“BUY THIS!” “INSTALL NOW!’ “CONTEST!” Facebook (FB) is about to start punishing business Pages that publish spammy, aggressive marketing posts with these kind of words to the News Feed. Facebook will show them to a lot fewer of their fans, even if the Page paid for ads to get those fans. After a study of 500,000 users found they wanted to see less promotional content, and that the majority of the posts that annoyed them weren’t ads, but organically displayed posts from Pages they Liked, Facebook decided to change the rules.

The sanctions will go into effect in January 2015, so some businesses will be forced to change their Page publishing strategies soon or see their organic reach drop, which can be devastating to referral traffic.

Though done in the name of improving the quality of the News Feed for its users, the whole situation is a disturbing bait-and-switch. For years, Facebook has pushed businesses to buy ads that score them Likes for their Pages so they can reach them for free via News Feed. Facebook didn’t say there would be any restrictions on what businesses could put in those feed posts. Suddenly, Likes will become a lot less valuable, especially for direct response businesses that use the feed to sell things.

For example, here Facebook says “When more people like your Facebook Page, it helps you build your reputation, stay connected with the people who support you and find new customers.” It then suggests one great way to do that is to “Create an ad to promote your Page.”  Nowhere does Facebook mention that despite buying fans so it can stay connected with them, it will punish Pages for publishing posts like this:

The decrease in organic Page post reach is why this has become an issue. As people add more friends and Like more Pages who are all sharing more content to the feed, but the amount of time people spend reading the feed stays roughly the same, it creates added competition that leads to a decrease in reach for everyone’s posts.