Facebook Is Finally Combating Clickbait Videos, This Is War

Veering away from its hands-off approach when it comes to the contents that users or media outlets post on its platform, it seems Facebook is finally taking the fight to some of the most harmful elements on the web. Aside from the usual white supremacists, terrorists, and trolls, the social media site is now also taking shots at videos with click bait titles.

Clickbait videos have proliferated all over Facebook ever since the site started seriously investing in its video platform. As a result, the social network has had to step in so as to curb the spread of misleading video content that can be both inconvenient and harmful, Fortune reports. This is part of Facebook’s campaign against the culture of fake news that has spread on the site.

As to what types of steps Facebook is taking to address these types of contents might be, it starts with an update that is intended to lower the rankings of any video found to have committed any of the acts associated with click bait. According to the blog post that the social network’s engineers released, most of the publishers affected by the changes are those intentionally misleading users and directing them to low-quality sites.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to fight clickbait and improve the integrity of information on Facebook, we are announcing today two updates that will limit the spread of stories in News Feed that feature either fake video play buttons embedded in their imagery or videos of only a static image,” the post reads.

“People want to see accurate information on Facebook, and so do we. When people click on an image in their News Feed featuring a play button, they expect a video to start playing. Spammers often use fake play buttons to trick people into clicking links to low quality websites.”