Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

....You stumble across it in your Facebook feed or Twitter feed. It reads, "13 Problems Every Blonde Bostonian Working at a Marketing Software Company Has." You recognize it's pandering to you ... but it's just so perfectly intriguing, you have to click. You click, resigning yourself to scrolling through for just a minute because you've got work to do. You get to the first list item -- it's roughly on point, so you continue.

Suddenly, 10 minutes go by -- you've scrolled through the whole article and realized it's a load of crap that was meant to waste your time. You hate yourself a little. You get back to work, telling yourself you won't get duped again. You're too smart for that ... but sure enough, an hour later, the whole clickbait-shame cycle continues. 

Don't be upset -- it's happened to pretty much everyone. Clickbait has been around for over a century, and it's remained a common tactic for content creators because it works....

Facebook has tweaked its New Feed algorithm many, many times in its attempt to keep the posts you see relevant, but the change it’s rolling out today may be the most important one yet: Facebook is vowing to kill clickbait.

Facebook has tweaked its New Feed algorithm many, many times in its attempt to keep the posts you see relevant, but the change it’s rolling out today may be the most important one yet: Facebook is vowing to kill clickbait.

It’s a potentially huge move, and one that makes journalism better for almost everyone involved.

How it works

Now Facebook is filtering out clickbait much like Gmail hides spam. It’s detecting specific words, structures, and styles in titles which “intentionally leave out crucial information, forcing people to click to find the answer.”

Here are some Facebook-provided samples of titles you will be seeing a lot less of:

“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”

“The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.”...