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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

This article is better than a lot of comparables and the discussion isn't bad, so we've reduced the downweights (not Airbnb-related) that got automatically applied to this submission and replaced the baity title with something more neutral. If anyone wants to suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

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What's wrong with the original title? Would the subtitle "Airbnb has become so successful that hotels are losing business and tourist sites face being ruined" be acceptable?

"Ruin" is hyperbolic and "ruin our most-loved" is over the top.

Ok, your site, your rules. But I'm surprised to see that that title in another submission in the top page has been changed from "Reasons not to use Facebook" (the title of the document in the <h1> sense) to the less neutral and more hyperbolic "Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook" (which is the <head><title>).

We changed that one to the original title of the article. Is it misleading or linkbait? Those are the conditions under which it should be changed.

Arguably it is, but then the site is Stallman's, which makes the context of the advocacy unmistakeable. Also the verbal twist of "use, (i.e. be used by)" is marginally gratifying of curiosity in its own right, and not the same thing as the usual clickbait. So IMO that title squeaks by as ok.

Obviously different editors would call some of these differently, but that's not the same thing as arbitrarily changing the rules. The rule is pretty fixed.

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