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Comment by sevenless | Hacker News Reader

Clickbait is just a conspicuous example of a more general problem: sensational and scaremongering news there is no conceivable benefit in knowing. This category encompasses most political news, and the daily litany of misery, crime and terrorism that fills the headlines. I think FB should filter it all out, and stop news organizations lining their pockets by making us unhappy.

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It's just that it's very hard to determine what's 'wrong' and what's not, other than very extreme cases and even then you might disagree. Banning some media because you don't consider right/worthy/beneficial/whatever doesn't help with free speech at all.

Imagine someone banning Justin Bieber music because it's not 'worth listening', or banning some books because they have no value. That's a bit absurd.

The way Facebook chooses articles for its feed has no effect on anyone's free speech. Comparing it to banning books is silly.

This always depends on which receing end you are. If your book/blog/status is being _hidden_ by newsfeed, then you'll be screaming for freedom of speech and fairness in how people see their newsfeed and to let them decide what is worthy of their attention.

"Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks" [0]

"Was it funded by the US army? First the university said yes" it's US led information warfare [1]

[0] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/jul/0...

He did say filter, and not ban. To me that implies it's still accessible, but perhaps hidden by default for my user.

Lots of companies "ban" Justin Bieber, in that there are lots of places he and his music are not found.

People obviously want to read it, because they click on it.

People obviously also want heroin, because if you give it to them, they'll take it and ask for more.

Heroin induces desire for a harmful substance by exploiting the chemistry of our brains. News platforms induce desire for harmful information by exploiting cognitive biases and heuristics.

This is true... but what do we do about it? Outlaw click-bait? That will work even worse than outlawing heroin has.... at least heroin is fairly easy to define and identify.

Click-bait is such a nebulous term, that anyone can classify articles they think are vapid and pointless as click-bait, while someone else might find it informative and interesting.

This strikes me as a uniquely Californian point of view.

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