Long after declaring war on memes, Facebook is cracking down on click-baiting which is the practice of publishing content with a headline that tempts people to go to the concerned web page and see more before actually understanding what the said article is all about. The social network won’t ban pages posting click-bait; it will simply filter out such content from News Feed.
The company is constantly making changes to its News Feed feature in an attempt to get people to stay on the site for more time. The underlying idea has been to merge social and informative content in order to gain more ad revenue in the process. But advertisement money is also earned from publishers attempting to promote their websites through Facebook.
And guess what kind of a content is most eye-catchy if you had to pick between interesting headlines and informative ones? That’s right, you could straightaway come to the conclusion about Facebook actually shooting itself in the foot by stopping publishers from making the most of memes and click-baiting in order to gain more readers.
Also see: Facebook News Feed frowns at memes, tries to be a bit more serious
But there’s also the fact that once News Feed starts looking too spammy because everyone keeps clicking on links based on misleading or uninformative post titles, it may put people off taking the social network seriously as a source of what’s happening in the world outside Facebook. So it forces the company to walk a fine line between pleasing audiences and Page owners.
In our opinion, Facebook should just allow publishers fight it out with every creative means they can employ even if it means posting stories under headlines that can be misinterpreted or tell half the tale. Because in the end, it’s really down to website or Page owners to decide if they wish to gain a loyal following or not by the quality of articles they put up.
To weed out click-bait, the company will come down heavily on URLs which people open only to return to right back to Facebook. If too many folks click on a link and do not share, like or comment on it, this works as another indicator of poor content quality. Publishers are also being asked to post in link format (second image) since they can help viewers decide whether to click or not.
Do you agree with us about Facebook being too unrealistic about what must appear in News Feed by quashing click-baits and memes?