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like the rest of simple solutions to complex problems suggested by otherwise (seemingly) intelligent people on HN, it simply wouldn't work. do you really not see why?

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Are you talking about that people could just click on the link then not actually read it? The thing is that clicking on the link then closing is serves as both a slight barrier to entry targeted at the people who comment without reading and also a reminder that there is an actual article to comment on. It's not going to fix discourse but the theory behind it is to be a slight nudge to get people who don't click to at least consider reading the article (or just not comment) while being an invisible change to people who actually read the article. It's not meant to be a magic fix, it's just some something I would want (though I'm biased since I click on links so there's no downside to me).

Wouldn't browser prefetching subvert these small frictions to entry?

I think I've seen sites trying to track outbound clicks recently, has prefetching made that impossible? I don't know the implementation but I've seen the browser sending requests that track clicks while investigating other stuff (idk whether it's working accurately though).

Edit: to be clear, it's not like I've researched this proposal since I don't work for social media companies. It's just a feature I wish I could have on my posts.

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