New Facebook update reduces links to low-quality web pages

San Francisco: In an effort to enhance the user experience, Facebook has rolled out an update that reduces the posts on News Feed linking to low-quality web pages.

Many Facebook users had complained that when they clicked on a link, it led to a web page containing little substantive content, covered in disruptive or malicious ads, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The update is in line with the social media giant`s efforts to check misinformation and hate content. The changes will roll out gradually over the coming months.

"We have had a policy in place since last year to prevent advertisers with low-quality web page experiences from advertising on our platform. Now, we are increasing enforcement on ads and also taking into account organic posts in News Feed," Facebook said.

The social network has reviewed thousands of web pages linked to Facebook to identify those that contain little substantive content and have a large number of disruptive malicious ads.

"We then used artificial intelligence (AI) to understand whether new web pages shared on Facebook have similar characteristics. So if we determine a post might link to these types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in people`s feeds and may not be eligible to be an ad," Facebook explained.

This will lead to people seeing fewer misleading posts and more informative posts on their News Feed.

The update will, however, impact page owners in terms of the flow of traffic. Publishers who do not have the type of low-quality landing page experience may see a small increase in traffic.

But there will be a decline in traffic for the publishers who have the type of low-quality landing page experience.