3 ms·
Any headline that uses “quietly”, “finally”, or “openly” is a signal of a bad faith article. And headlines using “This company” rather than naming the company
by brookst 3y ago
Any headline that uses “quietly”, “finally”, or “openly” is a signal of a bad faith article.
And headlines using “This company” rather than naming the company are clickbait.
Funny that TechCrunch wants to cast aspersions using cheap devices like that.
- tgv 3y agoYou need a bit more substance than association by guilt (and not even a strong association) to criticize an article or a headline. My reading of e.g. "quietly" is that either they're claiming a scoop, or they're critical of the acquisition, not of bad faith.
- robertlagrant 3y agoWhat is "association by guilt"?
- _0ffh 3y agoMaybe they mixed up "guilt by association".
- robertlagrant 3y agoPossibly, but then I would ask how that's relevant as well!
- tgv 3y agoI did mean guilt by association. The comment's author assumes the articles uses cheap devices based on an association the word "quietly" with bad faith arguments.
- robertlagrant 3y agoHow's that guilt by association?
- actionfromafar 3y agoI love this "Association by Guilt", great lo-fi post-punk band.
- brookst 3y ago“Quietly” is a way to imply wrongdoing in something purporting to be a news article. Which is funny because you can use “openly” the same way, and it seems to me that every action can be characterized as either quiet or open. That’s why it’s bad faith. It’s a cheap shot that purely injects a negative feeling without actually expressing an opinion. “Teamshares buys mom and pops to lock them in as customers” or “Teamshares screws small businesses to make a buck” would be honest, good faith headlines. Innuendo is never good faith.
- Nicholas_C 3y agoA browser add in that replaces article titles with a factual summary based on the content of the articles would be pretty neat.
- htrp 3y agoNot sure its in bad faith. It literally reads like a PR placed puff piece
- bwanab 3y agoI agree. I've started avoiding almost any headline with the phrase "this X ..." where you've got to click to see what X is. Almost invariably, the headline could have easily specified what X was but then you might know you don't have any interest.
- jamilton 3y ago"This venture-backed started" is reasonable, saying "Teamshares" instead isn't actually informative because (presumably) no one has heard of them.
- lolinder 3y agoThe headline would feel less like clickbait if it omitted "this": "Venture-backed startup has...". The word "this" in a headline has become strongly associated with low-effort articles that try to draw you in by being simultaneously provocative and non-informative.
- dcow 3y agoClick-bait works, sad as it may be…
- ford 3y agoThere's very little incentive to write headlines that aren't clickbait
- 99_00 3y agoThanks for sharing. I find signals like this very useful.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]