>"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" We really need to stop using Hanlon's razor when discussing businesses at scale. I

>"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" We really need to stop using Hanlon's razor when discussing businesses at scale. It is a great rule of thumb for everyday people, who are much more careless than malicious. With business though, there is too much money to be made by being shady and then hiding behind plausible deniability to always give the benefit of the doubt. Outside hospital billing companies make mistakes all the time. It seems adequately explained by stupidity...until you realize the mistakes heavily tend in favor of overcharging. If the people who designed the system are benefitting from a systematic error, don't use Hanlon's razor. If a delivery driver leaves your package at the wrong house, it's almost certainly an honest error. If a near monopoly delivery service constantly loses packages while heavily advertising package insurance, then there might be a reason they aren't improving their internal processes. (this isn't in reference to anything, I made up an example that could be either) Anyway, off my rant and to your specific example: In the case of journalism...if clickbait headlines about stupid controversies outperform well written articles, then I have to think media executives know exactly what they're doing when they tell a journalist to bang out a dozen garbage articles a day.