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Comment by n42 | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, I have no issue with anything here, except that someone would think a title like "The worst product I've ever reviewed" is not clickbait.

Clickbait does not mean bad. It does not mean I don't like it. It doesn't mean evil. It means it is bait designed to make you click.

And clearly, if you look around you, it's working.

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I think there are two different definitions of clickbait that people are operating with.

One definition (maybe close to what your definition might be) is "a title written with the intent of getting people to click on it".

I think the other definition that many people hold would be something like: "a *misleading* title with the intent of getting people to click on it".

So, if someone thinks of clickbait as requiring some element of deception, misdirection, or other very mild fraud, then this wouldn't fit that category. I think that's why people are talking past each other a bit.

"A title written with the intent of getting people to click on it" describes every title ever. What professional whose livelihood is dependent on people interacting with their work would possibly ever title their work in a way that dissuades people from interacting with it? Clickbait needs to be something more than simply "an interesting title" for the term to have any meaning at all.

Clickbait describes the replacement of traditional news headlines (a summary of what happened, e.g. "Tulsa high school student defeats chess grandmaster at tournament") with mystery lead-ins designed to leave you wanting to know what thing happened (e.g. "What this high school student did will SHOCK you", or "This high school student just changed EVERYTHING about chess").

For the YouTube video in question, I guess it hinges on whether you recognize the device in the thumbnail you're looking at. If you do, then the title is giving away the lede and letting you have the takeaway if that's all you're looking for. If not, then you could argue that leaving out the product's name is clickbait-y.

What's interesting is that that's basically the opposite of Vassallo's argument. He argues on X that it's not the video that's the problem; it's the meanness of the title that might effectively kill the product. He even says that the same video posted on X has a different title, and he has no problem with that.

So he's claiming that the title is in effect anti-clickbait. That by itself, regardless of the video content or whether or not people watch the video even, it could potentially cause harm to the product. I mean, he's not entirely wrong. It wouldn't be unsurprising if more people saw the title, and said to themselves, "Well, that sounds like a shit product, no need to even waste time watching the video," than actually watched the video.

That seems like a poor definition of "clickbait" in the context of YouTube, as that definition would effectively apply to every video being put on the platform these days and as such makes the label meaningless.

It would be a comment on the state of YouTube. Also Clickbait is a spectrum. On one end there are disingenuous titles (1) on the other are academic titles (0). A typical book of fiction title would be somewhere in the middle of the scale. But we do judge fiction and other artistic efforts differently.

There are Channels I subscribe to, that do not use titles like those too much. You can find examples from those channels that are clickbait from my perspective, but that is a general feeling I have.

I would also say that for complex stuff covered by a video you can't give a simple purely descriptive title and then my Clickbait detector allows some leeway. Just don't rely on terms, that almost automatically put a question in minds. Like: weird (weird, how?), the worst/best product (which product? - is it something I know of?).

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