What if this article was titled "29 reasons we're thankful for Facebook's News Feed change," or "Facebook switches its News Feed algorithm. You won't believe what happens next," how about "Here's one unbelievable reason Facebook changed its News Feed policy?" Do you think readers would be quicker to click on it? Most likely, yes -- but according to Facebook, that's not really a good thing.
The social network announced Monday that it's cutting down on so-called click-bait stories appearing high in people's newsfeeds. Facebook said the reason for the change is because it wants users to see more relevant information and make sure posts from friends aren't drowned out.
The new changes to News Feed "help people find the posts and links from publishers that are most interesting and relevant, and to continue to weed out stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don't want to see," Facebook research scientist Khalid El-Arini and product specialist Joyce Tang wrote in a blog post.
The way Facebook is going about de-prioritizing click-bait articles is two-fold. One, the social network will look at how long people spend reading an article. If users click on the article and then quickly click back to Facebook, that's an indication the article may be click-bait because it didn't fully interest the reader. Two, the company will take into account how many people are liking and commenting on a story vs. the number of clicks it's getting.
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