Over all I think that this type of metric has had a significant detrimental effect on the quality of news items. I understand that there is a business advantage

Over all I think that this type of metric has had a significant detrimental effect on the quality of news items. I understand that there is a business advantage to knowing things like this, but I think that there would be much less rage porn and click bait around if this information wasn't known to an entity that can use it to forgo relevant reporting on things that matter and manipulate our tendencies towards morbid curiosity and outrage. I'd go as far as to say that it isn't only unethical to collect this information, but that it's unethical not to take active measures not to share it.