We all know the articles; “This man spoke out and you won’t believe what happened next”. It’s called clickbait, and it’s used by sites like Upworth, Buzzfeed, and Huffungton Post. It can be very annoying. (check out the onion’s click-bait satire site)
Facebook says it’s going to be cracking down on click-bait so it doesn’t “drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.” How will Facebook crack down on this? They’re going to focus on time spent on an article and user clicks in comparison to likes, shares, or conversations as indicators as to whether or not a post is of more or less legitimate value to users.
It won’t be an easy change, and it will take a lot of programed nuance to get this right but it’s going to be something Facebook will focus a continues effort toward. Hopefully soon all of our news feeds will be less sugar-coated spam and more crunchy information.