative behavior. Focusing more on accounts that try to game the system for higher visibility and unfair financial gain. The result of this spammy activity is a flood of low-quality, misleading, or irrelevant posts that disrupt the user experience. Facebook targets spammy content now more aggressively than ever, marking a major shift in its approach.
To combat this, Facebook is specifically penalizing behaviors such as sharing posts with overly long captions packed with irrelevant hashtags or posting mismatched images and captions—for example, a picture of a dog with unrelated text about airplane facts. Although such posts may not always be malicious in intent, they clutter feeds and push down meaningful, authentic content.
Moreover, Meta is taking steps to dismantle large spam networks—groups of accounts that coordinate to distribute the same low-value content across the platform. These networks will no longer be eligible for monetization, a move that could discourage bad actors from trying to profit off the platform in unethical ways.
In addition to reducing the reach of spammy content, Facebook is also going after fake engagement. Facebook will show disingenuous or coordinated comments less often, further protecting the integrity of conversations on the platform. To enhance this effort, Facebook is testing a new feature allowing users to mark comments as off-topic or irrelevant.
As part of its broader crackdown, the company is also refining its tools for comment management. It will soon automatically hide comments from suspected fake identities. This action will also give creators better tools to report impersonators directly from their post threads.
Notably, these changes come at a time when “AI slop”—low-effort, AI-generated content—is becoming increasingly common across social media. Facebook had clarified that the new rules don’t specifically target AI-generated content. However, any AI material shared in a spammy way will fall under this enforcement.
All of this aligns with Facebook’s broader plan to improve content relevance in users’ feeds. Just weeks ago, the platform launched a redesigned “Friends” tab. The features of this platform only post from users’ actual friends—excluding suggested or promoted content. This redesign, combined with the current clampdown, reflects a clear message: Facebook wants to prioritize authentic human interaction again.
Zuckerberg’s desire to return to Facebook’s roots isn’t just philosophical. Internal emails from 2022 revealed that he was worried about the platform’s declining cultural relevance. With these changes, Facebook is not just reacting—it’s actively steering its future.
Facebook targets spammy content as part of a multi-pronged strategy to restore trust, encourage quality content, and ensure users see more of what really matters: posts from real people, not spam or artificial noise.
