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.
other_cat@piefed.zip 20 hours ago
I will say the title used here did get me to click through because the way it’s worded made me wonder if there was a lawsuit being brought up. Obviously, since it was staged, that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t pleased at being tricked.
Honestly if they had used my title I still would have looked at the article, so my click would have been given anyway. I just now come away annoyed where I otherwise wouldn’t have.
I generally expect better from Futurism.
trevdog@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I saw that headline earlier this week and skipped reading it. I still skipped the source with this post, but at least you took some highlights out so I know more. Thanks for engaging with it and making it more digestible.