Facebook deploys a new anti-clickbait algorithm for News Feed

Facebook’s new anti-clickbait algorithm will further remove bogus headlines

In an effort to reduce the number of clickbait stories that show up in users’ feeds and to keep posts relevant, Facebook has once again gone ahead and tweaked its algorithm that controls its News Feed. In the past too, Facebook has made changes to the news algorithm many number of times.

User Experience Researcher, Kristin Hendrix and Research Scientist, Alex Peysakhovich at Facebook explain clickbait stories as those with headlines that deliberately leave out important information or else try to mislead readers and get them to click their story.

For instance, the new Facebook algorithm can identify headlines like “What she saw at this moment will SHOCK YOU!” or “You won’t believe what will happen next” or “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe” or “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.” and it doesn’t assign only a binary like “Yes, clickbait” or “not clickbait”, but it gives each story a score. The algorithm mainly looks for phrases often used in clickbait headlines but not in genuine headlines, similar to email spam filters.

The system classifies posts that are clickbait and which Pages and web domains these posts come from. Links posted from or shared from Pages or domains that constantly post clickbait headlines will appear lower in News Feed. If a Page stops posting clickbait headlines, their posts will stop being affected by this change, which in turn would lead to improvement in News Feed over period of time. This new update will have a huge impact on your page, if you are a spammer.

The change supports Facebook’s recently announced “News Feed Values”, which concentrates on “Friends and Family Come First” that resulted in last month’s feed change to de-emphasize news publishers.

Facebook has published a guide for bloggers, news agencies, and anybody else on how to avoid clickbait titles. Facebook advises that publishers avoid omission of important information to fool users into clicking, like “You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet…” Instead, Facebook recommends calls to action and text prompts. It also suggests avoiding exaggeration like “This Pen Never Ever Runs Out of Ink! Get It While It Lasts!”

“Pages should avoid headlines that withhold information required to understand what the content of the article is and headlines that exaggerate the article to create misleading expectations,” Facebook explained in its page. “We don’t post clickbait and we always appreciate a new like on our page on Facebook. We rely on people like you.” Facebook added.

Click here to read more on Facebook’s clickbait.

SOURCES: TECHWORM

Google’s new Play Store algorithm to halve size of updates

The amount of data required for updating Google Play apps can really send your mobile bill through the roof, especially if you aren’t using Wi-Fi. Fortunately, Google has heard your concerns, and rolled out a new Delta algorithm, bsdiff, which reduces the app update size and lets you save on the data required for updating them.

Google’s new algorithm does this by further compressing the size of patches for apps and games. According to a blog post by Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play, for about 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only deltas to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files to reduce the size of the updates. Now, Google’s new algorithm will further reduce the patches by up to 50 percent. As he explains in the post,

“For approximately 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates. We recently rolled out a delta algorithm, bsdiff, that further reduces patches by up to 50 percent or more compared to the previous algorithm. Bsdiff is specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).”

Google has also applied the new algorithm to APK Expansion Files to allow users to include additional large files of up to 2GB in size with their apps. This means that the download size of your initial installs will now be lower by about 12 percent, and your updates by approximately 65 percent.

“APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12 percent, and updates by 65 percent on average.”

Google really cares about you and doesn’t want you to pay unnecessarily high data charges when you update your favorite apps. So it has also updated the Play Store descriptions to include the actual download size of the apps instead of the size of their APKs. So instead of seeing just the app size earlier on Google Play and remaining in the dark about how much data and storage the update would actually consume, you’ll now get to see the precise size of the app you want to install or update. Cool, huh?

If the changes made to Google Play aren’t reflecting on your screen yet, don’t panic because, as always, they are being rolled out to all users and should reach you sometime in the coming weeks.

Let us know in the comments below if you think Google Play’s new algorithm will help reduce your data usage!

SOURCES: ANDROIDAUTHORITY.COM