One of the major reasons so much online content is junk is advertisements. When journalists make money based on clicks, they have very strong incentives to prod

One of the major reasons so much online content is junk is advertisements. When journalists make money based on clicks, they have very strong incentives to produce a lot low quality, easy to consume content. When you profit from manipulating attention, it's hard to resist generating clickbait. It is much easier to manufacture outrage(that spreads very well) than to educate or enlighten. I think that the best way to fix this is to change monetization strategy from ads to premium content or paid subscriptions. When that happens, the main incentive turns from "quickly produce a lot of viral content" to "create high quality content that is worth buying". It is the easiest, the most straightforward way to properly align incentives. I was so excited about Medium because it's a platform that had a chance to do that, and I hoped they would. Unfortunately, they have introduced ads as a monetization strategy. Too bad.