You won't believe that Facebook is getting rid of click-bait News Feed spam

Facebook
We still may click on the kitten post

Tired of seeing posts on Facebook telling you to "click to see more"? Well so is Facebook as the social network is attempting to minimize how often spammy click-bait headlines show up in everyone's News Feeds.

The social network announced it's updating the News Feed to minimize click-baiting, or headlines that suggest users "CLICK to find out" and tease "You'll NEVER believe what happened next."

From now on pages that get a lot of clicks won't simply rise to the top. Rather posts that users spend an appreciable amount of time spend reading away from Facebook will be given greater presence.

In turn the social network hopes these richer stories will encourage more engagement and conversations.

Spam-a-lot

On the flip-side if users click though to a story and flip right back to their News Feed, Facebook will deem these posts as click-bait and reduce their visibility on the website.

Facebook noted it's making this change in an effort to please its user base. Supposedly the results of a Facebook survey discovered 80% of users wanted headlines that would help inform them about the story before actually clicking through to it.

Facebook also announced a second News Feed update focused on making sure posts with an included link in the text are promoted over links buried in photo captions.

Facebook claims that embedded links are simply easier for mobile devices users to tap on.

Both these changes will be ultra important to social media managers, forcing them to change up their sharing strategies. As for the rest of us, we can all rejoice that now we'll see far fewer posts that read "You'll NEVER guess what happened next" and more that actually inform us about what's going on in the world.

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.