Comment by ks2048
1 day ago
"Since I've added gambling and pornography to my old niche hobby website, my profits are up 4% - how can anyone criticize me?"
Not a perfect analogy, but adding some bait that does indeed work for grabbing attention can of course be criticized.
And of course those criticisms can and should be dismissed if the creators goals are purely to maximize engagement
No that _is_ the criticism
You can dismiss criticisms of theft if you look at the goals of the thiefs
The goal of purely maximizing engagement should itself be dismissed.
Lying, grifting, and promoting conspiracies online also maximizes engagement and drives revenue. I guess we should go ahead and do that too.
This whole conversation makes me want to throw up
This does make me wonder if I'm being disillusioned or if the community has genuinely shifted in the past 2–3 years or so. Or of this merely a greater societal shift as "history culture" takes off. You'd think sentiments like "clickbait is bad" would be a common sentiment here, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
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