Facebook announced that it is tweaking its News Feed algorithm to reduce clickbait headlines in an update for the social network.
The announcement was made in a post on the Facebook Newsroom written by Research Scientist Khalid El-Arini and Product Specialist Joyce Tang.
Clickbait headlines are posts of links with a headline written out in such a way that users are encouraged to click the link to see more. The headlines usually don't reveal much information on what the pages that the link goes to contain.
Posts with clickbait headlines usually get high numbers of clicks, leading to these posts getting shown to more users as they keep moving up the News Feed.
However, when users were asked on the kind of content they want to see on their News Feeds, 80 percent said that they prefer headlines that were more helpful in helping them choose whether to click on the link to read about what the link says or not.
In addition to not being the preference of users, clickbait headlines also drown out the more meaningful content to users, such as posts by friends and pages that users are really interested about.
Facebook will look to reduce clickbait headlines on the News Feeds of users by determining the amount of time spent when a user reads an article that a link leads to. The longer that a user spends time reading an article from a clicked link, the more valuable the article is. Oppositely, if a user clicks a link and then goes back to Facebook right away, then the link does not contain something valuable. A Facebook update will take the time users spend away from Facebook upon clicking links to determine the ranking of stories on News Feeds.
Facebook will also be looking at the number of people clicking on the link compared to the number of people that are liking, sharing or commenting on the said link. Links that a lot of people click on but do not like, share, or comment on means that they are not valuable and would be less prioritized on News Feeds.
In addition to the update that will look to weed out clickbait headlines, Facebook will also update the way that users share links in their posts.
Currently, when users share links on the News Feed, the post appears with a picture and a headline, along with text that describes the link. However, sometimes the links are shared by publishers in status updates or as captions for photos.
Facebook has found out that users prefer links that are shown in link formats, rather than included in captions for pictures. The link format shows more relevant information about the link, along with being easier to read on mobile devices.
The update will make Facebook give priority to links shown in the link format, with fewer links that are shared in text captions or status updates being shown in News Feeds.
Publishers that utilize clickbait headlines extensively should therefore re-think their practices so that their content will remain visible in user News Feeds.
