On Thursday, the company announced it was cracking down on spam content that was crowding out authentic creators and “hurting” the Facebook experience.

Meta said that accounts “gaming distribution and engagement” will see fewer views and monetization. This includes posts with unrelated captions and excessive hashtags.

Meta also said it was taking “aggressive steps on Facebook to prevent” spam networks that aim to generate fake engagement. The company said it was testing a comments feature so people can signal irrelevant comments that don’t fit the spirit of the conversation. 

The company said it was part of an effort to make the Facebook Feed more relevant to users and help creators break through on the platform.

“We’ve heard you. Facebook Feed doesn’t always serve up fresh, engaging posts that you consistently enjoy. We’re working on it. We’re making a number of changes this year to improve Feed, help creators break through and give people more control over how content is personalized to them,” the company said in a blog post.

The changes may also be an effort to crack down on AI slop, which refers to low-effort, mass-produced AI-generated content. The rise of this kind of AI content can clog feeds and degrade user experience as platforms driven by engagement algorithms end up prioritizing whatever content generates clicks and views, regardless of quality.

AI slop floods user feeds with repetitive or irrelevant posts, making it harder for authentic human voices or meaningful content to surface. This kind of “digital clutter” could pose an issue for social media companies by driving users away rather than keeping them engaged.

“OG Facebook”

The changes are part of Zuckerberg’s broad aim to take Facebook back to its roots of authentic and meaningful content. In a January earnings call, he said returning the platform to “OG Facebook” was one of Meta’s key goals for the year.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities to make [Facebook] way more culturally influential than it is today,” he said at the time.

The move follows Meta’s introduction of a revamped “Friends” tab for Facebook that only showcases updates from accounts users are connected to.

Zuckerberg’s fears over Facebook’s cultural relevance

Emails made public as part of Meta’s trial with the FTC show that Zuckerberg has been worried about Facebook’s waning cultural relevance for some time.

The CEO even suggested wiping everyone’s Facebook friends and making users start again to boost the platform’s relevance.

“Option 1. Double down on Friending,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2022 message to senior Meta executives. “One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again.”

Tom Alison, the head of Facebook at the time, cautioned that such a move could undermine critical platform functionality, particularly on Instagram.

Though the proposal was never implemented, as Zuckerberg noted in court, the email reveals how concerned Meta was with remaining competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.