Facebook Tackles Click-Bait With News Feed Tweak
Facebook will flag phrases frequently used in click-bait headlines to reduce the amount of spam or number of misleading stories appearing in users’ news feeds, the social network said in a news release Thursday. It listed as one example of…
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a click-bait headline, “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe.” To root out such stories, the company “categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by considering two key points: (1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader,” the company said. “A team at Facebook reviewed thousands of headlines using these criteria, validating each other’s work to identify a large set of clickbait headlines. From there, we built a system that looks at the set of clickbait headlines to determine what phrases are commonly used in clickbait headlines that are not used in other headlines.” Facebook previously tried to reduce click-bait in 2014 by removing posts to content where clickers spent little time before returning to the social media site. More recently, the company tweaked its news feed algorithm to favor content posted by family and friends (see 1606290066). Also, Facebook faced pressure in recent months over allegations it suppressed conservative viewpoints in the trending topics of its news feed (see 1605100032 and 1605170068).