Dark post: what is it and why has Facebook abolished this practice?
Ecommerce

Dark post: what is it and why has Facebook abolished this practice?

Jamesflick
Jamesflick
8 min read

Dark Post? That's what you read! Before, it was possible to create “dark” campaigns on Facebook to reach a certain share of the public. Understanding why this practice was abolished is essential to avoid falling into traps and taking advantage of this platform.

Whether you're starting to produce content on Facebook or not, the dark post can sound sinister at first.

But in practice, it just had the dark name itself. We used the past tense because Facebook Dark Posts no longer exist.

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That is, if you heard about this practice and were looking for how to put it into practice, forget it.

But that's history towards the end of our text. Before that, let's know what they were, and why this technique was interesting for companies.

Get a better understanding of this exciting narrative from the dark side in the following topics:

What is Facebook dark posts?

Why did Facebook take down the strategy?

Invest in best practices on Facebook so you don't go to the dark side of the force!

What is Facebook dark posts?

First of all, unfortunately the dark post has nothing to do with the Star Wars universe.

This is because the Facebook dark posts, or unpublished page post, were sponsored posts created by brands, but which were not on the timeline of the fan page from which they were generated.

In this way, they only appeared in the timeline of a specific group of people, defined according to the company's outreach interests.

For this, the dark post could be segmented from different categories such as age, region, relationship with the brand, etc.

That's because the goal of Facebook Dark Posts was to enable the creation of content aimed at specific groups of people, without filling the timeline of those who already know you with publications.

Why did companies use Facebook dark posts?

Companies used the dark post to better target their posts, without overwhelming users and followers.

For example, if you had a department store, your customers are from different segments. So not all content is going to be equally relevant to everyone.

Just as if you had a car seat promotion, you wouldn't show this promotion to your entire audience, including minors, for obvious reasons.

In other words, taking this into account, the right thing would be to create a new, more targeted campaign, instead of not publishing it, isn't it?

That was where the dark post came in, which allowed the creation and forwarding of this promotion only to people from São Paulo, over 25 years old and male, for example.

Thus, this type of action not only avoids the excessive presence of your brand on the timeline, but also ensures a better ROI (return on investment) rate.

In other words, the sponsored and hidden post was able to generate more engagement, as it only appeared to those who already had social relationships with the subject.

For that, the way of making dark post was similar to the current procedure for Facebook ads, but with that more detailed targeting process with the option of not posting on the timeline.

Why did Facebook take down the strategy?

The main mission of the social network Facebook is to “connect” people. This is always highlighted by CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in his profile.

And it can be said that this goal was more than successful: after all, in January 2018 there were already more than 2 billion people on the social network.

But just as Facebook's announced updates highlighted in February 2018, the social network team realized that the mass present in the timelines was mostly from companies and was much more frequent than that of actual users.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this vision of the social network happened after the current BOOM of fake news.

And you might think:

"But what do companies have to do with fake news?" Or even what is the relationship of this information with dark posts Facebook ads?

Well, Facebook was not responsible for analyzing the content of all sponsored posts, as the idea is that everyone can speak their minds.

But the presence of large (and small) communication vehicles took this thought much further.

This is because this lack of “oversight” opened up a margin for anyone who had a fan page and made the payment, would have their content not only published, but also boosted.

Whether it's real or not.

So, in the case of dark posts facebook ads, the aggravating factor was even greater, since the content was not even linked to the companies' timelines.

Furthermore, they could only be seen by a few users, increasing the chances of influencing user opinions from fake news.

Thus, Facebook has strongly positioned itself against this practice, eliminating resources that can help cover up this type of behavior from the team's social networks.

Therefore, in 2017 dark posts Facebook ads were removed from the sponsored ad options.

In addition to dark posts, other functions were removed and even added to ensure greater transparency within the social network.

And even linked to sponsored posts, the option of political posts was added, where it is possible to know the amount paid for any partisan post.

Elections

The greatness of this fake news movement on the networks is still not clear ?

Well, in an article published by Estadão , Mark Zuckerberg himself announced that after accusations that Facebook had influenced the US presidential elections in 2016, surveys and studies were carried out within the social network throughout the US election period. American.

After the results, the CEO reported that more than 50,000 paid advertisements (including dark post) were published by an alleged Russian organization that intended to influence the 2016 elections.

Although it is not possible to say that the publications of these dark posts Facebook ads are really related to the results of the polls, the social network found it better to work to prevent this type of situation from happening again.

Currently, the platform is already applying the new policy to all the others, such as WhatsApp, which, according to an article published by Jornal Internacional El País , will also start to indicate which messages were forwarded.

In addition, the application will limit the forwarding to only 20 conversations at a time, in order to avoid the proliferation of fake news.

Invest in best practices on Facebook so you don't go to the dark side of the force!

So, whether you were researching how to make a dark post or just researching, now you know that it was not only removed, but also the reasons that led to this decision by the social network.

In addition, this is the kind of case that can highlight the importance of quality content, and that real references and foundations generate credibility for everything that is published.

If you want to know other techniques for Facebook, or Digital Marketing, keep following the contents of the Ideal Marketing Blog .

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