Facebook to filter out links with deceptive and annoying ads

Facebook is planning to intensify its crackdown on so-calledclickbait websites, saying it will begin giving lower prominence to links thatlead to pages full of deceptive or annoying advertisements.

The downgrade of the links was expected to take effectbeginning on Wednesday on News Feed, the home page of Facebook where people goto see posts from friends and family.

Facebook said it wanted to downplay links that people postto websites that have a disproportionate volume of ads relative to content, orthat have deceptive or sexually suggestive ads along the lines of "5 Tipsto be Amazing in Bed" or "1 Crazy Tip to Lose Weight Overnight!"

Links to websites with pop-up ads or full-screen ads alsowould be downplayed, it said.

People scrolling through their News Feed are oftendisappointed when they click on such links and do not find valuableinformation, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of ads and businessplatform, said in an interview.

"People don't want to see this stuff," he said."We're just trying to figure out how to find it and rank it further downNews Feed when possible."

Facebook uses a computer algorithm to determine which postspeople see first from friends and family, and it frequently refines thealgorithm to keep up with spam or other concerns.

The company said in August it was adjusting the algorithm todownplay news stories with clickbait-style headlines, a style of headline thatintentionally withholds information or misleads people to get them to click onthem.

In December, facing criticism that hoaxes and fake newsstories spread too easily on Facebook in the run-up to the U.S. presidentialelection on Nov. 8, the company made it easier for people to report those kindsof posts.

Facebook, the world's largest social media network with 1.9billion monthly users, has enormous power with its algorithms to potentiallydrive traffic to media publishers or stymie it.

The company said it reviewed hundreds of thousands ofwebsites linked to from Facebook to identify those with little substance butlots of disruptive or shocking ads.

Bosworth declined to name any websites Facebook wants totarget. He said only publishers of spam needed to worry about seeing lesstraffic, and other publishers could see their traffic go up.

"This is a small number of the worst of theworst," he said.