August 24th, 2017

A year ago, we wrote about how Facebook began using a system to detect clickbait headlines in a shared links and how they reduced the distribution of those posts in News Feed. Last week, Facebook announced that they will be taking further action to crack down on clickbait, this time against video clickbait.

There are two updates that Facebook is making that they claim will limit the spread of clickbait in users News Feed:

1) Posts that features a fake video play button embedded in their imagery.

2) Videos of only a static image. 

Facebook explains that "When people click on an image in their News Feed featuring a play button, they expect a video to start playing. Spammers often use fake play buttons to trick people into clicking links to low quality websites."*

Facebook has already begun demoting stories that have fake video play buttons and static images that are dressed as videos in News Feed. So what can you do? In short, if you've been using these methods to drive clicks, stop immediately. Posting these types of images made to look like video content will only hurt, not help your reach on Facebook.

*Source: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/08/news-feed-fyi-taking-action-against-video-clickbait/