Ad professionals or media companies that may have, unwisely, put trust in video clickbaiting are going to face challenges on Facebook.

Clickbaiting per se has become among the industry practices that despite its widespread criticism are still seen in abundance. Video clickbaiting is true more so on social media and mobile platforms, where video formats are picking up.

In Facebook’s broader fight against fake news, protecting information integrity and clickbaiting, the platform has introduced updates that will limit the spread of stories in News Feed that feature either fake video play buttons embedded in their imagery or videos of only a static image.

“When people click on an image in their News Feed featuring a play button, they expect a video to start playing. Spammers often use fake play buttons to trick people into clicking links to low quality websites,” a Facebook post explained.

Similarly, these deceptive spammers also use static images disguised as videos to trick people into clicking on a low quality experience. “To limit this, during the coming weeks we will begin demoting stories that feature fake video play buttons and static images disguised as videos in News Feed,” the post explained.

Consequently, publishers that rely on these intentionally deceptive practices should expect the distribution of those clickbait stories to markedly decrease.