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Facebook Downranks News Feed Links To Crappy Sites Smothered In Ads (techcrunch.com) 95

Facebook's New Feed algorithm is targeting links that send people to crappy websites filled with advertisements. According to their blog post, Facebook defines a "low-quality site" as one "containing little substantive content, and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads." TechCrunch reports: The change could help Facebook fight fake news, as fakers are often financially motivated and blanket their false information articles in ads. High-quality sites may see a slight boost in referral traffic, while crummy sites will see a decline as the update rolls out gradually over the coming months. Facebook tells me that the change will see it refuse an immaterial number of ad impressions that earned it negligible amounts of money, so it shouldn't have a significant impact on Facebook's revenue. Facebook product manager for News Feed Greg Marra tells me Facebook made the decision based on surveys of users about what disturbed their News Feed experience. One pain point they commonly cited was links that push them to "misleading, sensational, spammy, or otherwise low-quality experiences... [including] sexual content, shocking content, and other things that are going to be really disruptive." Today's change is important because if users don't trust the content on the other side of the links and ads they see in News Feed, they'll click them less. That could reduce Facebook's advertising revenue and the power it derives from controlling referral traffic. Getting sent to a low-quality, shocking site from News Feed could also frustrate users and cause them to end their Facebook browsing session, depriving the social network of further ad views, engagement and content sharing.
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Facebook Downranks News Feed Links To Crappy Sites Smothered In Ads

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  • In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @05:41PM (#54396551)

    Facebook Downranks News Feed Links To Crappy Sites Smothered In Ads

    In other words, "Do As I Say, Not As I Do."

    • My use of FB has dropped substantially since all the pages I followed had decided to jump on the sensational bandwagon. Funny how once I dropped George Takei my newsfeed went silent almost. No more "These 10 things...", or "I couldn't believe Number 5" showing up ten times a day and being recycled.
    • Not quite. While Facebook is full of ads they aren't the abusive pop-over, blinky light, don't let the browser go, flashy gif autoplaying advert bullshit you see on so many sites now a days.

      If even half the internet had ads like Facebook's we'd probably be in a better* place.

      *Ads only, not tracking. If half the internet tracked like Facebook I wouldn't have the spare CPU cycles to render the page.

    • To quote George Carlin (out of context). "BULLSHIT! THAT'S OUR FUCKIN JOB!"

    • I almost couldn't post this due the page janking up and down loading crappy ads.

  • and Deadspin
  • So sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @05:46PM (#54396565) Journal

    So sorry Slashdot. I guess no Facebook love for you...

    BTW, your floating ads and stealing of horizontal space for your shitty ads (are you aware there's a dumbass ad with an Edward Snowden hipster-lookalike on a scooter which is just laughably awful) are making this site suck. Some of the ads don't properly timeout and cause all kinds of scrolling issues.

    • Re:So sorry... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @05:47PM (#54396585)

      I don't see any ads. But it's not because I have an ad blocker, it's because I gave Slashdot some money.

      • Is subscriptions still available? They seem to have removed the subscriptions link from the front page.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        "Please Note: Buying or gifting of a new subscription is not available at the moment. We apologize for the inconvenience. This downtime though does not effect your current active subscription in any way. We will keep you posted on the latest"

        TAKE MY MONEY

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So sorry Slashdot. I guess no Facebook love for you...

      BTW, your floating ads and stealing of horizontal space for your shitty ads (are you aware there's a dumbass ad with an Edward Snowden hipster-lookalike on a scooter which is just laughably awful) are making this site suck. Some of the ads don't properly timeout and cause all kinds of scrolling issues.

      Ads? What ads? I don't see any ads.

      Oh, you must be one of the dumbasses not using AdBlock?

      • Ads? What ads? I don't see any ads.
        Oh, you must be one of the dumbasses not using AdBlock?

        Which is also going to be one of the techniques used by crappy web site owner :
        if the webserver recieves a request from a IP within a known Facebook IP range, then serve instead an ad-less version.

        Then it's basically a cat-and-mouse game, as makers of crappy sites try to find better way to detect Facebook's access and Facebook tries to be less obvious (retrieve content through external 3rd party servers, retieve content through the webapp running on the poster's local browser, etc.)

    • Get some:

      https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]

      No need for a Raspberry. Run the damn thing in a VM if need be.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This doesn't apply to my websites. ;)
    • This doesn't apply to my websites. ;)

      Optimized for Lynx?

      • Optimized for Lynx?

        I haven't used Lynx in 20+ years. I should check out my websites in Lynx. The static websites will probably fare better than the WordPress websites.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @05:48PM (#54396593)

    Wait for it in 10, 9, 8, 7... "Facebook blocks right leaning news on Facebook."

  • So every time I visit a facebook page it pops up disruptive advertising about me logging in or signing up. I don't want to f'ing sign up for your sh***y site.

    • ... every time I visit a facebook page ... I don't want to f'ing sign up for your sh***y site...

      Than why do you visit it so often? I know it's geek or leet or whatever to say you hate Facebook, but own up to it, you're there every day because those are the only "friends" you have.

      • ... every time I visit a facebook page ... I don't want to f'ing sign up for your sh***y site...

        Than why do you visit it so often? I know it's geek or leet or whatever to say you hate Facebook, but own up to it, you're there every day because those are the only "friends" you have.

        Because everyone in the world is on Facebook. Subject specific forums have become passe, and Usenet has long since become a vast echo chamber containing mostly Pr0n and a few old timers like, well, me. Last weekend I very reluctantly signed up for the Facebook version of rec.motorcycles.harley, because (it took me a long time to admit to myself) there was nobody there but me and the bot that posts the "how to post to RMH" weekly messages. Now that I write that, it seems like I need a life.

        My daughter tel

  • by magarity ( 164372 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @06:14PM (#54396715)

    For a while now Yahoo's news has been polluted with the worst sort of clickbait adbombs. Facebook has their work cut out for them if they are trying to be worse.

    • For a while now Yahoo's news has been polluted with the worst sort of clickbait adbombs. Facebook has their work cut out for them if they are trying to be worse.

      When your business depends on advertising (and you have no integrity) that's what you get.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I'm looking at you Salon, Buzzfeed, Daily Kaos... nice knowing ya!

    • Hmm... a few posts up, someone predicted that all the right leaning sites will be out now.

      Maybe that means that all the political crap fake news sites will become unlinked? That could make FB finally relevant as a site that filters all the politically biased crap.

  • by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @06:42PM (#54396853) Homepage Journal

    Many web sites, and the FB app, have way too many ads, to the point that I can't even read the screen, and stop going to the site.

    And, to be quite frank, it's why I removed FB from my cellphone.

    Dudes. You can keep adding more ads, but if I can't see the text, I'm not going to read the site.

    I don't care how interactive you make it.

    I don't have time to remove twenty ads with close boxes that decide close X means link to site.

    I get rid of it. Entirely.

    Pennywise. Pound foolish.

    • > I don't have time to remove twenty ads with close boxes that decide close X means link to site.

      A personal white hot hate of mine.

    • Or you can install Firefox mobile with Adblock and Noscript and just add shortcut to desktop? As a bonus - if you switch to "Desktop view" you can even read messages without Facebook Messenger. So far I found 1 website that does not work with this combo - NewsThump...

  • "low quality site" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @07:19PM (#54396991) Journal

    > Facebook defines a "low-quality site" as one "containing little substantive content, and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads."

    The snarky side of me wants to say "Yeah, like most of the internet". But at very least, like a substantial amount of the Yahoo front page. (I hate listies and will not click on anything that looks like one no matter how interesting or provocative the title.) It annoys me that I can't scan for headlines on the Yahoo front page without discarding half of them in the categories of "they couldn't believe what happened next" (under a photo of a half naked girl) or "the ten ugliest squirrels -- number 7 will make you lose your lunch". Or the latest one -- "this 'white oil' will put oil companies out of business". It's LITHIUM, people! Lithium! For batteries. Get it? Oh dear, I spoiled the surprise.

    Does anyone remember when the Seattle PI newspaper website was just swarming with full page popup ads and floating popovers and ads with animation and sound? The site had a tool where you could create your own survey.... and someone created a survey asking readers how much the site resembled a Pr0n site. (a) Not that much, (b) Somewhat (c) Enough to be really annoying (d) I'm expecting to meet LiveJasmine at any moment. They eventually toned down the ads. I wonder if it's because other sites were flagging Seattle PI as a "low quality site"?

  • Sponsored content (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @10:24PM (#54397709) Journal

    The vast bulk of this kind of ad infested crap I see on Facebook is from sponsored content (IE paid ads) that have nothing to do with my actual newsfeed (as in the friends and pages I have elected to follow). They are not viral things being shared, but content actively promoted by Facebook for money. Many of these sites are so polluted with ads and broken up into so many pages you have to click through that they literally are non-functional. I wonder if Facebook is going to reduce their revenue and prevent these kinds of sponsored content?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Some of the worst sites for being overwhelmed --to the point of freezing the computer, or groaning it so slow as to useless, are some older mainstream* news sources. Major newspapers and news magazines, and some tv networks.
    Example, I live in Los Angeles and looking for local news on the LA Times would be nice. I'm limited to 5 free views a month or something, but it's near impossible for me to read anything there because it loads up so much other stuff. One of the results is such sites are probably losing

  • by David Gould ( 4938 ) <david@dgould.org> on Thursday May 11, 2017 @01:57AM (#54398157) Homepage

    ...will BLOW YOUR MIND!

  • Another upshot of this kind of change would be reducing the presentation of those "CELEBRITIES EATING FOOD - YOU WON'T BELIEVE NUMBER 10" sites that have a sentence of content per click through (and 20 ads).

    I fail to see this as a problem.

  • Screw Facebook. Glad I'm not on it.
  • When I've got the time I do go to the clickbait sites. Then I find the link back to the Reddit thread they scraped and post it in the comments. I find it very satisfying to perform this service for people who are interested in the topic but not enough to click through all the pages and ads.

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