Clickbait was discussed in an indie webforum. The answer may surprise you.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Those fluff piece articles they show up when you start up Firefox.

You know them, you got them (at least until you figured out how to get them off your starting page), what do you think of them?

I got them removed from my home PC but sometimes I'm guilty of sneaking a quick click on one of them on my work computer on empty hours.

I want to think they are useful, but to be fair the most interesting part of them is their title. I guess that's why they're called clickbait 

Let's try to discuss the superficiality of clickbait in depth.

We all know obnoxious Youtube thumbnails and prologues to recipes the size of the Silmarillion, but how do you distinguish a "good" article from a fluff piece? How do you ward yourself against this stuff? Can you describe in detail that sensation of "augh" you get when you see an exaggerated open-mouthed smile gaping at you on your youtube searches?

Extension recommendations, reliable sources of articles and anecdotes are welcome.

[MediocreMetastasis]

Firefox has popup articles? I've never seen them before.

Youtube is really bad for it. If I ever see a thumbnail of a guy unhinging his jaw with bulging eyes with the saturation cranked up I'm not clicking. There is an extension where it'll remove the thumbnails and the title of all videos so instead of the clickbaity thumbnail it's a screenshot of the video and instead of the title being "I did something CRAZY in minecraft" it's "minecraft #5". It's an extreme way of avoiding clickbait but it works.

[Nova]

If y'all ever wanna, ya know, not see the thumbnails on YouTube, DeArrow.
It also changes titles if you want too.

https://dearrow.ajay.app/

[Cele]

I had to turn them off years ago... Seeing news constantly even when I'm not looking for them makes me too stressed out :S

[ABlueRose]

I must have turned off Firefox articles instantly because I don't remember ever seeing them 

Like the others have said, "DeArrow" is a really good extension for Youtube. I've been using it for a few weeks now, and love it!

The only tip I can think of for click-bait titles is that if the title ends in a question, nine times out of ten the answer is no.


I will admit I click on click-baity Youtube shorts. As long as I don't begin scrolling through them, I'm okay with myself for clicking on a couple a day

[Loebas]

I've completely turned off the firefix startpage, and get a blank page every time i open up a new tab.

For the youtube side i use grayjay desktop instead of the webversion of youtube. The official plugin comes even with sponsorblock build in. And there is a separate plugin for DeArrow as well.

But the use of youtube has decreased for me anyways, i only use it in the mornings, and when i'm having diner to watch truck vlogs.

So yeah, i'm completely clickbait free now

[H0ppin_H00ligan]

God, i HATE clickbait!!! At best it's just kinda obnoxious and stupid and at worst it's just plain disrespectful.

I especially see this with gaming videos on youtube, youtubers could play a game that discusses the most horrible things that could happen to someone and do so in the most gut-wrenching way you've ever seen and just put bright neon colors in the thumbnail and make the title some dumb shit like "I GOT KIDNAPPED?!?!?!?! - bleebo blorpo's adventure ep. 46" and like....to a point i know it's probably just because i'm getting old, i mean...back in my day, people would call youtubers like pewdiepie and jacksepticeye loud and annoying all the time. But still, the amount of times i've seen youtubers talk about the indie horror game "my eyes deceive" and put LITERAL SPOILERS IN THEIR THUMBNAILS and tell everyone that they should never play the game because of it's dark subject matter bothers me so much that i'm literally in the middle of writing a whole 11-page essay about WHY it bothers me.

[PurpleHello98]

I hate YouTube clickbait, but honestly...? I kind of like the Firefox clickbait articles. They give me a little something to do with my time and help me learn something. They're helping me transition away from a video-centred view of the Web back to a text-centred view of the Web in my mind, which is what's helping me use social media less and less. So I appreciate them. Even if they do remind me of this scene from The Paper.

[lakes]

I use the dearrow title setting on Freetube to take care of the youtube clickbait, but I've noticed sometimes the more accurate title changes will be delayed especially if it's a smaller channel.
As for clickbait articles, admittedly I have trouble gaining the motivation to still read articles.
I remember a couple of years ago, I was obsessively fact-checking things.

[Vidknight]

Eh... I feel mix. On one hand I don't like clickbait at all. I find that most of the time stuff that has to clickbait is just low quality stuff that can't stand on it own legs and need some wild crazy title/thumbnail to get people to click on it.

But at the same time what do we mean by clickbait? Like I seen some videos with titles and thumbnails that can be considered clickbait but is only there as a joke. One of my favorite channels WizardWithGuns (And just sketch comedy channels in general) has a lot of videos that look like clickbait, but is instead a setup for a joke in the video.

What about videos where the title is vauge, but the thumbnail explain everything? for example

Youtuber: Kamsandwich


I'm just incredibly confused on where the line is between being clickbait and just a regular title/thumbnail.

Honestly I'm kind of getting to the point where I no longer care about clickbait. I mean at worse in my experience I waste a minute skimming through the article/video, roll my eyes and go back.

I still think clickbait is bad especially nowadays where finding true information is getting pretty hard, but trying to analyze every single piece of content on the internet to see if it clickbait or not is just tiring yknow.

Also I do know about dearrow, but honestly it doesn't help me much especially since I usually immediately block channels I know will post stuff I don't like.

[lakes]

Eh... I feel mix. On one hand I don't like clickbait at all. I find that most of the time stuff that has to clickbait is just low quality stuff that can't stand on it own legs and need some wild crazy title/thumbnail to get people to click on it.

But at the same time what do we mean by clickbait? Like I seen some videos with titles and thumbnails that can be considered clickbait but is only there as a joke.

I get what you're saying. Even with Dearrow titles enabled, sometimes I catch it changing a title that didn't need to be changed in my opinion. (Freetube lets you see the original title by clicking a circle with a dot in the middle.
I think a small group of people consider any title that's expressive at all to be "clickbait" and I don't agree with that stance. For me, it's more like if the title is misleading in a way to make it seem more interesting than it is. But then again that's still kinda vague. It's more like a call it when I see it thing which is why a lot of people get it wrong.

One of my favorite channels WizardWithGuns (And just sketch comedy channels in general) has a lot of videos that look like clickbait, but is instead a setup for a joke in the video.

Yeah Wizards with Guns is funny. I personally won't consider them clickbait that much.