Facebook Clamps Down on ‘Low Quality’ Links on Newsfeeds

Facebook is rolling out an update that would throttle links from users who are judged to be posting “vast amounts” of low-quality content onto their profiles and clogging up the news feeds of their friends.

“Our research shows that there is a tiny group of people on Facebook who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day, effectively spamming people’s feeds,” Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s VP of News Feed, wrote in a blog post. “Our research further shows that the links they share tend to include low-quality content such as clickbait, sensationalism, and misinformation,” the post continued.

While links will be restricted, no other forms of posting will be effected. Mosseri confirmed that “this update will only apply to links, such as an individual article, not to domains, pages, videos, photos, check-ins or status updates.” Rob Waugh, writing in The Metro, lamented that “pictures of people’s breakfasts or little maps showing how far they’ve jogged” would not be removed from his feed.

This is building on previous work by the news feed team from last August, when they attempted to reduce clickbait headlines:

These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer. For example: “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”; or “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless…”

We categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by considering two key points: (1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader.

However, while Facebook has clearly defined what they consider to be “clickbait,” the other terms used, namely “sensationalism” and “misinformation,” could potentially be used against anything Facebook judges to be “fake news.” Previously, Facebook had rolled out an option for people to report fake news on the site, along with creating an algorithm to combat it.

Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can like his page on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_ or on Gab @JH.