YouTube has become the home of clickbait in recent years. Thumbnails and headlines (at least on most of the largest channels) have one purpose: to capture users’ attention. YouTube has been rewarding this behavior for years. In fact, it penalizes videos that lack eye-catching thumbnails and descriptive text.

This has led some channels to abuse clickbait, taking advantage of the fact that YouTube gives such videos a lot of visibility. As a precaution against misinformation, the platform will start penalizing videos that use clickbait in the title or thumbnail (first in an initial testing phase in India).

Google announced its measures against “YouTube’s disgusting clickbait” on its blog.

“We’re redoubling our efforts to combat the dreaded clickbait on YouTube. This means we plan to step up our crackdown on videos where the title or thumbnail promises viewers something the video doesn’t. This is especially important when the video covers topics like breaking. What viewers see on YouTube We will gradually begin to implement this measure in India in the coming months to ensure that we are not misled.

What is this terrible clickbait? Posts that contain promises or statements that are not reflected in the video itself, especially regarding current events, according to Google.

For example, YouTube makes headlines such as “the president is resigning” in a video where resignation is not discussed. In other words, a lifetime of pure and simple clickbait.

YouTube is very clear: It will remove videos that violate this policy without taking any action. Similarly, they suggest that detection algorithms will allow us to recognize when a clickbait video is uploaded and block it from being uploaded to the platform.

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