Facebook is escalating its war on “clickbait” headlines by instituting a new system on its newsfeed that will weed out misleading and exaggerated headlines the same way that email spam filters weed out fantastic offers to help Nigerian princes recover their lost fortunes.

The tweaks to the algorithm, announced today in a blog post, will de-prioritize posts with headlines that “withhold information required to understand what the content of the article is and headlines that exaggerate the article to create misleading expectations”.

The blog post listed three examples of clickbait headlines: “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”; and “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.”

The changes mark the second attempt by the social network to crack down on the much-reviled but nevertheless effective strategies publishers employ to coax readers to click on their content.

In August 2014, Facebook announced changes to its newsfeed that took into account the amount of time people spent on an article, penalizing publishers who used the Upworthy-style “curiosity gap” to garner clicks.

“If [users] click through to a link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests that they didn’t find something they wanted,” the company said then.



The new update is based on publishers’ behavior, rather than the users.

Facebook analyzed tens of thousands of headlines, deeming as “clickbait” those that intentionally withhold important information and those that use exaggeration to mislead the reader.

Publishers who “consistently” post content with clickbait headlines will be penalized with lower placement in the newsfeed. If publishers stop using clickbait headlines, they will no longer be negatively impacted by the changes.

Facebook’s announcement was immediately the subject of headlines – many of them jokingly clickbait-y – by the digital publishers that rely on the social media for a significant proportion of their traffic.