A few days ago, Facebook announced that it would be making design changes to News Feed on mobiles in the coming weeks. In an effort to further improve the quality of this feature, the company has now introduced a couple of updates that aid in curbing the spread of clickbait videos.
Some of these videos feature a fake play button which is often used as a ploy by spammers, tricking people into clicking links to bogus websites. Similarly, users are sometimes misled into clicking on a low quality static image posing as a video.
Moving forward, the company will be demoting stories featuring clickbait videos. Publishers should also expect their respective pages to be impacted in the following way:
Publishers that rely on these intentionally deceptive practices should expect the distribution of those clickbait stories to markedly decrease. Most Pages won’t see significant changes to their distribution in News Feed. But, as always, publishers should refer to our publishing best practices.
It is important to note that this isn't the first time the firm has targeted its efforts to reducing clickbait. A little over a year ago, Facebook said that it was updating News Feed by "using a system that identifies phrases that are commonly used in clickbait headlines". It remains to be seen if the firm's latest endeavors manage to substantially limit the spread of clickbait videos as well as headlines.
Source and image via: Facebook
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