Based on my experience with how people respond to things I post I am not convinced at all this strategy even increases engagement.
Maybe you can show a number for a slightly higher click through rate, I don’t know and it doesn’t reslly matter since people so obviously tend to bounce off articles that fish for clicks in a condescending manipulative way that whatever the benefit is (if it exists which I am doubtful), it doesn’t remotely even make up for the greater number of people who just pass the article by because they felt they were being prodded by an emotionally manipulating headline.
I would rather 1 person genuinely read an article I post than 10 people vaguely interact with it, click through to read a sentence or two and then close out of it. Honestly I think the same holds for media entities like The Verge, they just have convinced themselves with bean counting the wrong things that they are optimizing instead of undermining.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
General opinion I’ve seen online over the past year or two is that the Verge has started following the same downward trend as nearly every other online news source, unfortunately.