Have you ever been a victim of “fake news” from people who spam your news feed with clickbait and misinformative articles? Good news is that Facebook has released an update to help reduce low quality links in the News Feed. “This update will only apply to links, such as an individual article, not to domains, Pages, videos, photos, check-ins or status updates.” according to FB News Feed.
Improving user experience has always been one of Facebook’s main motivator and probably with so many reports from Facebook users reporting posts that seem malicious and misleading, it’s high time they do something about this.
What exactly are “Clickbait” articles?
We start with the headlines, if you encounter exaggerated titles that reads like “This something did something and what happens next will blow your mind!”, “10 Shocking stories that will make you cringe”, or “You’ll never believe what this dog did to the cat” then you are one of the million readers who have fallen into a clickbait articles’ prey.
Clickbait headlines help build interest and connect with the audience. However, Facebook has already started penalizing posts that are “click-baiting”.
The Ethics of Facebooking
Facebook has posted an article on Best Practices and this includes the following:
- Share headlines that inform
- Post headlines that set appropriate expectations
- Public figures: Share links with clear, accurate headlines
Tricking readers to click first before they could get answers or even find out just what the entire post is all about may have an adverse effect on your post and eventually, on your page. Use your personal voice in posting captions because that’s how you should be connecting with your audience. Make them feel that a person is behind a Facebook page or account, and not just an emotionless bot.