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Famous Headlines, Rewritten For Facebook's New Clickbait Policy


Andrew Boyers / Reuters

You’ll never guess what happened when we tried to game the social platform’s algorithm. (What happened was we wrote a bunch of terrible headlines.)

Adrienne LaFrance and Robinson Meyer
Aug 4, 2016

For the second time this summer, Facebook has made a major change to its News Feed guidelines. The company will now reduce the rank and reach of headlines that it considers to be clickbait [ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/news-feed-fyi-further-reducing-clickbait-in-feed/ ], because it believes that these deceptive headlines erode the “authentic communication [ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/deciphering-facebooks-news-values/489812/ ]” that happens on the platform.

“These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer,” write two researchers who work for the company [ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/news-feed-fyi-further-reducing-clickbait-in-feed/ ]. They rattle off some examples:

“When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS… I Was SHOCKED!”

“He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe”

“The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.”

Facebook is a vast platform, so its employees can’t identify all the headlines that lurk there one at a time. Instead, they have developed a system that identifies them automatically. An algorithm knows certain phrases that usually indicate clickbait and punishes them accordingly. “Links posted from or shared from Pages […] that consistently post clickbait headlines will appear lower in News Feed,” they write.

This could potentially be very good for readers and for the journalists who work hard to inform them. But at the same time, we don’t really have a choice about whether to comply. Along with Google, Facebook wields incredible power in the marketplace: By one estimate, the two companies direct 80 percent of all traffic [ http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/twitter-has-outsized-influence-but-it-doesnt-drive-much-traffic-for-most-news-orgs-a-new-report-says/ ] to news websites. Two years ago, the late media columnist David Carr fretted that news publishers would soon become “serfs in a kingdom that Facebook owns [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/facebook-offers-life-raft-but-publishers-are-wary.html ]”; today, not only do we find ourselves ensconced in Castle Facebook, but the local lord’s laws and guidelines are not written on paper, but executed impersonally and algorithmically. Journalists have to guess to make sure that we’re not doing anything wrong.

So in the spirit of practice and loving fealty, we’ve rewritten some famous headlines to practice for this new age of Facebook. The last thing we would want to do is leave out crucial information.

Frank Sinatra Is a Complicated Person (and Unfortunately Our Reporter Did Not Get to Speak to Him)
[ http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/essays/sinatra.html ]

The Lived Experience of Surviving the Atomic Bomb Detonation in Hiroshima Was Horrific
[ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima ]

Ford to New York City: Drop Dead (but He Only Means That Figuratively, As He Intends to Veto Any Bail-Out for New York City’s Municipal Budget)
[ https://editdesk.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/ford-drop-dead-headline/ ]

ISIS Really Wants to Expand the Caliphate and Trigger the Apocalypse
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ ]

Due to an Incredible History of Oppression Against American Blacks Generally, and the Experience of One Chicago Family in Particular, It’s Time to Take Reparations Seriously Already
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ ]

This Is a Long, Vividly Written Story About the History and Types of Oranges That Exist
[ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/05/07/oranges-2 ]

This Is a Long, Vividly Written Story About the History and Types of Pasta
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1986/07/pasta/306226/ ]

Truman Defeats Dewey
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman ]

Not Only Is Marriage Not a Cure For Poverty, but Systematic Injustices Keep America’s Poor From Prospering
[ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/08/18/the-marriage-cure ]

I, John Updike, Watched Ted Williams Hit the Last Home Run of His Career and It Was Bittersweet
[ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/10/22/hub-fans-bid-kid-adieu ]

It's Hard to Sell a Diamond, Which You Know if You’ve Ever Tried, Because the Market's Controlled by a Global Cartel
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ ]

A Young Man Hiked Into the Alaska Wilderness and Died Under Somewhat Mysterious Circumstances, and Also His Ordeal Raises Larger Questions About American Culture
[ http://hudson.k12.oh.us/cms/lib08/OH01914911/Centricity/Domain/1167/Krakauer%20article%20McCandless.pdf ]

Most Commuters Didn’t Even Notice When a Violin-Playing Prodigy Masqueraded as a Street Performer
[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721_pf.html ]

Machines Can Improve Society if They’re Built in a Way That Values Information Sharing and Connectedness (and if  You Read This Again in 50 Years It Will Blow Your Mind Because of How Much Technology I Accurately Predicted)
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ ]

Political Campaign Reporting Is Deeply Flawed, and It Contributes to a Profound Sense of Disenfranchisement Among Voters
[ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/10/27/insider-baseball/ ]

I Have Moral Qualms About Boiling Lobsters Alive—Given That They Feel Pain, Studies Now Show—Just Because They Taste Good
[ http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html ]

The Experiences of One Obsessive Horticulturalist Raised, for Me, Fascinating Questions About Human Desire; Also, Lots of Facts About Orchids Are in Here
[ http://www.susanorlean.com/articles/orchid_fever.html ]

Headless Body in Topless Bar
[ http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/new-york-post-editor-and-film-critic-vincent-musetto-dies-at-74/ ]

Copyright © 2016 by The Atlantic Monthly Group (emphasis in original)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/famous-headlines-rewritten-to-comply-with-facebooks-new-policy/494603/ [with comments]

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