Now video clickbait stories on Facebook News Feed will be demoted

Facebook which was often criticized for not doing enough to combat fake news on its platform, has launched two new updates that will limit video clickbait posts from appearing in the News Feed. The posts being targeted are those that have fake video play buttons embedded into an image, and videos of a static image.

“Publishers that rely on these intentionally deceptive practices should expect the distribution of those clickbait stories to markedly decrease,” Facebook engineers Baraa Hamodi, Zahir Bokhari, and Yun Zhang, wrote in a blog post. “Most Pages won’t see significant changes to their distribution in News Feed.”

Spammers for long have exploited Facebook’s algorithm which promotes videos into clicking links to low-quality websites and those with malicious ads. This new update by Facebook will try to at least curb these malicious practices.

Last month, Facebook decided to disable modified links previews that prevent fake news from circulating over the News Feed. Also, it was removing the ability to modify shared link previews on Facebook.The demotion of video clickbait posts will roll out over the next few weeks.

This announcement by the social media giant comes on the heels of a major redesign in the Facebook's Android app. Rolled out a couple of days ago, the firm tweaked the Home Screen to improve navigation and bring better readability.