You Won't Believe this Clickbait Problem! It's Serious

Devon Stephen- ds708914@ohio.edu

          In the last 15 years alone, technology has given us platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which changed the way we create and absorb content every day. While the advancement has made some of us savvier in online content consumption, others seem to lag behind in the era of Fake News and “clickbait.” Clickbait is a form of false advertising that lures viewers into clicking on a video or article that isn’t at all what its title or headline teased. Sometimes clickbait can be humorous, like when YouTuber Nikita Dragun titles a video totally unrelated to current YouTube controversy “What Really Happened.” Nikita’s subscribers expect to see clickbait in her video titles and view it as a joke. Unfortunately, clickbait isn’t always harmless.

Channeling Hate and Fear
A Washington Post article with the headline, “For the ‘new yellow journalists,’ opportunity comes in clicks and bucks” explains how anyone with a laptop and an opinion can use clickbait to spread dangerous “news,” regardless of truth or credentials. The motivating factor behind doing such a thing? That’s easy: cold, hard, Facebook cash. Paris Wade said he gets paid more than he feels comfortable discussing to run a website and Facebook page with false headlines and opinions.

Screenshot of content from Wade's Liberty News website

Unfortunately, most of the articles Wade and his partner, Ben Goldman, post incite anger and even violent comments. According to the article, one of Wade’s posts read, “BREAKING: Top Official Set to Testify Against Hillary Clinton Found DEAD!” Another article headline meant to incite fear read, “Terrorists Have Infiltrated the US Government! Look Who They Want To ASSASSINATE!” Wade and Goldman know their headlines are clickbait and their “articles” are fiction, but they don’t seem to care.

“Violence and chaos and aggressive wording are what people are attracted to,” Wade told the Washington Post. Regardless of whether he agrees with the content he posts, or whether the people who share the articles on Facebook actually read them, Wade gets paid based on engagements. If he is morally unbothered, why would he pursue any other career?

A Share’s a Share

The Colombia Journalism Review has an article from 2014 which talks about clickbait that’s slightly less terrifying and political. The article cites headlines from publications like the Washington Post and Time that are clickbait without the fear. Instead, they play on readers’ disinterests or annoyances to aggregate engagements. For example, the article says Washington Post published an article with the headline, “Video games could make kids better, healthier people.” While the article doesn’t incite fear or violence like the ones from Wade, it does play on readers’ emotions. A mom with sons whose eyes are glued to their screens might read the headline and disagree so strongly that she shares it with a post about how false it is. The Colombia Journalism Review calls that a “hate-share.” Regardless of how people feel about it, a share puts dollars in a content creators' pockets.

What Can We Do?

So, what can we do to end the clickbait madness? Is there even a solution? Of course, we can educate our friends in family in detecting clickbait headlines. For example, the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining published an article in 2016 that said the length of words in clickbait headlines is, on average, shorter than the length of words in non-clickbait headlines. Clickbait articles also use more hyperboles and contractions than real news articles. Another way to decipher clickbait headlines from real news headlines is by familiarizing yourself with common bait phrases that exploit the “curiosity gap,” such as “Will blow your mind” or “You Won’t Believe,” according to the article.

Chart from the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks
Analysis and Mining that shows the difference between words in clickbait articles
and words in news articles

News articles from reputable sources do not exploit the curiosity gap with headlines that make readers want to click. Aside from providing our friends and family with as much knowledge as possible, there may not be much we can do. The success of clickbait articles depends largely on the algorithms of platforms like Facebook. Although Facebook has spam filters that temporarily block rapidly shared articles, many of the clickbait articles slip through the filters. Until platforms change algorithms that reward creators of fake news like Wade and Goldman, clickbait headlines will continue to pop up on people’s timelines.