YouTube has become the home of clickbait in recent years. Thumbnails and titles have (at least in many of the largest channels) a single objective: to attract the attention of users. For years, YouTube has rewarded these behaviors. In fact, it penalizes those videos that do not have eye-catching thumbnails and indicative text in them.

This has had the consequence that some channels abuse clickbaittaking advantage of the fact that YouTube gave a lot of visibility to this type of videos. As a measure against misinformation, the platform will begin to punish (first in India as an initial testing phase) those videos that use clickbait in the headline or thumbnail.

Google has announced on its blog measures against “the atrocious clickbait of YouTube.”

“We are redoubling our efforts to tackle egregious clickbait on YouTube. This means that we plan to increase our measures against videos where the title or thumbnail promises viewers something that the video does not deliver. This is especially important when the Video covers topics such as breaking news or current events, to ensure that viewers are not misled about what they see on YouTube. We will slowly start implementing this measure in India in the coming months.

What is this egregious clickbait? According to Google, those publications that include promises or statements that are not reflected within the video itself, especially on current affairs.

As examples, YouTube raises headlines such as “the president resigns” in a video in which the resignation is not addressed. Pure and simple clickbait of a lifetime, in other words.

YouTube is clear: it will eliminate those videos that violate this policy, without half measures. Likewise, they advance that the detection algorithms will allow us to recognize when a video with clickbait is uploaded, to block its upload on the platform.

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