Facebook To Crackdown On Clickbaiting Headlines

CNN Money reports:

Facebook is taking another stab at reducing the amount of “clickbait” in your news feed. “These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, forcing people to click to find out the answer,” the company said in an announcement on Thursday.

In other words: The headline on this story better be pretty specific. Publishers large and small pay very close attention to every adjustment of the Facebook algorithm, since the social network drives so much traffic to news and entertainment web sites.

The company made a big change at the end of June that was meant to prioritize posts from friends over posts from brands and publishers. Facebook is targeting headlines like — this is an example they came up with — “When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS… I Was SHOCKED!”

I used the website of nutjob Allen West to illustrate this post because his is the worst of all the sites I track when it comes to clickbaiting headlines. They often even tease their posts on Twitter by cropping the subject’s face out of the accompanying tweets.

The NUMBER ONE question I use to expose hypocritical liberals…https://t.co/mIhD4xHLZf pic.twitter.com/s4mjOSsZq6

— Allen West (@AllenWest) August 4, 2016