The art of clickbait.
You clicked on the link, didn’t you? How do you attract clicks on your post in a world that is moving so fast that you don’t have time to read everything? Create a title for you article that is too good not to click. Enter clickbait, fishing for your clicks by creating purposely false titles. Clickbait can be described as “web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, […] relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks.”¹ Clickbait is probably one of the most hated categories of posts on social media.
BuzzFeed and Upworthy are known to use clickbait titles to drive in views and ad revenue. (Screenshot of BuzzFeed taken on October 1st, 2016)
Facebook recently introduced a new algorithm that aims to stop these kind of ‘headlines’ to appear in your newsfeed. They already tried to limit the amount of clickbait appearing in your newsfeed in 2014², but apparently those clickbait sites still found a way around it. In 2014 Facebook announced that they would start looking at the amount of time spend reading the article, and the amount of likes given, to determine whether the article is clickbait or not. The new algorithm will will weed out misleading and exaggerated headlines the same way that email spam filters weed out fantastic offers to help Nigerian princes recover their lost fortunes. The new algorithm will de-prioritize posts with headlines that “(1) withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader.”³. Facebook employees analysed tens of thousands of headlines, and flagged those that intentionally withhold important information and those that use exaggeration to mislead the reader as “clickbait”. From there, they built a system that looks at the set of clickbait headlines to determine what phrases are commonly used in clickbait headlines that are not used in other headlines. This is how many self learning systems work. You show them a set off correct items and a set of incorrect items and the software itself can figure out if a new item is correct (no clickbait) or incorrect (clickbait).
Facebook wants to get rid of the clickbait articles in order to show people the stories most relevant to them. When your whole timeline is full of clickbait this ruins your user experience and you will probably not return to Facebook very often anymore which is bad for Facebook.
So hopefully no more:
- This [xxxxx] will change your life
- With this one weird trick…
- This [xxxxx] will restore your faith in humanity
- This Young Boy Was Bullied At School For Having Tiny, T-Rex Like Arms. What He Did Next Might Make You Rethink Slavery.
- Here Are 37 Grandmas Who Want To Squeeze Your Cheeks And Call You “Pookie”, But Can You Guess Which One Is Actually A Russian War Criminal?
- Spooky! This Picture Of A Mummy Was Found Upstairs In The Attic, But Nobody Knows Who Took It?!
- Ewww! Your Cat Brought A Bloody, Mutilated Animal Into Your House! You Won’t Believe What Happened When The Toddler Got Hold Of It.
- Watch As This Incredibly Strong Black Woman Redefines What It Means To Eat 18 Hotdogs In Less Than One Minute.
- You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet…
- Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!
- 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.
in the future.
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait
²https://www.cnet.com/au/news/facebook-nixes-click-bait-headlines-in-users-news-feeds/
³http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/news-feed-fyi-further-reducing-clickbait-in-feed/
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Facebook’s efforts are very laudable and I hope they will not only reduce the amount of clickbait found on Facebook but maybe also lead to a shift in thinking about clickbait in general (although this seems improbable to me). Next to being a nuisance to anybody exposed to it, clickbait also has worrying societal consequences. In the modern information economy that is the internet, attention is the currency. No wonder, therefore, that everyone from online marketers to our own friends tries to grab gain as much of our attention as they can.
Clickbait is the logical conclusion of this battle for attention. The actors that lose out, however, are those who decide against using clickbait and instead rely on the quality of their content rather than flashy headlines. Unfortunately, these actors usually are major quality newspapers. This means that clickbait shifts our attention away from high-quality, informative content to pointless lists on sites like Buzzfeed and similar sites. This makes it easier for populists and other unscrupulous people to spread false information and dangerous superficial knowledge.
Therefore, I welcome Facebook’s new, harder stance on clickbait.
The same is happening with TV stations and their news updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX2uR-KqD8o (parody on CNN) Because the one with the wildest or most attention grabbing headline gets all the attention, we don’t get to know the ‘real’ news anymore. If you want to do something about your facebook situation right now: there is a downwards pointing arrow in the top right corner of each message, click it and click ‘Hide post (see fewer posts like this)’ or ‘unfollow’.
https://www.facebook.com/help/745556738851537
While you at it: you can also check your ad preferences to see all the categories facebook has put you:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences
Hi Sverre, thanks for you post. I can totally relate to clickbait ruining my user experience.
Misleading headlines distract people from well-written, high quality articles. People become annoyed and might choose not to read internet articles anymore. On the other hand, why does clickbait still exist? I think many people nowadays have experienced clicking on clickbait articles, and might recognise from the way titles are formulated that the given article won’t be useful. However, if you are an active social media user, you will probably see clickbait articles multiple times a day/week. I think people are naturally curious and have the fear of missing out on something. When a clickbait title leaves you with a question, you might be tempted to click and find out.
I hope Facebook will succeed in getting rid of clickbait articles. There are so many more useful things we can spend our time on, for example reading high quality articles that will actually give us new information.
I hope that facebook will succeed as well 🙂 However, if you know how clickbait looks like you suddenly see it everywhere. I think it’s nowadays what people expect a headline to be. You even see it on this blog, many people (unconciously) choose a title that invites people to read the whole article.