Typical pattern: “Scientists find something strange when they look at a common whatever - and it’s not good!”

This kind of crap used to be the style of little blurbs at the side or the bottom of an article, but it’s in the headlines now. Until you click the headline you don’t even really know what the article is about anymore - just the general topic area, with maybe a fear trigger.

Clicking on the headline is going to display ads, but at that point the goal isn’t to get you to buy anything yet, it’s just to generate ad impressions, which the content provider gets paid for regardless of whether you even see the ads. It’s a weird meta-revenue created by the delivery mechanism, and it has altered the substance of headlines, and our expectations of what “headline” even means.

  • solrize@lemmy.world
    78·
    12 days ago

    Yeah I made c/savedyouaclick in the hope of getting people de-clickbaiting stories, but I was the only poster afaict. I wonder if calling it newssummararies could help.

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
    44·
    12 days ago

    I don’t click those any more. I assume they’re completely written by AI and not fact-checked in any way. They just suck knowledge out of me instead of adding more.

    • magnetosphere@fedia.io
      17·
      12 days ago

      Exactly. If the headline is garbage, I assume the story is, too. Real journalism that’s worth reading doesn’t need to resort to clickbait.

  • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
    26·
    12 days ago

    No other choice than sticking with the few reputable media that still don’t do that. Gotta support them so they don’t fall into that too.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      12 days ago

      Sometimes the articles themselves are fine, and it’s just the editorial department that adds the sensational headlines. I don’t know if it’s worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
        12·
        12 days ago

        If the marketing has the power to go over the journalism to change the titles, isn’t it a symptom that things are going downward for this media?

  • ripcord@lemmy.world
    261·
    12 days ago

    While we’re at it, does anyone on Lemmy hate capitalism? I never see anyone mention it.

    And that Trump guy is really not turning out well.

  • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
    9·
    12 days ago

    I hate them. I hate that everything is always trying to sell you something or trick you into generating profit somehow. It makes me want to burn down a bank.

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
    7·
    10 days ago

    That’s why I stopped reading the news. Instead I get my news here and I have to interpret what they mean for me locally. Its extremely bullshit. Now orange man has bit into NPR and PBS. When that institution disappears, I won’t have a leg to stand on. I’ll be a mindless robot going to work. Suddenly they come and tag one of my balls with a chip because they said they would but nobody was there to tell us.

  • Grass Cat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    12 days ago

    It’s the news that Starship Troopers and Idiocracy both parodied. Except it’s not future fantasy, it’s real and here now.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    72·
    12 days ago

    It’s not new, it’s just adapted to the media format.

    Getting people to read the news and the ads between articles is how the game is designed.

    Journalism classes has always educated this.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      61·
      12 days ago

      If you had been an adult during a decade or two before the Internet you would know that a headline used to sum up the basics of a story. For example, picking a random 1980s headline: “Six US embassy aides escape from Iran”. Nowadays that would be more like, “US admits Iran plot.”

      • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
        5·
        12 days ago

        I took some journalism classes in the 90’s (and then decided it wasn’t for me), and my SO was a journalist around the same time.