Facebook is cracking down on excessively promotional posts

Facebook plans to start deprecating newsfeed posts from brand pages that it sees as “too promotional,” according to a blog post late Friday. These types of posts aggravate users more than usual and they’d rather not see them. Ads that brands have to pay to place in newsfeed, however, are apparently fine, according to an evaluation Facebook did with users.

Facebook announced that it intends to crack down on “promotional content” from brands, citing feedback on Friday from users who complained about too much hucksterism in their News Feeds. Such content was showing up in the form of status updates from brands that consumers had Liked at one time or another. Starting in January, updates with a promotional bent won’t show up in users’ News Feeds as much, thanks to an algorithm tweak. Rebecca Lieb, an industry analyst with the Altimeter Group, said Facebook’s move sounds similar to Google’s quality score, a ratings system the search giant has been using for years to weed out ads with clunky copy.