Due to the nature of links being shared on social media platforms like Facebook, it’s hard to tell what an article is about especially when clickbait headlines are being used. Typically it ends up being a waste of time and is almost never what the article would suggest, but since the user has clicked it and the page is viewed, it counts as a hit for the publisher.
However the good news is that if you’re getting a bit sick of seeing such articles from showing up on your News Feed, you’re in luck as Facebook is working on reducing them. This isn’t the first time Facebook is addressing the issue, so today’s update is basically an improvement over what’s been done before.
According to Facebook, “First, we are now taking into account clickbait at the individual post level in addition to the domain and Page level, in order to more precisely reduce clickbait headlines. Second, in order to make this more effective, we are dividing our efforts into two separate signals — so we will now look at whether a headline withholds information or if it exaggerates information separately.” Facebook has also announced that they are testing this with other languages.
Hopefully what this will result in is a cleaner News Feed without clickbait articles surfacing, so if you are noticing less or none of these types of articles, then it looks like Facebook has done a good job.
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