Facebook is cleaning up its news feed. And that means a war on click bait content and headlines. It wants to “weed out” spam stories and content that “drowns out” real news.
It's making changes to its algorithm that it claims will reduce the volume of click-bait headlines that make it onto the feed and also changing the format that shared links appear in.
Facebook defines click bait as posts where the headline asks people to click through without really giving away much of the story. Because they generate a lot of clicks, they are shared a lot and inevitably end up dominating news feeds. That effectively means spam pollutes what Facebook views as its most important feature.
Facebook says a survey of users found 80% of people prefer headlines that actually tell them something and let them decide if they want to read more before they click.
Click-bait style headlines in the vein of “you'll never believe what celebrity X did last night ” have influenced online journalism and many, like News.com.au, Smh.com.au, the Daily Mail and even the BBC have at least partially shifted away from the traditional hard news style of writing that aims to give most information up top in a story.
Some businesses have learned to skew their posts towards click bait style headlines to drive traffic to their pages. They are likely to see distribution fall in the coming months on the platform. Much like any update to Facebook's algorithms and policies, the click-bait ban warns brands not to get too comfortable with the status quo on Facebook. It's already time to learn the lessons of content sharing all over again.
Facebook will base its click bait clean up on how long people spend reading an article away from Facebook and how long it takes them to come back to the social network after clicking. If they return straight away, it implies the click-bait rather than something valuable, according to the company.
It will also take into account the ratio of clicks of links and discussion or sharing of the link. Less likes and sharing implies click bait, according to Facebook.
Facebook has previously taken steps to eradicate Like-baiting - when brands ask people to like a post to improve its distribution and get it boosted up the news feed. It regularly changes its approach in a bid to maximise ad revenue while attempting to balance user experience.
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