No, Spooning Isn’t Sexist. The Internet Is Just Broken
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
"What the tool does is to try to capture the content of an article or blog post without passing on your visit as a pageview. Effectively this means that you're not paying with your attention, so you can read and share the idiocy that it contains."
"Effectively this means that you're not paying with your attention". I don't see how this is true. The owner of the website might just think I don't pay with my attention. But I did.
Everything can be made either legal or illegal.
This goes back well before Slate, though: The term "yellow journalism" was coined in the late 1800's.
I find these "clickbait" stories to be the natural evolution of the same type of sensationalism that's been used to sell papers and magazines or get you to stick around for the full story at 11.
No, Slate, you are the worst.
> "The Alabama Granny Murder-For-Hire Plot" > "Attack Of The Kate Upton Clones" > "The Internet Is Just Broken"
...oh wait, that last one... It's not an issue with the internet, Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster style intriguing/bizarre stories have always been popular. Hyperbole brings people in, and it's not just about clicks – people will read stupid stories in The Sun or The Mirror depending on their political leanings, and feel entertained. Because they're fun, silly stories. I'd hate to write one myself but that's a personality trait I have, and not necessarily a positive one.
Also:
> Advertisers have wised up a little bit. There are now party tricks like branded content—wherein advertisers pay for stories that are sort of about their product, but are also about, say, travel or sports—and advertisers sometimes take into account unique visitors within specific demographics, based on age, race, and location.
> Tony Haile, the CEO of Chartbeat—the kings of metrics on the Web—tried to warn us about this last year.
I'm inclined to think this is a Daily Beast writer and Chartbeat being a bit cheeky! Hiding in plain sight. Not that I would begrudge them at all. It was a fun read. Although I disagree with the central premise behind writing it, most of the actual ideas seemed fine. Time on site is hardly a new concept though, and engagement in general has been somewhere on the priority list for (for example) Google for quite a while now.
What alternative model can work aside from measuring pure clicks though? Even "the time on site" solution they mention here (if it were even workable) has problems, just because I spend a few minutes reading something doesn't mean it's high quality. Equally high quality content need not necessarily take a long time to consume.
Precisely. Attraction to spectacle results in not only clicks on that "Outrageous Statement X", but also so one can firmly applaud/smugly disdain it.
And I'm not just pretending its only other people who do this; I'm not proud but I've fallen into that hole myself.
Just look at Donald Trump.
That said, I feel at least the latter 90% of the article is on-topic for HN.
Incidentally, this is not a new or unexpected phenomenon, 'traditional' media marketing bods have understood the principle for decades - the noisier a channel gets the louder/shriller you have to shout to get people's attention.
If the latter then I must remind you the Hacker News is not news about hackers but rather news hackers would find interesting. If the article doesn't gratify your intellectual curiosity then simply don't upvote it.