Engagement bait is not a moderation problem but a structural one: ranking and retrieval systems optimized on engagement as a proxy for relevance will surface whatever maximizes interaction counts, and such bait can only be durably fixed by changing what retrieval measures—moving from behavior to meaning.

At first glance, this question might sound like a moderation problem that you can simply solve by enforcing better content policies and classifying posts that are engagement bait. However, the problem is much deeper. It often sits inside the component that decides which posts become part of a user's feed in the first place... However, the problem is that this type of engagement is also easy to manufacture. For example, a post that opens with "comment DONE if you're a real engineer" collects clicks and replies while delivering little value. But a ranking function tuned to reward interaction will promote it even though it is clearly an engagement bait. For years, the countermeasures against this were heuristics and demotions applied after ranking, but such an approach hasn't eliminated the problem. Accounts producing bait always find ways around such measures... A more durable fix changes what retrieval measures in the first place, and this happens by moving from behavior to meaning.

Read full article ↗excerpt · fair-use quotation