[phtrivier]

Fair enough, but then I want a way to penalize publishers for abusing clickbait. There is no "unread" button, and there is no way to unsubscribe to advertisement-based sites.

Even on sites that have a "Like / Don't like" button, my understanding is that clicking "Don't like" is a form of "engagement", that the suggestion algorithm are going to reward.

Give me a button that says "this article was a scam", and have the publisher give the advertisement money back. Of better yet, give the advertisement money to charity / public services / whatever.

Take a cut of the money being transfered, charge the publishers for being able to get a "clickbait free" green mark if they implement the scheme.

Track the kind of articles that generate the most clickbait-angry comment. Sell back the data.

There might a business model.

[NineStarPoint]

I doubt there’s a business model there because who is going to opt in to a scheme that loses them money?

What could work is social media giving people an easy button to block links to specific websites from appearing in their feed, or something along those lines. It’s a nice user feature, and having every clickbait article be a chance someone will choose to never see your website again could actually reign in some of the nonsense.

[phtrivier]

> I doubt there’s a business model there because who is going to opt in to a scheme that loses them money?

Agreed, of course.

In a reasonable world, that could be considered part of the basic, law mandated requirements. It would be blurry and subject to interpretation to decide what is clickbait or not, just like libel or defamation - good thing we're only a few hundred years away from someone reinventing a device to handle that, called "independent judges".

In the meantime, I suppose you would have to bring some "unreasonable" thing to it, like "brands like to have green logos on their sites to brag" ?

> What could work is social media giving people an easy button to block links to specific websites from appearing in their feed, or something along those lines.

I completely agree. It's a feature they have had the technology to implement such a thing since forever, and they've decided against it since forever.

However I wonder if that's something a browser extension could handle ? A merge of AdBlock and "saved you a click" that displays the "boring" content of the link when you hoveron a clickbaity link ?