Meta introduced on Monday that it’s going to take extra measures to crack down on accounts sharing “unoriginal” content material to Fb, that means those who repeatedly reuse another person’s textual content, pictures, or movies. This 12 months, Meta has already taken down round 10 million profiles that had been impersonating massive content material creators, it mentioned.
Plus, it has taken motion towards 500,000 accounts that had been engaged in “spammy behavior or fake engagement.” These actions have included issues like demoting the accounts’ feedback and decreasing the distribution of their content material to stop the accounts from monetizing.
The replace from Meta follows solely days after YouTube mentioned it was additionally clarifying its coverage round unoriginal content material, together with mass-produced and repetitive movies — issues which have turn out to be simpler to generate with the assistance of AI expertise.
Like YouTube, Meta says it gained’t penalize customers who’re participating with different individuals’s content material, doing issues like making response movies, becoming a member of a pattern, or including their very own takes. As a substitute, Meta’s focus is on the reposting of others’ content material, both on spam accounts or those who fake to belong to the unique creator.
Accounts that abuse the system by repeatedly reusing another person’s content material will lose entry to Fb monetization packages for a time period and see lowered distribution of their posts, the corporate mentioned. When Fb detects duplicate movies, it should additionally scale back the distribution of the copies to make sure the unique creator will get the views and credit score.
As well as, the corporate mentioned it’s testing a system that provides hyperlinks on duplicate movies that time viewers to the unique content material.
The replace arrives as Meta weathers criticism from customers throughout its platforms, together with Instagram, about misguided, over-enforcement of its insurance policies by automated means. A petition with practically 30,000 signatures asks Meta to repair the difficulty with wrongfully disabled accounts and its lack of human assist, which has customers feeling deserted and has harm many small companies. Meta has not but publicly addressed the difficulty, regardless of consideration from press and different high-profile creators.
Whereas Meta’s latest crackdown is targeted extra on accounts that steal others’ content material for revenue, points round unoriginal content material are rising.
With the rise of AI expertise, platforms have turn out to be flooded with AI slop, a time period referencing low-quality media content material made utilizing generative AI. On YouTube, for occasion, it’s straightforward to discover an AI voice overlaid on pictures, video clips, or different repurposed content material, because of text-to-video AI instruments.
Meta’s replace seemingly solely focuses on reused content material, however its submit means that it could be taking AI slop into consideration, too. In a piece the place the corporate provides “tips” for making authentic content material, Meta notes that creators shouldn’t simply be “stitching together clips” or including their watermark when utilizing content material from different sources, and they need to deal with “authentic storytelling,” not quick movies providing little worth.
With out immediately saying so, all these unoriginal movies are additionally issues that AI instruments have made it simpler to supply, as low-quality movies will typically function a collection of simply pictures or clips (both actual or AI), with added AI narration.
Within the submit, Meta additionally warns creators to not reuse content material from different apps or sources, which has been a longstanding rule. It additionally notes that video captions ought to be prime quality, which might imply slicing down on using automated AI captions that aren’t edited by the creator.
Meta says these adjustments will roll out regularly over the months forward, so Fb creators have time to regulate. If creators suppose their content material isn’t being distributed, they’ll view the brand new post-level insights in Fb’s Skilled Dashboard to see why.
Creators may even be capable to see in the event that they’re prone to content material advice or monetization penalties within the Help residence display screen from their Web page or skilled profile’s foremost menu.
Meta sometimes shares details about its content material takedowns in its quarterly Transparency Stories. Within the final quarter, Meta mentioned that 3% of its worldwide month-to-month lively customers on Fb had been faux accounts, and it had taken motion on 1 billion faux accounts from January by March 2025.
Extra not too long ago, Meta has backed away from fact-checking content material itself in favor of Group Notes within the U.S., just like X, which permits customers and contributors to find out if posts observe Meta’s Group Requirements and are correct.
