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It's safe to say that headlines and headline writers (usually editors) are some of the biggest contributors to the culture wars and all-up dishonesty in modern discourse.

If you think about it, it was inevitable when incentives became more aligned with quick 'hot takes' and volume over signal/noise ratio.

The darkpattern of our times.

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Especially since many (most?) don’t even bother reading past the headline.

...and strangely, even quality sites like HN take the given headline instead of the lede. Some subreddits have a way to indicate 'misleading headline' – could be a great feature across all consolidators/curatorial social media.

The mods here do sometimes change sufficiently misleading headlines, but that takes time and getting their attention.

Which is good, but it almost feels like it should be a UX convention at this point. Of course, that'll be abused as well. Remember eTrust badges? :'D

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