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What the network tab in your browser's DevTools when you click it, and you'll see. Even if the whole text is loaded with the initial page, you'll see a request

What the network tab in your browser's DevTools when you click it, and you'll see. Even if the whole text is loaded with the initial page, you'll see a request to somewhere to record that you clicked. Your engagement has been measured. This can be helpful for the site directly (which articles do people actually care about after the first paragraph) and that people are engaged enough to click for more is something they can “sell” to advertisers. A better designed site will have the “read more” button be an actual link so if you have JS disabled (or it fails to load) instead of the content reveal simply failing it falls back to a full-page round-trip so you are counted that way. This could be done with picking up on scroll events or visibility tests on lower parts of the article, instead of asking the user to click, but those methods are less accurate for a number of reasons (people with big screens, people with JS disabled or JS failed to load, …)

exo762 4y ago
So much effort to be able to claim that you do targeted advertising, that is yet to be proven to be effective.
- dspillett 4y ago
  It isn't as much to claim specifics about what you do wrt targetting. It is to try prove they have engaged users who are looking at the screen rather than, for instance, opening it in a tab then closing it later without ever reading any of it. You might link that to what adverts were shown, but only if they know that information (they may not if the advertising space is farmed out to 3rd parties which is very common).
- Kiro 4y ago
  Is it really that ineffective? Let's say I get 1 million click-throughs and 100k of them click "read more", which I send as conversions to Facebook. Won't Facebook's algorithm start targeting people similar to the 100k that "converted", making the next 1 million clicks contain more people that hit "read more"?
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > Is it really that ineffective? Maybe, maybe not. It could all be a huge cycle of cons with each part of the advertising and stalking business making crap up about what is effective and convincing the next people in the cycle. But certainly some think it is effective, or at least are hoping that it will be. It could be like junk email: there are companies and individuals who make money from sending it. It doesn't actually matter to them if it is effective, as long as they can convince others buying their services that it is, or likely might be, effective, and they get their money whether it actually is or very much is not.
discardedrefuse 4y ago
Once upon a time, web browsers were equipped with a STOP button. As soon as the thing you were interested in was loaded, you could press it and...everything else on the web page would just stop loading. Unfortunately, now days the thing you are interested is hiding behind mountains of cruft and usually the last thing to load.

exo762 4y ago

So much effort to be able to claim that you do targeted advertising, that is yet to be proven to be effective.

dspillett 4y ago
It isn't as much to claim specifics about what you do wrt targetting. It is to try prove they have engaged users who are looking at the screen rather than, for instance, opening it in a tab then closing it later without ever reading any of it. You might link that to what adverts were shown, but only if they know that information (they may not if the advertising space is farmed out to 3rd parties which is very common).
Kiro 4y ago
Is it really that ineffective? Let's say I get 1 million click-throughs and 100k of them click "read more", which I send as conversions to Facebook. Won't Facebook's algorithm start targeting people similar to the 100k that "converted", making the next 1 million clicks contain more people that hit "read more"?
- dspillett 4y ago
  > Is it really that ineffective? Maybe, maybe not. It could all be a huge cycle of cons with each part of the advertising and stalking business making crap up about what is effective and convincing the next people in the cycle. But certainly some think it is effective, or at least are hoping that it will be. It could be like junk email: there are companies and individuals who make money from sending it. It doesn't actually matter to them if it is effective, as long as they can convince others buying their services that it is, or likely might be, effective, and they get their money whether it actually is or very much is not.

discardedrefuse 4y ago

Once upon a time, web browsers were equipped with a STOP button. As soon as the thing you were interested in was loaded, you could press it and...everything else on the web page would just stop loading. Unfortunately, now days the thing you are interested is hiding behind mountains of cruft and usually the last thing to load.