Shocking! Facebook changes its News Feed algorithm to combat clickbait
Facebook has announced that its made changes to its News Feed algorithm to combat clickbait.
What’s clickbait? Clickbait are headlines that are made intriguing and typically suggest that there is more to a story than there actually is. They use enticing phrases such as "you'll never believe what happens next..." in order to increase clickthrough rates and drive traffic to an article.
Facebook announced in a newswire that they "making an update to News Feed ranking to further reduce clickbait headlines in the coming weeks," and that "with this update, people will see fewer clickbait stories and more of the stories they want to see higher up in their feeds." Facebook also added that "people have told us they like seeing authentic stories the most.”
The changes to the News Feed algorithm will automatically scan for signs of clickbait headlines and hide any article it deems as clickbait. The algorithm was written by a team at Facebook that manually examined thousands of headlines and put together a list of commonly used clickbait phrases. The clickbait headlines that are flagged will be automatically subsided on Facebook's News Feed.
This will not be the first time that Facebook has attempted to combat clickbait. They’ve previously timed how long users stayed on an external website after clicking on a headline to determine whether an article was clickbait or not, but they found that this process wasn't accurate at all.
Facebook now categorizes headlines as clickbait if they hold back information required to understand what the content of an article is and also if the article is exaggerated to create misleading expectations.
With these changes taking place on Facebook's News Feed algorithm, could we expect Steemit to incorporate a similar algorithm as well?
Facebook makes money off of people coming back to their site. Clickbait makes people like facebook less, and makes facebook no money, so of course they want to get rid of it.
Thanks for the comment and upvote @jrkirby.
You made a great point there. It really does benefit Facebook to eradicate what they deem to be clickbait in order to keep engagement on the Facebook platform, but I wonder how this change in their algorithm will affect their advertising platform.
I don't see any benefits for news media publications that use clickbait headlines such as Upworthy, BuzzFeed or OMGFact, to advertise on Facebook anymore.
Or maybe this change will ring in a new area on how news media publications monetize their content.
What do you think?
How did this get onto the promoted page?
I see no Boost Payment...
Hi @beanz,
I promoted this post, however, great question, I'm not sure why the boosted payment isn't showing up.
My guess, it's a glitch, and it will show up soon enough. Either way, I'm glad that you found it in the Promoted content section.
Cheers!
Ah ok, that's a harmless glitch.
For Steem a lack of upvotes might indicate dissatisfaction.
A blog today had what appears to me to be a clickbait title, since the blog isn't really about why ladies go to bars, but just is about a skyline view bar in China. But the blog has a lot of upvotes.
I think the only reliable way to filter is by having the readers give feedback on the content, since their preferences are what matter. Unless an A.I. filter could learn what readers will appreciate.
Hi @anonymint!
Thanks for joining the conversation, and I think crowdsourcing the task of filtering clickbait content from the Steemit using our feedback is possibly the best solution to make sure that Steemit doesn't become a clickbait heaven for internet marketers, or is it already happening?
I checked out the blog post you linked to and I would consider it to be clickbait. For me personally, if I was enticed by a blog post title to click on it, and then I proceeded to read the post and enjoyed it, I wouldn't consider it to be clickbait.
I guess in the case of the link you shared, some people did enjoy the post, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten so many upvoted, right? I personally didn't find the post interesting, but then again I'm not into bars.
Actually I dont see any way that an automated algorithm could tell if the headline is holding stuff back.
Of course it would be hard to tell a whole story in just the headline anyway.
I am sure this is just another way that FB is going to use to sensor posts that don't fit the companys political agenda.
I wish they would quit sensoring things based on their politics.
I truly hope that Steemit never sinks to that level.
Hi @cryptosolitaire,
Thanks for the upvote, comment, and for sharing your thoughts.
You have a point there as well, there is always more to a story than the headline, even in the case of clickbait headlines.
I guess the question here is whether or not Facebook's algorithm can really detect the difference between a clickbait article or just a great article with a clever headline that the algorithm might deem as clickbait.
If there is a policitcal or any other agenda behind the News Feed algorithm changes, we might never find out what those ulterior motives are for sure.
Do you think Steemit will suffer if they also implemented a clickbait eradicating algorithm?
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 12.1 and reading ease of 53%. This puts the writing level on par with academic journals.
I upvote U