Facebook has just announced a series of measures to crack down on clickbait in an attempt to help users decontaminate their feeds of shoddy journalism.
One of the worst tendencies in modern blogging and journalism is to create headlines that don’t really say anything about the story, but instead “bait” users into having to click to see what a story is all about. This practice, aptly deemed “click-bait”, is the key to success for some sites that expertly craft headlines that don’t say anything in order to get their pageviews. Well, it turns out this will be the end of an era, as Facebook has heard its users, and deemed the practice annoying.
The image illustrating this story is an example straight from Facebook’s blog, where they also explain why they are not too happy about this practice. In their own words, “[W]hen we asked people in an initial survey what type of content they preferred to see in their News Feeds, 80% of the time people preferred headlines that helped them decide if they wanted to read the full article before they had to click through. Over time, stories with “click-bait” headlines can drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.”
The newsfeed algorithm will be modified so stories that don’t hold readers’ interest after clicking, or don’t get comments and shares aren’t shown as often. The idea? That you see more of your friends, and the things you care about instead of junk clogging your newsfeed. Are you happy about these changes? Let us know about it in the comments section.
Via The Mary Sue
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