Facebook clickbait cull

Facebook is tweaking its system in an effort to reduce the number of misleading articles people see in their news feed, aka clickbait.

The social media giant is analyzing how long people actually spend reading the article they click on as a way to discern its importance. It claims to have accounted for long articles so human goldfish won't be starved of short-term news fixes before returning to Facebook to make it more money.

Several recent reports have highlighted that Facebook's revenue model is being threatened by the fact that people are sharing less personal information and finding the information they are presented with in their news feed less interesting.

The tweak is an effort to reverse that, while still boosting the company's efforts to make money from being a key source of news. ®