Facebook Implements NEW Anti-Clickbait Algorithm…You Won’t BELIEVE What Happens Next!
An example clickbait article from Facebook.
Countless numbers of users fall prey to so-called “clickbait” articles every day. In fact, one’s personal Facebook newsfeed in particular probably contains many of these articles. This has led to many filing complaints against Facebook, spurring the social media site to improve its anti-clickbait defense. Facebook’s most recently updated algorithm is interesting; “rather than just assigning a binary ‘[clickbait]’ or ‘not clickbait’, [it has] each story [get] a score” on how spam-like it is (Constine). Furthermore, the system also “identifies…which web domains and Pages [such] posts come from” (Hendrix, Peysakhovich). In this way, each of the Pages that generate these clickbait articles is assigned a value similar to Google’s well-known PageRank.
There are stark differences, however, between the two systems of ranking webpages. In Facebook’s case, the higher a Page’s “rank”, the worse–or in other words, the less trustworthy–a domain is in terms of offering valid information. Just as Google’s PageRank will naturally assign a higher rank to a domain that can be reached from an even higher-ranked site, Facebook’s algorithm will score a Page higher if it is responsible for generating more of the clickbait
articles found in one’s feed. And in a world where authentic news and information is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from the sweeping sea of sources found online, such an algorithm will hopefully improve the transmission and receipt of worthwhile intelligence.
Sources:
[1] Facebook’s new anti-clickbait algorithm buries bogus headlines
[2] News Feed FYI: Further Reducing Clickbait in Feed