When is a company's Facebook post not an ad?

Facebook has decided to exert more control over posts that it deems "overly promotional." Ultimately, though, isn't every Facebook post by a company promotional?

Are the people Facebook is putting first its users? Or is the profit motive too hard to resist? James Martin/CNET

How human are corporations?

This thought has been niggling at me like a dyspeptic cornerback all weekend. I've been thinking, you see, about Facebook suddenly deciding to curtail companies' enthusiasm for posting overly commercial messages to the site.

The pain, so Facebook says, is felt by the users, who don't want to see too many corporate messages. The pain, so I suspect, is felt by Facebook, which realizes that there's a lot more money to be made from companies.

Now it'll be harder for brands to post "overly promotional" messages. Well, it'll be easy to do it. It's just that Facebook may easily make these posts disappear into its algorithmic ether, where commercial messages float in a nothingness and have only each other to talk to.

It's odd to think that brands would be on Facebook for any other reason than to be promotional. Altruism is rarely at the heart of a brand's mission statement. (Yes, even Facebook's.)

Facebook's true purpose in this latest move -- a wild guess, this -- is to get brands to pay more money for "conventional" ads. Given that the company says Facebookers won't suddenly see more ads, the price of those ads to corporations will surely rise.

The company's new delineation of which posts will be deemed overly promotional and which ones won't is curious. As my colleague Ian Sherr describes, it includes: "ones that encourage people to buy a product, install an app, sign up for sweepstakes or reuse the content from an ad."

What possible reason could there be for a company to post something to Facebook, other than to encourage people to buy its product? Every corporate post on Facebook is, in some sense, advertising.

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When is a company's Facebook post not an ad?