Facebook Says It’s Cracking Down On Clickbait

If you’re tired of headlines declaring that “you’ll never believe what happened next!”, it looks like Facebook feels your pain.

The company said in a blog post today that it’s trying to cut back on “click-baiting headlines”, which it defines as “a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see.”

Handwringing about clickbait is nothing new (my favorite variation on that handwringing is The Onion’s recently launched ClickHole website), but Facebook’s worry is that these headlines could “drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.”

But how do you distinguish between deceptive, clickbait headlines and those that are just, y’know, effective? Facebook team members won’t be making the call themselves, but rather relying on user behavior to suggest whether they got any value out of the story. So the company says it will be looking at things like the time spent reading an article (before returning to Facebook), and at the ratio of people clicking on a link versus discussing and sharing it.

So I doubt you’ll see a sudden transformation of your News Feed, with nothing except highbrow discussions of foreign policy. But if everyone’s clicking on a link, immediately thinking, “What the hell is this?” and clicking back to Facebook, the link will probably be penalized in the News Feed.

A few months ago, Facebook announced other steps it was taking to cut back on News Feed spam. These efforts are going to be increasingly important as there’s ever-more competition for News Feed real estate and user attention.

Less excitingly, today’s blog post also said that Facebook will be favoring posts where the link to a story is shared in the text, rather than in a photo caption.

Comments

Samsung Galaxy S5 Review and Giveaway

Few smartphones are as aggressively marketed as Samsung’s Galaxy S5. The S5 can no longer be considered brand-new — but it is Samsung’s flagship, at least for the next few months. With a gorgeous screen, a capable camera, a waterproof build, and a user-replaceable battery, the Galaxy S5 has a lot to offer… at least on paper. Let’s find out how good it really is. What Makes This Review Different There are about a million Galaxy S5 reviews out there. Why should you read this one? Two keys points make our review different: We bought our own device . Unlike many tech blogs, we don’t use a review unit Samsung gave us. We went out to the store and bought one, just like you would. This means everything you read here is truly impartial – we owe Samsung nothing. We used it for more than a month . Some sites rush to be the first to publish a review on a new device. That’s not how we do things. I used the Galaxy S5 as my main (and only) Android phone for nearly two months,...

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9000 Review and Giveaway

When it comes to massive phones, nothing is more iconic than the Samsung Galaxy Note. It has gained popularity not only due to its size, but its additional features such as a stylus and a larger battery make it a more useful phone. Samsung released the third generation of the Galaxy Note in October, updating the phablet with a larger screen and improved hardware. Read through our review, then join the giveaway to win the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 ! Competitors Of course, other Android competitors haven’t let the $640 Galaxy Note 3 be the only player in the phablet market. There are others such as the Sony Xperia Z Ultra , the Samsung Galaxy Mega , and the other more common phones that are reaching 5″ screens such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 , the HTC One , and the Nexus 5 . Unlike the normal-sized top contenders, the Galaxy Note 3 has a bigger screen and larger battery. It also offers specific features (surrounding the S Pen stylus) th...

Android - How Can I Override Silent Mode With a Text Message?

People set their phones to silent or vibrate mode when in meetings, lectures, theaters, or anywhere else where it would be rude if the phone made noise. But what if there’s an emergency and someone needs to quickly get in touch with you? We’ll show you how to have your Android phone override silent mode and play an alert when a text message containing something like “Emergency” or “SOS” comes through. There are multiple ways to do this and we’ll cover two. You can easily use a free app created just for this purpose or take the geekier route and create a task using Tasker. Tasker is a powerful Android automation solution that allows you to specify custom events that cause actions to happen. Go the Tasker route and you’ll learn how to automate many different things on your Android phone. The Easy Option: TeXTe and Silent Mode Bypass TeXTe is the easiest way to do this. It’s an app built for one thing and one thing only: alerting you when a text message containing a w...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog