As part of its efforts to eradicate clickbait headlines, social media giant, Facebook, has updated its algorithm to tackle such headlines from its News Feed.
Facebook said the rate at which bloggers use its platform to ‘deceive’ readers through its (Facebook) was becoming worrisome.
“We are updating News Feed by using a system that identifies phrases that are commonly used in clickbait headlines,” Facebook research scientist, Alex Peysakhovich, said.
Facebook pointed out that some bloggers use its platform to post sensational headlines that lead to inaccurate and misleading content once clicked on.
With the new update, relevant posts like those from friends or pages users like would be pushed higher up in the feed results.
“For example, the headline ‘You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet…’ withholds information required to understand the article (What happened? Who Tripped?) The headline ‘Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!’ misleads the reader (apples are only bad for you if you eat too many every day),” Peysakhovich posted.
“A team at Facebook reviewed thousands of headlines using these criteria, validating each other’s work to identify a large set of clickbait headlines.”
