We’ve seen Facebook attempt many times to remove irrelevant posts by changing it’s algorithm. However, this new Facebook update will potentially remove clickbait titles from the entire website. This includes misleading headlines, and titles that leave out important information.
The way Facebook filters misleading titles is almost the same way Gmail filters spam, it looks for specific words and phrases that are irrelevant or that leave out important information. This will change your feed by ranking posts, for example, titles with important information will be listed higher in your feed, while possible clickbait will be lower in the list. This does not mean that clickbaits will always be lower on the list, however this will greatly reduce the spam titles seen on the site.
Facebook have actually attempted to remove false headlines before, by looking at how long people spent on an article before returning to the main page. This was to see the actual quality of the article, however Facebook believes that this new method they’re rolling out is much more effective.
Clickbait is an issue because it makes people click more, not because of the content, but because the titles make us ask more questions and much more curious. Only to find out that it’s just a lame clickbait post with no quality content.
60 percent of American adults read news on social media, and Facebook being the largest social media platform, they have most control of what people read. Thus removing clickbait would make people read quality articles instead of being fooled by misleading headlines. This can also help publishers that produce quality content, as their articles will have more traffic than articles with misleading titles.
However, Facebook still needs to make money, if removing misleading titles lessens the activity on the site, then Facebook will take action to remove the filtering of clickbait.
Facebook have actually had people review clickbait titles, and people put clickbait headlines under two main points, titles that exaggerate the article, or titles that have information to understand the article. We can all agree that removing clickbait from the entire internet could make everyone’s experience smoother while surfing the web.
