Facebook Users Fight Back Against Clickbait, Newsfeed Changes Not Much Better

There are a lot of things that are wrong with Facebook that the social media site is trying to address, but users are still experiencing some unpleasant aspects that they would rather live without such as clickbait titles. More than that, it would seem that the changes the social media site made with its newsfeed algorithms is not as great as many hoped, particularly with regards to the “Daily Me” style of getting news.

As Stuff pointed out, Facebook users absolutely hate clickbait titles. Unfortunately, there seems to be a biological need to click on said titles even when they know that they won’t likely find anything worth their time once they get there. Since this is the case, users are instead fighting back by using the like button to show just how displeased they are.

For example, a user could click on an article with a clickbait headline and be disappointed by the lack of interesting content found on the destination. The user could then go back to Facebook to express their annoyance by liking and then unliking the article.

For the social network’s part, they are looking at how long the user stays once they arrive at the website they clicked to determine how worthy the article is to host. Articles that have low user retention usually have terrible content, and Facebook uses this information to judge if they will feature future articles from the site as priority items in newsfeeds.

Speaking of newsfeeds, Bloomberg reports that the changes in Facebook’s algorithm are anti-democratic. The personalized news aspect is particularly troublesome for some social and economic experts since it means exposing a significant number of users to news that only confirm their own ideas.

Being provided with conflicting opinions that actually have substance is important in initiating public awareness. By personalizing newsfeeds, users only served to confirm their own bias and are not exposed to other ideas if they don’t search for them.