Facebook's New Anti-Clickbait Algorithm Buries Bogus Headlines (techcrunch.com) 123
Facebook is going to make some changes to its newsfeed, again, it said on Thursday. The company is now having another go at sweeping clickbait news stories away from people's newsfeed. The move comes as the social networking giant struggles to entice many people from coming back to its service every few hours. Under the new changes to the feed algorithm, articles with headlines that "withhold or distort information" will be classified as distort. Such stories won't completely disappear, but as the company says, will appear less frequently in users' feeds. TechCrunch adds: Facebook manually classified tens of thousands of headlines with a clickbaitiness score to train the new algorithm. Now it can detect headlines like "When She Looked Under Her Couch And Saw THIS... I Was SHOCKED!"; "He Put Garlic In His Shoes And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe"; or "The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless." The algorithm then punishes the entire Page that shared them or site they link to by making all their posts or referral links less visible. Facebook's VP of Product Management on News Feed Adam Moserri said "If you post 50 times a day and post one piece a clickbait, this shouldn't affect you. If you're a spammer and post clickbait all day this should affect you a lot."
Just one quick trick ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Just one quick trick ... (Score:1)
US Posters shocked by this one new rule!
Re: Just one quick trick ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot posters read this story, but couldn't believe what they saw in the entire right column of Slashdot.org...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:4, Insightful)
People stopped having the right to expect more from journalism when they stopped paying for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Cut down a little bit of journalism each day with one weird old tip
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:5, Funny)
You won't believe THIS easy trick to getting rid of click-bait headlines! ...
Click HERE to find out more!
You'll be SHOCKED [Re:Just one quick trick ...] (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You should have linked to a certain song performed by Rick Astley.
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your UID makes it look like you should remember the old days, but whatever. When I was growing up (80's - 90's) we didn't have cable television; we had an antenna on the roof that picked up the local ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX affiliates, plus the local CBC/CITY/other Canadian stations (grew up in a border town). We got the news from the local nightly news on whichever station, and didn't pay a thing for it, unless you count watching commercials as "paying". These days, we seem to be "paying" more for our news, in terms of ads and having our habits tracked and sold online, but *still* somehow we're getting less *actual* journalism.
Re: (Score:1)
It's dilution of eyeballs.
"Back in the day" there were only ~3 TV channels that had the news, and there was no time shifting. If you advertised on the nightly news in the 80s, you can be pretty sure you got 100% of the news-viewing audience with the purchase of three slots (okay, perhaps more to get the early and late news). That means that it was worth spending big bucks on that advertising slot.
Now days, very few people get their news from any one source. They're spread out across a number of different pl
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying that journalism from pre-WWII to the end of the 20th century was merely a fluke, given that people never directly paid for radio or television news in the first place, just as they don't directly pay for web-based news now.
Re: (Score:2)
People stopped having the right to expect more from journalism when they stopped paying for it.
Advertisers always paid the cost of journalism. Subscription fees and newsstand sales paid the cost of producing and distributing the physical paper.
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps once mainstream sites realize their articles are practically invisible on Facebook, they'll go back to writing proper headlines. I like Facebook's move here, it's a lot like Google penalizing sites that use black hat SEO tactics.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Just one quick trick ... (Score:4, Informative)
It's bad enough on Facebook, but it's a lot more heinous on mainstream news sites (like CNN.com). A respectable news site has no business exposing their readers to that kind of s%!t. (don't hassle me about calling CNN respectable, they all do it).
Go international. Reuters, Al-Jazeera, etc. I particularly like al-Jazeera because, while they have a lot of videos, their headlines are clear and the site layout is very clean compared to sites like CNN.
Re: (Score:2)
Go raw news site, unfiltered. I'm sick of people telling me what I saw, wasn't what I saw.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't handle the raw news. Seriously. There's far too much of it. Even for a small incident, it can involve video footage, interviews (which are of course affected by the questions asked), additional research, hours of monitoring of Twitter and Facebook, and so forth. News outlets take all that stuff and condense it down into summaries that are small enough to be absorbed without a great deal of time and effort, and they may add background information. It would be useful to have all the source mat
Re: (Score:2)
News outlets take all that stuff and condense it down into summaries that are small enough to be absorbed without a great deal of time and effort
By Summary you mean filtered through the lens of the biased reporters deciding what is worthy to report on. Hillary barking like a dog, if that was Trump it would have made NYT front page, but not Hillary. Or Weird facial ticks ? or NOT having a press conference in over 240 days. Or actually investigating the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and quid pro quo State Department special treatment of foreign governments ...
Meanwhile Melania is NAKED!!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. What do you want out of news? Raw news is impractical, and what's available is slanted by what the camera operators think are interesting, and what the reporters ask. There are going to be biases no matter what. Learn to deal with them.
Also, recognize that your intuition is not necessarily better than actual news. You're childishly suggesting investigating the Clinton foundation and State Department special treatment, in terms that make it quite obvious that this is something you hope is found
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You're thinking of the Fox tabloid. Al-Jazeera is closer to the BBC in quality of stories and in-depth reporting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
(like CNN.com). A respectable news site
CNN used to be respectable. But they are part of the IN THE TANK HILLARY crowd now.
Re: (Score:1)
Everyone who isn't insane or a fool understands that we need to stop Trump
Your insane and foolish to think that this is how democracy works. It isn't. If people want to elect Trump, they will. The more CNN/MSNBC/Washington Post/etc etc etc bash him, the more people WANT to elect Trump.
Even Hillary acknowledged that the people have a reason to distrust her. Hillary and Trump would be equally as bad for the country.
Hillary, when she's all that stands between us and (Trump)
Bovine Fecal Matter. This is the first election where an independent might actually have a proper chance.
Re: (Score:2)
No, Trump has some very hard limits on the people who will consider voting for him. You're referring to a certain anti-elitist and anti-rationality group, which is nowhere near a majority and which is basically in Trump's pocket already.
Nor is an independent going to win. There have been realistic third-party challenges before (Teddy Roosevelt, Wallace, Perot), but no third party candidate will win a single state this election. If there was going to be a credible independent, we'd know by now. The ne
Re: (Score:2)
If everyone who thinks Hillary is the answer to Trump actually opened their mind and saw that Hillary and Trump are basically the same lunatic, we'd be much better off. However, Hillary conspired to rig an election, with the MSM in her pocket and you're simply ignoring that because "Trump is worse". I reject the idea that "Trump is worse" the same way I reject the idea spewed by right wingers that "Hillary is worse". It is basically saying "dying of a heart attack is worse than dying of cancer", no, both s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
CNN supports the Democrat and attacks the Republican every four years. This year they aren't even trying to hide their anti-Trump vitriol.
Between elections they're okay.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
And many Democrats are attacking Hillary - did you notice there were larger, and more violent, protests at the DNC than the RNC?
There are always those that lost out, or aren't getting their plank into the party platform, that are willing to lose the election for ideological purity. Trying to claim that this somehow means that one of the candidates is insane and evil and must be stopped!!!1!1 while the other is just fine and dandy makes you look like a cheap hack.
Re: (Score:2)
Your information is seriously screwed up. The majority on both sides don't like their candidate. Ditto the electorate in general - they don't like either of them, and it's hard to convince people to vote for someone they don't like.
Going from today's ipsos/reuters poll, hardly anyone thinks either candidate is "fine and dandy."
Re: (Score:2)
So, you're saying that only news outlets that endorse your favored candidate are respectable?
Re: (Score:2)
The local news has been doing this for as long as I can remember. They'll tease a story during primetime programming. Find out on your local news at 10!
Okay, so you're wondering what it's all about and it really sounds interesting. The teaser could be about anything, crime, entertainment, the latest fad it doesn't matter. So you tune in. You watch as they go through a few not-very-interesting news stories. You watch a boring weather report and then they cover sports - as if anyone who cares about
Re: (Score:2)
I thought wire fraud was a federal criminal offense.
overlords (Score:1)
I for one welcome our clickbait-free overlords. A title should be a complete thought.
This is lame (Score:2)
That's lame ... I share clickbait headlines all the time because I think they're funny. The posts always include a comment from me explaining why I'm posting it. Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that? Why assume that the people who ask to be my Facebook friends don't want to see my posts?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well if the Facebook algorithm is going to bury the posts so they're never seen, isn't that about the same thing?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Appear less frequently = buried?
That's a generally accepted term, as in a newspaper: "Bury the story on page 4."
Re: (Score:2)
I share clickbait headlines all the time because I think they're funny.
You're the one, huh?
Re: (Score:2)
Because then they don't get to control what you're reading.
The great algorithmic wars begun they have (Score:2)
Considering it's pretty codable to create those headlines I have to wonder how long before someone comes up with a heuristic to write the headlines which get through the filter.
At which point FB will have to update to catch those which will cause a counter update and so on and so forth until no headline ever will get through, leaving us completely news free and ignorant!
Brilliant!
I wish they'd all go away. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Almost every website you go to now, even sites like CNN, CBS, Forbes, etc., have clickbait ads.
I bet they also wonder why people use ad blockers. You don't have to see those ads, you know.
Re: (Score:3)
I bet they also wonder why people use ad blockers. You don't have to see those ads, you know.
Unfortunately, I found ad blockers to be almost as much of a problem as the ads. Often times, if you have an ad blocker enabled, you won't be able to view videos on the site.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose this is a problem because, on the internet, there are too few videos, and way too much time to watch them all. So even the loss of one video is a strike against the home side.
Ad blocker + plenty of fish attitude = why did I even worry about that stupid girl
On YouTube, I have adopted a pretty much infallible personal rule about what curiosity links to click through, when I'm bored enough to even think abou
Re: (Score:2)
if you have an ad blocker enabled, you won't be able to view videos on the site
Which is rather telling of the quality of their content.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Almost every website you go to now, even sites like CNN, CBS, Forbes, etc., have clickbait ads. The ones that irritate me the most lately are "You won't believe what X looks like now, it's stunning!" where X is some sort of 60's or 70's TV show star. They're in their 50's-80's, I pretty much guarantee they aren't going to look "stunning". They're going to look like old ladies. Nothing wrong with that, it's just the ads seem to imply they somehow magically got better looking over the past 40 years. /end rant
Don't forget the ads that say "20 Celebrities you didn't know were dead" but uses as the ad picture the photo of a still living but hardly working celebrity.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was browsing a serious news site recently without ad blocker and was presented with ads of really ugly fat women with skin flapping about. Something about weight loss I suppose. Yuck, I lost the interest in reading the article and installed ad-blocker.
Big-Balls Boyfriend Buries Bone in Bunch of Bitche (Score:2)
This angry girlfriend read his text messages, you won't believe what happened next!
Re: (Score:2)
And every one of those pages tries to hijack my browser to another page.
Guess which headline FB algorithm doesn't block (Score:2)
2. "A wall to block illegal immigrants? This presidential candidate says it can be done at no cost to America!"
In related news ... (Score:3)
The really fucked up thing (Score:2)
There's a major TV network in my country which has all video titles generated to be click bait. The fucked up thing is that the videos themselves are fine, OK-ish news which are not a pain to watch, are relevant and pretty well done. They don't really need clickbait titles because the quality is above average. Why they do it though is beyond my comprehension.
Gaming the system. (Score:1)
So, the smartest bullshitters get through, raising the bar on bullshittery, and making it more of a cognitive challenge to recognise. Gotcha.
Any rule-based system turns into an arms race, which is why they collapse in favor of value-based systems.
Alterior motives (Score:1)
Zuck is one self-loathing jew.
SHOCKING photos of how Kim Possible looks today (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Some clickbait writers have shorter careers than others.
I would click on that just to see how an artists imagines Married life for the morbidly obese Ron Stoppable and Stressed out middle aged soccer mom Kim Stoppable
Not a problem (Score:2)
Since I'm one of the last few carbon-based lifeforms in the entire world who doesn't use Facebook, I can ignore this whole mess. Yay for meeeeeeee!
...And You Won't Believe What Happened Next! (Score:5, Funny)
"Facebook Changed One of it's Algorithms And You Won't Believe What Happened Next!"
"Facebook Reduced Its Clickbait Using This One Weird Trick!"
Re: (Score:2)
"Facebook knows the secret to paying off your mortgage with this one simple trick!"
Re: (Score:2)
And the secret is.....sending a shitload of money to the mortgage company. lol
Why can't it remember my setting? (Score:2)
.
facebook should respect my request to view my newsfeed as I want to view it, and stop hiding behind their "algorithm" to show me stuff I don't want to see.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do I have to set my newsfeed to "Most Recent" each time I visit facebook?
. facebook should respect my request to view my newsfeed as I want to view it, and stop hiding behind their "algorithm" to show me stuff I don't want to see.
I regularly post this complaint in my FB feed, calling out Zuckerberg on it. Fuck man, you're a goddamn software company and you can't keep one fucking preference saved?????
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, I think you two already know the answer to that.
It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's really not about what you want.
I'll believe it when I see it (Score:2)
FB's 'algorithm' could start with random clickbait bullshit sites like Outbrain, TMZ and Zergnet.
I'd prefer they try to stop direct marketers (Score:2)
I can spot and avoid a click-bait article without Facebook's help. What I really want from Facebook is a way to block direct marketing posts from my friends without blocking the friend completely (e.g. Herbal Life, Mary Kay, Shake-ology, Stella & Dot, etc.).
my current slashdot sppnsored content (Score:2)
Here's what's in my Slashdot home page Sponsored Content right now:
The Open Source ""Code"" That Saved the World
Microsoft
This Service in -mytown- is Changing the Way People Cook at Home
HelloFresh
Your 401(k) Isn't Growing as Fast as It Should - Here's Why
Mint | Future Advisor
Aging Science Advances At Unprecedented Pace: The Potential of the Latest Findings on Long-term Health
MIT Technology Review | Elysium Health
Facebook kills all mainstreamnews, and that's OK. (Score:2)
About time (Score:1)
Sheesh, I just wish (Score:2)
I don't need your clickbait algorithm.
How long? (Score:2)
How long until legitimate headlines on legitimate stories are found to "withhold or distort information" because they don't fit the political Narrative of Facebook?
This is not good thing. It is cover for pushing agendas and squelching stuff they don't like... "Oh, it was the algorithm, not our political bias".