You will never believe this! Facebook research scientist Khalid El-Arini and product specialist Joyce Tang said that the social network is cracking down on articles that have click-bait headlines. According to Facebook, click-baiting is when a publisher posts links with headlines that encourages people to click to see more without offering much information about what will be viewed.
Facebook is making these changes because they asked users in an initial survey about the type of content that is preferred in the News Feed. About 80% of the time people said that they preferred headlines that helped them decide if they wanted to read the full article before clicking through. Facebook said that the click-bait headlines may “drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.”
Here is an example of what clickbait looks like:
Facebook also announced that links should be posted in a "link format" instead of sharing them in captions of photos and status updates. The posts that have links in the captions will be given less priority in the News Feed. For example, this is the wrong way to post links:
Facebook said that the link format makes it easier for someone to determine if they want to click through the content. This is the right way to post links:
“Over time, stories with ‘click-bait’ headlines can drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about,” said Facebook in a blog post. Determining whether content is “click-bait” can be rather subjective, but Facebook has two methods to make a judgment:
1.) Facebook will monitor how much time people spend on a link after clicking on it. If users go back to Facebook right away after clicking on a link, then it may suggest that they did not find something that was wanted.
2.) Facebook will look at the ratio of the people clicking on content compared to comments and shares. If many people click the links without liking or commenting on the post when they return, then it may be a click-bait article.
Click-bait websites are not the only ones that will notice a change on the News Feed. Earlier this month, Facebook started adding a [Satire] tag to articles that were published by The Onion and other news parody websites. The [Satire] tag appears in the “related articles” box under posted links and appears only if you visited the article. In April, Facebook said that it was going to penalize Pages that excessively posts repeated content and encourages like-baiting. Like-baiting is when a post asks News Feed readers directly to like, comment or share a post.
With over one billion users, Facebook drives a lot of traffic to publisher websites. This is why changes in the News Feed are closely watched. Facebook said that a small set of publishers will notice a drop in distribution as part of the change.
What are your thoughts click-bait articles being suppressed on the News Feed? Do you think it sounds like a good idea or a bad idea? Let us know in the comments below! We want to hear from you!
