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The changed the title, including the subtitle.

Don't know if it's just me, but all of the archive.today sites have been putting me into a captcha loop for the past couple months. :(

Are you using Cloudflare as your DNS? It's intentionally broken for Cloudflare users

I don't know if the situation is identical, but on Youtube, creators can see the analytics of their videos and adjust their titles and thumbnails based on what performs best each time they adjust it.

I wouldn't be surprised if other online creators do the same.

That's called A/B testing, like the parent mentioned, and yes, it's a popular technique predating YouTube and "creators" in the new sense of the word.

Standard practice to A/B test for the bigger online outlets, and presumably also to try targeting based on neighborhood, cookies, etc.

The Atlantic was A/B testing headlines back in 2015 when I worked there. I don't know why they would have stopped. It's SOP at larger sites.