Meta introduced on Monday that it’s going to take extra measures to crack down on accounts sharing “unoriginal” content material to Fb, which means people who repeatedly reuse another person’s textual content, pictures, or movies. This 12 months, Meta has already taken down round 10 million profiles that have been impersonating massive content material producers, it mentioned.
Plus, it has taken motion in opposition to 500,000 accounts that have been engaged in “spammy conduct or pretend 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 into simpler to generate with the assistance of AI expertise.
Like YouTube, Meta says it gained’t penalize customers who’re partaking with different folks’s content material, doing issues like making response movies, becoming a member of a development, or including their very own takes. As an alternative, Meta’s focus is on the reposting of others’ content material, both on spam accounts or people who faux 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 is going to additionally cut 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.
Picture Credit:Meta
The replace arrives as Meta weathers criticism from customers throughout its platforms, together with Instagram, about faulty, over-enforcement of its insurance policies by way of automated means. A petition with practically 30,000 signatures asks Meta to repair the problem with wrongfully disabled accounts and its lack of human help, which has customers feeling deserted and has damage many small companies. Meta has not but publicly addressed the problem, regardless of consideration from press and different high-profile creators.
Whereas Meta’s latest crackdown is concentrated 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 into flooded with AI slop, a time period referencing low-quality media content material made utilizing generative AI. On YouTube, as an illustration, it’s simple to discover an AI voice overlaid on pictures, video clips, or different repurposed content material, due to text-to-video AI instruments.
Meta’s replace seemingly solely focuses on reused content material, however its publish means that it could be taking AI slop into consideration, too. In a piece the place the corporate provides “ideas” for making unique content material, Meta notes that creators shouldn’t simply be “stitching collectively clips” or including their watermark when utilizing content material from different sources, and they need to concentrate on “genuine storytelling,” not quick movies providing little worth.
With out instantly saying so, a lot of these unoriginal movies are additionally issues that AI instruments have made it simpler to provide, as low-quality movies will usually characteristic a sequence of simply pictures or clips (both actual or AI), with added AI narration.
Within the publish, 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 needs to be prime quality, which might imply reducing down on the usage of automated AI captions that aren’t edited by the creator.
Picture Credit:Meta
Meta says these adjustments will roll out step by step over the months forward, so Fb creators have time to regulate. If creators assume their content material isn’t being distributed, they will view the brand new post-level insights in Fb’s Skilled Dashboard to see why.
Creators may also be capable of see in the event that they’re liable to content material advice or monetization penalties within the Assist residence display screen from their Web page or skilled profile’s predominant menu.
Meta sometimes shares details about its content material takedowns in its quarterly Transparency Studies. Within the final quarter, Meta mentioned that 3% of its worldwide month-to-month lively customers on Fb have been pretend accounts, and it had taken motion on 1 billion pretend accounts from January by way of March 2025.
Extra lately, Meta has backed away from fact-checking content material itself in favor of Neighborhood Notes within the U.S., just like X, which permits customers and contributors to find out if posts comply with Meta’s Neighborhood Requirements and are correct.
