Imagine you’re reading an online article about what steel tariffs mean for construction and manufacturing industries, and suddenly, you find yourself distracted by a “real” photo of a family eating Thanksgiving dinner with a grizzly bear they allegedly raised from birth.
It’s photoshopped clickbait derailing you and robbing your valuable time. According to “Time Well Spent” founder Tristan Harris, it’s the “perverse incentive” of social-media and media companies to trick users into spending more time on their platforms. Clickbait is the biggest abuse of the Internet advertising model (free content in exchange for targeted advertising). That’s because the goal is to get you to take an action, not to give you something of value.
