Facebook to demote stolen content on the News Feed

MANILA, Philippines – Facebook said on Tuesday, October 16, it will now downrank sites which scrape and publish stolen content on the News Feed.

“Starting today, we’re rolling out an update so people see fewer posts that link out to low-quality sites that predominantly copy and republish content from other sites without providing unique value. We are adjusting our Publish Guidelines accordingly,” Facebook wrote in an update to a post from May 10, 2017.

According to a TechCrunch report, the social network’s systems identify stolen content by comparing the main text of a page with other text from the web to find matches. When it matches to a certain degree, Facebook predicts which one of the links is the likely content scraper, based on whether the content has clickbait titles and the quality of a site’s ads.

Facebook reportedly learned through surveys and interviews that its users do not like scraped content.

The update, meanwhile, fits with the social network’s efforts against low-quality content that can flood the site at times. It also helps news publishers in protecting its intellectual property and reducing traffic and ad revenue to content scraper websites. – Rappler.com