Facebook is finally doing something to combat the millions of click-bait articles that pops up on the News Feed of users. Click-bait articles are designed to lure users to a website with an eye-popping headline, but giving users little information as to what they should expect.
These articles pop up on Facebook regularly on a daily basis, and they can be extremely annoying. Clicking on a click-bait isn't all that bad when the articles are interesting. However, interesting articles are few and between, so clicking most of the time would likely lead readers to something stupid or an article that requires the constant loading of another page to finish reading.
"Today we're announcing some improvements to News Feed to help people find the posts and links from publishers that are most interesting and relevant, and to continue to weed out stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don't want to see," says Facebook on its blog. "We're making two updates, the first to reduce click-baiting headlines, and the second to help people see links shared on Facebook in the best format."
Users might be glad to see that Facebook is making moves to rid the newsfeeds of these types of contents, because they are mostly not worth the trouble. Question is, how does Facebook hope to keep click-bait articles under control?
According to Facebook in a recent blog post, the company is planning to look at how long a person spends reading an article away from the social network. If persons should spend a good amount of time reading an article, then it would mean that these users have found something of worth, but if not, then chances are the article is click-bait.
Another idea is to figure out how many people click on a certain content, compared to how many folks share it with their friends, like it, or make a reply in the comment area. If most folks are not sharing, liking, and commenting, then there's a high possibility this article is of no significance.
If everything goes according to plan, folks should not expect click-bait articles to be gone forever. They'll still be around, but not as profoundly before Facebook implemented the new features. This means that users should still keep an eye out for these articles, as they can pop up at any time.
Facebook only announced the features and did not specify when the implementation will begin. The features might have been implemented already, and the magic is happening right now.
