Facebook announced Thursday that it was changing the way its news feed selects stories by penalizing sites and stories that use clickbait headlines to attract traffic.

The company explained the changes as being about making sure the news feed delivered “authentic communication” to users, who are said to like seeing authentic news stories the most.

“That’s why we work hard to understand what type of stories and posts people consider genuine, so we can show more of them in News Feed,” the company said in the announcement post. “We also work to understand what kinds of stories people find misleading and spammy to help make sure people see those less.”

Examples given as clickbait were headlines that intentionally leave out critical information or mislead people, such as “When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS … I Was SHOCKED!”; “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe”; or “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.”

Part of the way Facebook is addressing clickbait articles is by measuring how quickly a user returns to the service after clicking through on a headline; a user returning to Facebook shortly after clicking on a link indicating that the content on the other end was not substantive.

Facebook will also analyze the way headlines are worded to see if the headline withholds information or creates misleading information, with headlines such as “You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet … ” withholding information required to understand the article (What happened? Who Tripped?) and “Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!” delivering a misleading message.

Notably, the system does not only punish clickbait articles but sites that also use them regularly as well.

“Our system identifies posts that are clickbait and which web domains and Pages these posts come from,” Facebook explained “Links posted from or shared from Pages or domains that consistently post clickbait headlines will appear lower in News Feed.”

Great

The announcement from Facebook that it intends to crackdown on clickbait content follows its move in April to re-order content on the news feed to favor content from friends versus publishers, a move that while welcomed by users gained an opposite reaction from companies that rely on Facebook to drive traffic to their sites.

Facebook for many years seemed to value advertisers and business content over users but the Facebook of today is most certainly a different beast, be it that there is still no shortage of ads displayed in a typical news feed.

The crackdown on clickbait headlines is a great move that without question improves the Facebook experience for users and for that Facebook deserves praise.

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