“The dog went into the chimney and what he does next is adorable”
“She saw a rat in the kitchen and what happens next made laugh so bad”
Are you sick of seeing stuff like this on your Facebook feed? Well, these click-baits will not be your problem anymore. The social media network in a blog post announced that it has made another update to its news feed that will help filter out these articles.
“We’ve heard from people that they specifically want to see fewer stories with click-bait headlines or link titles. These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer. For example: “When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS… I Was SHOCKED!”; “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe” said Facebook.
According to the blog post, the objective of news feed is to provide people with relevant stories, ranking them in a manner that what’s important to an user should show up on the top of the list.
“First, we categorized tens of thousands of headlines as click-bait by considering two key points: if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is and if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader,” it added.
Facebook has recently been making some big changes to the News feed. Like the new update which brings more stories from your friends than pages.
Several major publications have been seen using misleading headlines to push their articles. Since Facebook does not have SEO system like Google news, publications use these hooks to get users to click.
According to Facebook this click-bait strategy is also being used by cyber criminals to spread malware and compromise user’s security.
This move should push publications to use plane and accurate headlines. However the downside of this is, Facebook will still control what content reaches users rather than they deciding what they want or don’t want in their news feed. There is a good chance that these algorithms may filter out content that the user could actually use.
