Yes, but did you read the examples in the article? Many of the high-engagement headlines ignored most of the content in favor of a tangential but titillating detail. That's National Enquirer stuff, not what the New York Times has prided itself on being.
I did, but honestly most of the examples confused me. Both the Tesla rocket example and Cuomo story are surely headline changes relating to the story changing? They didn’t add “Cuomo apologizes” to titillate, it’s because… he apologized, and he hadn’t when the story was first published. Which isn’t even A/B testing! The article also more or less states this, hence my confusion.
I think the same is true for the Trump CPAC speech article. The blog post compares the initial headlines about him “claiming leadership” to the ones about him attacking other Republicans. But just from eyeballing the chart, first the headline changes from “Plans to Claim” to “Claims”, presumably around when he started giving the speech, and then shortly afterward it’s changed to mention him attacking Republicans, probably at the point in the speech where he did that. There does seem to be an A/B test between the last two headlines, “Trump Pledges G.O.P. Unity, Then Attacks Republicans Who Backed Impeachment” vs. “Trump’s Republican Hit List at CPAC Is a Warning Shot to His Party”. But that’s not the comparison the blog post makes. And among those two, while the winning headline (the second one) is clickbaitier, both focus on the same part of the speech, and neither is inaccurate.
Are you saying there isn't just two sides to every story?
Yes, so A/B testing won't work. You need a one-armed bandit algorit.
But, from the OP article, that doesn't particularly seem to describe at least some of these cases.