Facebook, the social-media giant that defines nearly half of our lives and self-identity, has gone out to reprimand sites, big and small, that use click-bait articles to entice visitors to their homepages. It will aim to accomplish this by targeting individual posts and not just the overall website.
This is big. Nearly 30 percent of internet users throughout the world is through the social media giant or one of its services. Facebook’s tough new stance will spell trouble for marketers who have made millions (literally) enticing people to their websites through headlines such as ‘Things You Wish You Didn’t Know About Jennifer Lopez’s behind’ or ‘Kareena Kapoor doesn’t want you to know this about her love life – you know – the articles you spend half of your life reading through.
This move by Facebook has two possible reasons behind it. First, the accusations were thrown against the social media platform after the 2016 US Elections, in which ‘fake news’ supposedly played a major role in tilting people towards the Don. Secondly, people are just sick of misleading headlines and titles, period.
We jot down a few reasons why we feel click-bait definitely needs to go out.
You learn absolutely nothing and waste a lot of time
It really is fake news in most cases
A lot of clickbait is fake news: no, Melania Trump is probably not a man and the BJP is not attempting to exterminate minorities. In fact, even when it’s not aiming to present you with fake news and just has a really enticing headline, you tend to see through the lines and tell yourself that it’s nothing more than unclassified crap.
Clickbait is downright unethical
Not only is the fabrication of such content for a few bucks outright unethical, but it can also potentially risk human lives, relationships, and beliefs. As all socially responsible thinkers know, you do not want to go into that territory if you don’t what you are talking about and can’t back it up with empirical evidence. Oh yes, peer-reviewed scientifically reviewed empirical evidence.