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."

Comments

Facebook just changed the game

[phorm]

I can see the headline now:
Facebook decides to change policy and you wouldn't believe what happened next!

Re:Facebook just changed the game

[swb]

Cut the spam in your newsfeed with this one simple trick! Facebook hates this!

Stop there

[kamapuaa]

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 :(

Buzzfeed's not nearly the worst

[PopeRatzo]

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:

No you haven’t. RT @EliteDaily: Apparently You’ve Been Tying Your Shoes The Wrong Way Your Entire Life:

or,

Nope. RT @HuffingtonPost: Is Jennifer Lawrence starring in Quentin Tarantino's next movie?

My favorite is when @SavedYouAClick really nails some sacred cow:

"Change your passwords" and "don't be stupid." RT @CNNMoney: Ok so you've been hacked. Now what? Here's what to do right now:

Re:10 secrets Facebook doesn't want you to know

[Half-pint HAL]

I just hope they use image recognition to eliminate my latest pet hate: the click-bait pages that use a screen grab of a youtube video, play button and all, as their thumbnail, trying to convince you it's just a shared video rather than a link.

Re:Stop calling them clickbait

[s.petry]

Clickbait in print is called "sensationalism". It defines some genres of media (tabloids) and was avoided until recently by companies that were considered higher caliber journalism. That we have no "news" above sensationalism today is telling in my opinion.

With all the hyper sensationalism today, I would be interested in seeing a large "news" site like "The Guardian" drop the sensationalism for a few weeks and see what happens. I'm guessing that readership may actually increase, if for no other reason than the appearance of being different. In a society full of bullshit a little bit of honesty may go a long way.

Could be a pipe dream too, not everyone is intelligent or worried about honesty.