Indeed it is. If anyone has suggestions about what we could do about this, beyond not have shallowly provocative articles to begin with, we'd love to hear them.
Sorry to suggest something you explicitly didn't ask for, but the problem is definitely the article to begin with. This is in a similar category as troll-bait; obnoxious behavior is guaranteed. An obvious but simple solution: an algorithm that punishes link titles that contain certain names. I propose:
- Steve Jobs
- Elon Musk
- Jack Dorsey
- Melissa Mayer
- Sheryl Sandberg
- Zuckerberg
- Etc.
In many genres the fetishization of individuals leads to lowest-common-denominator crap like this. Reminds me of "great man" history theories.
