Facebook releases new update to reduce clickbaits

Last year Facebook pushed an update to their News Feed to reduce stories from sources which consistently post clickbait headlines which withhold and exaggerate information. Today, three more updates have been released so that people will see even fewer clickbait stories in their feeds, and more authentic stories.

Facebook is now taking into account clickbait at the individual post level in addition to the domain and Page level, in order to more precisely reduce clickbait headlines.

Secondly, Facebook is now going to be looking at whether a headline withholds information or if it exaggerates information separately. Finally, Facebook is starting to test this in additional languages.

Headlines that withhold information intentionally leave out crucial details or mislead people, forcing them to click to find out the answer. Facebook hence identifies what phrases are commonly used in clickbait headlines which are not used in other headlines. This is similar to how many email spam filters work. Post with clickbait will appear lower in the News Feed.