MANILA, Philippines – Facebook rolled out changes to their News Feed designed to further reduce clickbait on the platform. 

The team behind the update said they are “dividing [their] efforts into two separate signals:” those that exaggerate and those that withhold information. Facebook identified these 2 signals back in 2016, but as per their blog post, now they’re delving into each one with more focus. 

Facebook reiterated their process in the blog post on Wednesday, May 17. They reviewed thousands of headlines, dividing them into non-clickbait and clickbait, and further divided the latter into the aforementioned signals. The data gathered from parsing clickbait into separate subcategories was applied to the News Feed, with the social media giant hoping to reduce clickbait more precisely. 

Past efforts

Facebook defined clickbait on its blog in 2014, formally acknowledging the issue and marking their push to do something about it. That year, they looked at how long people spent reading an article away from Facebook. If the user didn’t return to Facebook quickly, it suggests that the article is valuable and not the poor quality content associated with clickbait. (READ: Facebook to lessen clickbait News Feed posts)

In 2016, Facebook started identifying what phrases are commonly used in clickbait headlines that are not used in other headlines. Posts that use the identified phrases are likely to be branded as clickbait – and Facebook Pages and domains that make these posts consistently were down-voted in the feed. (READ: Facebook is cracking down on clickbait)

Now, Facebook is coming in for a closer look. It says that it will now be looking at posts individually, down-voting them if they fit the clickbait criteria. Before this, Facebook only down-voted Pages and domains when they’ve repeatedly posted clickbait content.

The anti-clickbait tweaks Facebook is implementing this year are more of a refinement of their processes, a way to be more precise with how they identify clickbait. For the Facebook user, the hope is the platform becomes more accurate in shooting down clickbait, thus increasing the chance for high-quality content to surface.  – Rappler.com