People are slipping fake baby and marriage announcements into Facebook posts to trick the algorithm into boosting their posts

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019.

• Facebook users are trying to trick the social network into showing their posts to more people by adding keywords about major life events to them.
• People believe that Facebook prioritizes posts about weddings, babies, new jobs, and the like, so they're falsely claiming to be hitting these milestones to promote unrelated posts.
• It's not totally clear if the social network does actually do this - but over the last few years, the belief has spread widely among its users.
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Wily Facebook users in search of more publicity for their posts are trying to game the social network by adding fake engagement and pregnancy announcements into their posts.

Facebook doesn't always show a user's posts to everyone they're friends with; instead, the company's opaque algorithm selects a subset of people to show it to, meaning posts it deems uninteresting can get lost in the digital ether. In an attempt to get around this, in recent years some Facebook users have taken to adding buzzwords and phrases like "getting married" or "having a baby" in to their posts.

The assumption is that Facebook's algorithm views posts about these major life events as more important - and prioritizes them at the top of people's news feeds.

This nominal Facebook hack has been floating around for years. Back in 2014, it was pioneered by a then-director at Fusion, who stuck a bunch of keywords like "congratulations" and "new job" in a post - resulting in it appearing at the top of friends' Facebook news feeds for days. 

But since then, it has quietly trickled down to the wider population - and now savvy Facebookers will frequently stick these messages in their posts in an attempt to reach more people.

For example, Twitter user Eben Marks remarked this week that they had used it to juice their reach when trying to get more people to register to vote in the UK before the deadline:

And a friend of mine who's a journalist also tried to cash in on the method earlier this year to request help on a story from their friends:

Rob Price/BI

(Personal information redacted.)

Users of the method seem convinced of its efficacy - but it's not totally clear if it still works. 

It could be that posts that deliberately make use of the buzzwords garner more engagement because the user's friends find the attempt to trick the system novel and amusing, or that they are typically affixed to more engaging posts anyway. Similarly, posts about weddings, babies, new jobs and the like seem highly likely to get above-average levels of engagement on Facebook, regardless of whether or not the algorithm is artificially boosting them. (The algorithm is known to boost posts that are driving engagement, regardless of keywords, meaning there's a virtuous cycle effect for these posts.)

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to a request for clarification on whether the "hack" works - but for now, if you see Facebook posts with random buzzwords in, this is why.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)

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