Facebook to time users in order to spot click-bait stories

Social network king Facebook has announced plans to weed out “click-bait” stories by timing how long users spend on the story before returning to the social site.

“Click-bait” is the practice of using an eye-catching headline to draw in readers without really telling them what they’re about to see. Facebook say users have been telling the site they regard click-bait as spam, so the social network is stepping in. An example of a click-bait news story on Facebook (Facebook)

“If people click on an article and spend time reading it, it suggests they clicked through to something valuable. If they click through to a link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests that they didn’t find something that they wanted,” said a post on the official Facebook blog.