I’ll be honest, I don’t even want to read articles anymore. Its just crazy cabinet nominees every time. Wars happening. Nothing I can control. I just post something sarcastic or jokes in the comments. The only thing I care is if a hurricane is headed in my direction.
Y’all actually read all this shit? How does anyone have the energy?
Sometimes I try, but I about as soon as the paywall pops up.
I always read the headline and if the headline is interesting I’ll read the article.
One thing I don’t do is voice my opinion about an article without reading it.
I do but that is because I use RSS feeds and heavily curate what I get (think new scientific papers, animation news, and DIY stuff) those articals are almost always interesting enough to get me to read them in entirety. Politics on the other hand… I check in maybe once a month to see what is going on. If something huge happens I’m sure I will find out from my coworkers quick enough.
If the article sounds interesting, I’ll read it, although I usually skim articles these days.
The articles almost never contain information that can’t be found mentioned or directly quoted by comments
If there aren’t enough comments for that to be true: the story is boring, I’ll read about it elsewhere if it’s ever important
Don’t have the time to load these websites that take ages even when you block their ads just to see it’s another 20 paragraph long article that could have been a concise 3 sentences
I read the headline, I read the discussion. If the discussion convinces me to read the article myself, I will. If there’s broad consensus, generally it’s not worth my time to confirm what I’ve learned already.
I do this for several reasons:
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Ads. Even with ad blocker the frequent text breaks are exhausting.
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Overeditorialization. I want the facts, not a narrative. I get why that’s the way the information is presented, but my time is limited and I’m not into it. Same reason I don’t really like (non-nature) documentaries
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Perspective. The author has their own unitary perspective, and I prefer to consume multiple perspectives on an issue so I can explore the problem/solution space.
If it’s short, data heavy, and plays nice with Simplified Mode then I’ll read it real quick, but the less navigation I have to do to obtain information the better.
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I have adhd
Depends on the article. Political or most other real world news, probably gonna either just read the headline and any comments. If it’s something that interests me, I feel more compelled to read it, though.
the commenters didn’t read it either
I didn’t read your question but “yes”
But actually, I don’t for political stuff because it is so freaking depressing, and you can’t affect it much.
I love reading science articles though!
Sometimes. I’ll often read the comments to get the highlights, but I’ll also read the article if it interests me or when I need to know more details.
Same here but with some tuning:
I read comments very carefully. If there isn’t a summary bot I don’t trust comments as true anymore. If the publisher prevents reader mode (firefox) or requires either a subscription or non-essential cookies: Keep your secrets.
Also, if the headline is too hard a clickbait, I skip it as well.
And let’s be honest: 90% of news articles don’t contain more relevant information for me than the headline.
“Politician said X” has almost never any effect on my life.
I just scrolled through the front page of Der Spiegel. The first 10 articles are speculations about campaign decisions, analyses of things already known, and opinion pieces of some mildly knowledgeable people.
Yeah, that’s mostly irrelevant. Yes, some background would be nice, but I don’t have time to read about everything that isn’t of consequence for me anyway.
Hell a lot of them don’t contain accurate information either. Especially AI slop.
I try to, when I have the time, but I don’t sweat it if I don’t, I just try to avoid forming too many opinions about the topic.
Also, a good chunk of the time I try, I get paywalled. Which I can usually bypass if I’m on PC, but that’s not really feasible on mobile.
Props to all the heroes copying the article into the post, or pointing out when the headline is misleading.
I don’t, I just try to avoid forming too many opinions about the topic.
The best way to handle most things in life. Do what you want, just always assume you know nothing about a topic.
I read the article if I want to talk to someone about it or make a comment, otherwise I read headline, then go to the comments.
My conservative inlaws read headlines aloud like it’s a fact without reading the article.
And make up a scenario about the headline. Its like angry improve for distressing yourself.
If the headline sounds interesting I’ll read the article.
Same
Same, but replace ‘article’ with ‘comments’
Worked for a newspaper for many years. This is a great question.
Good headlines are both intended to give reasonable summaries and drive readers toward articles they’d like to read, because newspapers – and news media congregation systems in general – don’t have a true table of contents, only a series of categories under which article types live. Headlines, at a glance, function as a table of contents in newsprint formats because of this: you can scan for what you find interesting, but don’t have to intake the whole newspaper page to understand what’s being reported.
App scrolling through headlines, then, is functionally the same thing. Just a different UX, is all.
What I find really worrying though is the trend to pick headlines that don’t summarize, but sensationalize and twist the content. And that’s not just a tabloid problem.
I know that this is designed to generate more clicks, but since most people skip most of the content, only the headlines stick. And if these are wrong, misinformation will stick.