Changes To Facebook ‘Like-gating’ Rules

New rules from Facebook, which come into effect on 5th November, will mean that companies and brands encouraging customers to ‘like’ their pages in order to participate in competitions or win coupons will have to stop the practice, or risk being removed from the site, Ragan reports.

The practice, which is commonly known as ‘like-gating’, is widely used by companies wishing to generate more likes and wider engagement. The changes to Facebook’s Platform Policy states that “effective November 5th, 2014, you may no longer incentivise people to like your app’s Page” – the new rules mean that companies may only encourage people to “log into your app, like your app’s Page, enter a promotion on your app’s Page, or check-in at a place” but any other actions are banned.

The information was published on the Facebook Developer Blog and went on to add the reasoning behind this change in policy, stating that the alterations will help “ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them”, and mean that users of the site “like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives.”

It is common for brands to experience an artificial boost in ‘likes’ by promoting contests for users to enter if they ‘like’ a page, however once the competition is over it is normal for such businesses to experience a sudden drop in their likes, or for users who only liked the page in order to win the prize to lose interest in the brand. But businesses shouldn’t panic about these changes, The Next Web claims, and should focus on creating a better strategy for increasing a user base rather than relying on the practice of ‘like-gating.’