Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

#11

Post by blatherard »

The WaPo-owned slate.com has been doing frequent renaming of articles for a while now. I suspect they've been a testbed for Bandito or a similar system. One very frustrating side-effect is that I am often drawn to click on the same article multiple times. That's because it shows markedly different headlines for the same article, sometimes even on the same page simultaneously.

Case in point, as of right now, slate shows a headline: "What Bernie Sanders' Victory Means"

and lower on the page: "It's Official: Bernie Sanders Just Won New Hampshire"

both of which link to the same article, which sports the quotidian title "Bernie Sanders Wins New Hampshire".

The two front-page headlines are not just tweaked variants of each other, they sound like substantially different articles, one a reporting-the-news article and the other an analysis piece.

This is super-frustrating to me, because I keep feeling like the site is wasting my time and attention. It's starting to drive me away from slate overall. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens to the WaPo.

Re: Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

#14

Post by apendleton »

blatherard wrote: post #11

The WaPo-owned slate.com has been doing frequent renaming of articles for a while now. I suspect they've been a testbed for Bandito or a similar system. One very frustrating side-effect is that I am often drawn to click on the same article multiple times. That's because it shows markedly different headlines for the same article, sometimes even on the same page simultaneously. Case in point, as of right now, slate sho…

Not disagreeing with the headline behavior, but just FYI, WaPo doesn't own Slate. They were both once owned by the Washington Post Company, but the Company sold only the paper to Bezos, and renamed itself to Graham Holdings shortly thereafter. It still owns Slate.

Re: Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

#17

Post by benologist »

blatherard wrote: post #11

The WaPo-owned slate.com has been doing frequent renaming of articles for a while now. I suspect they've been a testbed for Bandito or a similar system. One very frustrating side-effect is that I am often drawn to click on the same article multiple times. That's because it shows markedly different headlines for the same article, sometimes even on the same page simultaneously. Case in point, as of right now, slate sho…

CNN also does this, headlines change all throughout the day.

Re: Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

#18

Post by untog »

ada1981 wrote: post #16

There have been wordpress plugins that do this for years. What is surprising is that one of the largest media companies in the world just figured this out, when internet marketing shmoes have been doing this with $20 php scripts for years.

People were aware of it, but considered it the domain of internet marketing shmoes. Sadly, the media keeps losing money, so one by one those principles get compromised.

Re: Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks

#20

Post by glass55 »

blatherard wrote: post #11

The WaPo-owned slate.com has been doing frequent renaming of articles for a while now. I suspect they've been a testbed for Bandito or a similar system. One very frustrating side-effect is that I am often drawn to click on the same article multiple times. That's because it shows markedly different headlines for the same article, sometimes even on the same page simultaneously. Case in point, as of right now, slate sho…

The Huffington Post have been doing these kind of tricks for a long time too. Despicable, I hate being taken for an idiot and tricked into clicking like that. I just boycott websites that do that now.
Post reply on HN