
Facebook Takes Steps Against ‘Click Bait’ Articles - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/business/media/facebook-takes-steps-against-click-bait-articles.html?ref=business
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ColinCera
Why oh why didn't the Times give this story the headline, "You Won't Believe
What Facebook Is Doing To Your Timeline"?

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aaronbrethorst
I'm sure they A/B tested it.

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patmcguire
Maybe not. It is the Times, after all - there's no way those "For an Article,
Headline Written Like Yoda" headlines are optimized for clicks.

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sp332
Links to [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-
bait...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/) I
can't read the submitted article because of the paywall, but does it add
anything to the announcement?

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ben010783
The submitted article is shorter and more concise, but you're not missing
anything by only reading the official announcement.

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rlu
Thank god.

I was sad to have to unfollow "Wimp.com". It was (and I guess sort of still
is) a site that would upload 5 new videos a day. They'd be anything from funny
to cute to jaw dropping to inspiring to just plain interesting. But you could
pretty much bet on them being great.

A few months ago they decided to turn their titles into clickbait. It was so
incredibly frustrating to see them go down that path. I don't know if their
quality bar for videos also dropped, or if that's just my disappointment
seeping through.

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oneweirdtrick
Wow, I haven't been to Wimp in a while and it looks totally different now. It
used to be so elegantly simple.

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Zikes
> Facebook says its algorithm will now consider how long users spend reading
> an article as a way of judging the importance.

A result of Facebook monitoring your browsing habits on other web sites.

Thank goodness for Ghostery [1]

[1] [https://www.ghostery.com/en/](https://www.ghostery.com/en/)

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greglindahl
Did you read FB posting[1]? Especially this part:

    
    
      One way is to look at how long people spend reading an
      article away from Facebook. If people click on an article
      and spend time reading it, it suggests they clicked
      through to something valuable. If they click through to a
      link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests
      that they didn’t find something that they wanted. With
      this update we will start taking into account whether
      people tend to spend time away from Facebook after
      clicking a link, or whether they tend to come straight
      back to News Feed when we rank stories with links in them.
    

[1] [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-
bait...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/)

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Zikes
"One way", and a speculative one at that. Their tracking cookies are a much
more effective means to gather that sort of data with certainty. Anything else
is just fancy guesswork.

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jarin
They don't even need tracking cookies. They can just use the Like button.

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wf
>Facebook says its algorithm will now consider how long users spend reading an
article as a way of judging the importance.

Now the titles will be "[Number greater than 20] Things You Won't Believe
About The 90's"

But seriously, I hope this has a meaningful impact. I despise the lists.

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oneweirdtrick
'One Weird Trick To Fight List Articles'

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camillomiller
Let's all remember that facebook is not doing this for the users, but just
because it has to minimize the most effective strategy --as of now-- publisher
use to lure the sticky users out of the facebook cave and onto their websites.

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frostmatthew
> Let's all remember that facebook is not doing this for the users

Let's all remember that for-profit companies rarely do things "for the users."
That's not a bad thing. [It's only bad in monopolistic situations where there
is little or no incentive to improve the service/product in order to make more
money].

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camillomiller
For profit companies whose users don't pay a dime for the service. I was just
pointing that out because this change against linkbaits look like something
good for us, against the tyranny of stupidity that even once-glorious
publications are imposing on the social networks users. It is not.

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judk
Seems it would be easier to just make the "Never show me content from X.com"
menu item actually work.

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teepo
The vast majority of FB uses are using an app, not a browser. clicking a link
in the FB app does not take out "out of Facebook" they know if you clicked the
back arrow within the app, and went back to your feed.

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jsmeaton
_citation needed_ \- seriously, is there a link to stats that show mobile has
vastly more users than desktop for facebook?

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thatswrong0
Not exactly what you meant: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-
user-count/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/)

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jsmeaton
That link shows 700 million daily, 470 million of those mobile. If I
understand the numbers presented correctly, then 61% of their audience is
using mobile. While more than desktop, it's hardly "vast majority".

Thanks for the link. I was underestimating the impact of mobile. But I believe
the parent to my comment was overestimating, and I'm kind of sick of the
"everyone uses the web on mobile anyway" meme.

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kolev
Too bad for Ashton Kutcher as well! His Facebook posts are all click baits!

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cratermoon
Facebook makes one small change, you won't believe what happens next!

