Facebook announces new updates to reduce clickbait

Facebook has announced three new updates so that people will see even fewer clickbait stories in their feeds, and more of the stories they find authentic.

Clickbait describes web content that aims to exploit the curiosity gap, providing just enough information to make the reader curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content.

The social network is now taking into account clickbait at the individual post level in addition to the domain and page level, in order to more precisely reduce clickbait headlines.

"In order to make this more effective, we are dividing our efforts into two separate signals -- so we will now look at whether a headline withholds information or if it exaggerates information separately," Facebook said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The company is also starting to test new updates in additional languages.

"Posts with clickbait headlines will appear lower in News Feed. We will continue to learn over time, and we hope to continue expanding this work to reduce clickbait in even more languages," the post added.