Facebook Might Finally Kill Clickbait With New Algorithm Tweaks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Facebook is bringing two additional tweaks to its News Feed algorithm: time spent viewing and page post diversity. The former is an effort to weed out clickbait and bad content by attempting to quantify quality links. The change appears to be a mobile-first solution, as the announcement only states that Facebook will measure the time spent looking at Instant Articles or those within the mobile browser. Facebook also reports that users enjoy reading articles from a wide range of publishers, a revelation that led them to tweak the algorithm for greater diversity of page posts. In short, the idea is to reduce how often people see content back-to-back, or in short order, from the same page. For most pages, the content is spread out enough to where this shouldn't be much of a problem, but for those that post several updates in a few minutes, it could lead to some of the content not being seen.

Re:

[Hylandr]

Facebook is the new AOL.

Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak...

[tlambert]

Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak... [click here to read more!]

Re:Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak.

[John Zero]

Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak... [click here to read more!]

.. and you would NOT have guessed what happened next! [click here]

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

OK, let me guess...you clicked? ;)

Re:

[TubeSteak]

Clickbait headlines are so formulaic... it almost seems like the first step in the clickbait war would be to nuke anything with one of those formulaic headlines.

I'm not sure that clickbait is inherently bad, so perhaps evolutionary pressure to create a better headline would not be bad either.

Re:Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak.

[mcgrew]

I'm not sure that clickbait is inherently bad

I am. Clickbait does nothing but waste one's time. I've gotten to where I never click a link in facebook, especially ones that facebook "suggests", because every single God damned one of them are worth less than nothing.

I laughed at the slashdot headline. Facebook fighting clickbait? That's like a coal-fired power plant fighting global warming. CLICKBAIT IS WHY PEOPLE BUY STOCK ON FACEBOOK. Their entire business model is based on clickbait.

Re:Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak.

[Mashiki]

Gotta fix this for you:
Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak! Number 6 will blow your mind!

Really though, the clickbait industry is going into a death phase and has been since last year, and with any luck it'll kill the sites. Advertising revenue is drying up, people aren't going to the sites. Some sites have been bleeding views and uniques others have simply stalled [capitalnewyork.com] and/or entering serious declines (article paywalled)like Buzzfeed which has lost ~32% [ft.com] of it's traffic since last year.. Vice for example has bled ~18% of it's traffic. [thedrum.com] Huffpo? Laying off. Salon? Laying off. Even sites like Cracked, bleeding traffic and was sold off earlier this year. Lots of stories, lots of sties besides those that live and breath on clickbait are dying. Other publications(like media) that are pushing very specific agendas, are also suffering heavily as people turn away.

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[mcgrew]

Meanwhile, traffic on my ad-free site has tripled in the last year.

Re:

[mjwx]

Gotta fix this for you:
Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak! Number 6 will blow your mind!

Really though, the clickbait industry is going into a death phase and has been since last year, and with any luck it'll kill the sites. Advertising revenue is drying up, people aren't going to the sites.

This.

And it is entirely because the advertisements have become too insidious, too annoying and too intrusive.

Advertisers have learned that if you load the advertisement, especially the interstitial too quickly, before giving the sucker... erm, I mean viewer a split second view of the content than they'll instantly turn off. So they let the page load first and then load the ad over the content.

Sadly the only defences against this are adblockers or learning which sites are not taking the piss with advertising

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[just another AC]

Vice for example has bled ~18% of it's traffic.

Does that include traffic lost from slashdot because of beta?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisers hate him.
Find out how this website owner got rid of click-bait with this one weird tweak.
[click here]

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[Nanoda]

I'd much rather they fixed their stupid comment system, since it infects other websites with it's presence. As a single father working on my laptop, they use up the time I could be spending making 500$ a week from home! [click here]

Algorithms

[Laser_iCE]

I wish social networks would stop trying to prioritise my news feeds and home pages for me. I want every post by every page and person I follow and I want it in chronological order. I want to know that when I scroll back to a certain point I have read everything that has been posted since now and that point in time. I understand advertising and monetising and all that jazz but it really puts me off using social networking sites like Facebook.

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[Lumpy]

Install facebook purity. it fixes most of the problems you hate about what they are doing.

Re:Algorithms

[NatasRevol]

Their algorithms are ... worrisome.

http://www.npr.org/2014/07/04/... [npr.org]

They can, and HAVE, manipulated their algorithms to affect 100M+ americans mood.

They can, and HAVE, manipulated their algorithms in political events. In 2012, it was just TO vote. In 2016, it very easily could be HOW to vote.

http://fowler.ucsd.edu/massive... [ucsd.edu]

Now imagine if those in control of the algorithms want to lean a race one way or another. A few less articles about Hillary, a few more good articles about Trump. Say -1/+1 every week, until the election. Subtle, but a clear influence pushing neutral folks to FBs leaning.

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[AchilleTalon]

Only problem in your presidential election scenario is FB is rather than pusing Hillary than Donald. In fact, FB employees did ask Zuckenberg if they should do something to stop Trump. Because, as Microsoft, Facebook know what is good for you. https://politics.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

All major papers survive on clickbait.

[ThatBeDank]

My entire newsfeed is stuffed with clickbait from places like the Huffpost, New York Times, and the Washington Post. The WaPo just put out an article about an evangelical couple having black triplets. You're telling me that isn't click bait? This sounds like a weak attempt to drown out lesser outlets for established ones.

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[mcgrew]

Well, "clickbait" is a new word and I don't think its definition has been completely nailed down yet. The definition Google gives fits HuffPo and NYT, but wikipedia's doesn't. Wikipedia confirms my own definition. Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]"Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of

Hmmm lets see

[bazmail]

maybe something like if page.title.contains("You won't believe"){setclickbait(true);}

Re:Hmmm lets see

[wonkey_monkey]

if page.title.contains("you"){setclickbait(true);}

Much simpler.

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[Calydor]

Arguable for links to Youtube.

Bad for anything about bayous.

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[mjwx]

Sadly its not always that simple.

There were two articles that appeared in my feed yesterday morning. Both had headlines about "free things to do in London this week". One served up an ad, the other told me about things that were going on in London in the coming week. Things like free exhibitions, entry to venues, fee tours, so on and so forth. There may have been a small ad or two in the content but I didn't notice or care.

Hey, dont get me wrong. I wish it were as simple as ignoring every headline tha

Were they collecting this data before?

[son1dow]

Sounds good for journalists, but terrible for privacy.

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[dmgxmichael]

Certainly.

99.99% of the time such data is only used in aggregate. There's just too much of it to act on it on a per individual basis. When it does get acted on that way, it's scary, and laws of what is and isn't allowed need to catch up to reality. Nothing you submit to Facebook is private - nothing. Operate under that assumption at all times.

Shcoking relevation

[110010001000]

To read more about this shocking revelation, click here to learn what happens next! The answers will amaze you!

This is terrible!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Facebook is supposed to act as a honeypot for worthless clickbait and help keep some of it from wandering out into the parts of the internet that don't totally suck. If they become less hospitable, there's a risk that starving herds of clickbait will start migrating and that won't be pretty.

Facebook and newsfeeds?

[tetraverse]

What business is it of Facebook to suggest what news I read and who gave them permission to monitor my browsing habits?

The solution is to edit /etc/hosts: and insert this line: 127.0.0.1 facebook.com ..

What about ars technica and bgr?

[known_coward_69]

How will the internet survive without them?

There's clickbait and there's CLICKBAIT.

[dmgxmichael]

Thiis isn't going to stop the clickbait headlines. This will however stop the article structure of having one sentence of content or a picture surrounded by 100 ads on the page with a tiny next page button hidden among a bunch of links to other sites. Frankly, I wish Facebook would simply block sites that structure their pages that way.

Adverts.

[ledow]

How about when I say "Don't show me things like this", you don't show me things like that.

Like when I cross out every sports ads, I'm probably NOT interested in Sports.

Like when I hide every fucking Timehop page and friend post that includes it, you stop fucking showing them to me.

Does it really need that much of an algorithm to do what your own options say? Why would you WANT to show me more things that I'm deliberately going out of my way to remove (and not the others that I'm not)?

I'd actually like a more direct feedback approach

[CFD339]

I would love to see then surface an optional click layer when you return from an external article link, maybe as a strip across the bottom of the item panel that let you just with one click rate the link as interesting or not. It should be done in a non-model way, so it could be ignored by anyone who doesn't bother. Some way to punish clickbait directly would really help.

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[just another AC]

so companies would use clickbait AND astroturfing.

Wait, they didn't do that already?

[GuB-42]

Time spent looking is a metric Google have been using for years to estimate the quality of their search results (and relevance of their ads too, I suppose).
I'm surprised Facebook didn't do that.

the news feed on facebook is worthless

[kb7oeb]

I don't even look at my news feed anymore, nothing but spam. It tends to show me links to things rather than the user generated content that I want to see. I think the same happens in reverse, I rarely post because my posts are making it to my friends news feeds. I configured facebook to add notifications for a handful of friends and family members that I want to see posts from. Once or twice a week I skim the facebook notifications page, ignore anything that says "shared", open the few "updates" and the

This algorithm may kill Clickbait forever!

[wardrich86]

Buzzfeed HATES it!