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Facebook Cleans Up News Feed By Reducing Click-Bait Headlines
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook today announced further plans to clean up the News Feed by reducing stories with click-bait headlines as well as stories that have links shared in the captions of photos or within status updates. The move comes just four months after the social network reduced Like-baiting posts, repeated content, and spammy links."
Title speaks for itself ;-)
I can see the headline now:
Facebook decides to change policy and you wouldn't believe what happened next!
Fuck Buzzfeed with a rusty buzzsaw.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Answer: The answer to all questions posted in a headline, is of course "NO!"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you don't already know, the real value of facebook is the content that people post and the data mining that takes place behind the scenes. These social networks are a huge "SELL TO ME" sign that glows brighter with every like, repost, and share. I'm not surprised that the $$$ machine want's to control the content, they don't need us urinating in the same well we drink from.
After reading a shameful article praising clickbait I realize the term isn't negative enough. "Bait" can be good or bad. Instead, please call them "misleading headlines" or "incomplete headlines" or "editorializing headlines."
Often there may be an interesting tidbit in the clickbait articles, but it's obviously annoying to have to actually click on them and find the actual sentence of info buried in 5 paragraphs of fluff and 20 ads.
There are some Twitter feeds that spoil the clickbait from it (https://twitter.com/SavedYouAClick is probably the most "useful" at this) but it'd be nice to automate the process so that when someone posted any headline with clickbait, Facebook would just drop the answer right below. Actually a browser plugin would work even better, since it could work on any site.
...FB just banned their existence.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
They need to be careful and make sure they don't reduce Robin Williams tributes or Ice Bucket Challenges. Otherwise there won't be anything left :(
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
'Nuff said
Did you notice the "use our API for links" bit at the end? Let's be honest here clickbait is far more nuanced than any algorithm could predict. FB is likely doing this for 2 reasons, neither of which actually give users better content (and would you really want FB to decide that for you anyways?)
1) They want to appear to be on the user's side
2) They want to force everyone to use their API link format - so they can better track links and clicks.
I'm sure this will remove the lowest of the low-hanging-fruit, and that's good. But let's be clear about FB's motivation here.
Mainstream news outlets are a lot more guilty of clickbait headlines than Buzzfeed. Don't get me wrong, Buzzfeed is a dopey website, but the mainstream sites have taken it to a whole 'nother level.
If you use the twitter, the absolutely best follow is someone called, "@SavedYouAClick", who basically takes clickbait headlines and defuses them by reading the article and giving you the bit you actually might want to know, saving you from having to click and a barrage of ads and trackers. They're really really useful, and now whenever I see clickbait, before I even think of clicking, I go see @SavedYouAClick. I wish I knew who it was so I could thank them personally.
For example, from the other day:
or,
My favorite is when @SavedYouAClick really nails some sacred cow:
You are welcome on my lawn.
At first I was laughing, but the end of this video just blew my mind !
Now cue-in hordes of facebook users who will inevitably start to complain that facebook changed again their interface, and now it sucks, and that's it, they are going to deleter their account. Definitely. I swear it.
Like at each of the other 5 big changes over the last year.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is solely about viral marketing and Facebook ad revenue. Preventing people from seeing naturally shared articles will prevent things from naturally going viral. In order to get views marketers will need to pay for views.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
turned off Top Stories yet?
It's bullshit that one has to reset a boolean preference every few days for something no one wants.
And every annoying "Name a word without the letter F. Bet you can't" post.
I know another place where there is a lot of click-bait links and summaries.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Seriously. It's bad enough with an extension to block auto playing videos, but on a computer where the videos auto play you could hook up a hydroelectric generator to all that falling water and sell the power to raise money for charity.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If only Slashdot could do the same
//TODO: create a signature
n/t