Clickbait Detector FAQ:

• What is clickbait?
• Clickbait is any link that is vague, misleading, sensationalized and/or emotionally charged so that people will click on the link more than they would otherwise.
  • Vague, meaning the link doesn't inform the user what the article or content is actually about in particular.
  • For example: "Look at this thing I did."
  • Misleading, meaning the link leads the user to think of something most likely isn't true, is over exaggerated, or the link sounds like a rumor without evidence. Sensationalized is similar, meaning the link is designed to provoke interest and excitement, usually at the expense of correctness.
  • For example: "Did Amelia Earhart Fly into Space?"
  • Emotionally charged, meaning the link uses adjectives or emotionally charged words or phrases in order to make the content sound more interesting than it probably is.
  • For example: "10 Skateboard Tricks to Knock Your Socks Off." or "The Amazing Story Behind the Transistor."
    Examples of emotionally charged words include unbelievable, harassed, assault, and death.
• Why clickbait?
• Clickbait can often make people feel angered, disappointed, betrayed, and other negative emotions. We want to minimize the negative emotional impact that clickbait has on people.
• What does clickbait have to do with your company's mission?
• We think that people will notice the difference between when they regularly browse the internet without clickbait and when they browse with clickbait. Then, when they notice the difference in how they feel throughout the day, we'll have completed our mission of helping people better understand their emotions.
• How does the clickbait detector work?
• We use a very small neural network to determine whether or not the text is clickbait. Neural networks aren't 100% accurate, so there will be a few false positives and a few false negatives. If you run into one of those, please mark the I agree or I disagree buttons to let us know what is clickbait and what isn't.
• How do you make money?
• Currently, we depend on donations as a way of making money. If you would like to donate, you can donate from our main page.
• Why do you need money?
• It costs money to pay for server time, run experiments, host a website and a whole slew of other expenses, including just paying our employees so that they can eat.
• How can I help?
• You can help by contributing data to our experiments by clicking I agree or I disagree on the clickbait detector page, labeling our current data, or just by donating money.
• Do you collect any user data?
• Currently we depend mostly on data that you provide, like data you've contributed to experiments. We may also collect your IP address or other identifying information to make sure you aren't trying to down our servers or ruin our experiments. See our Privacy Policy for more information.
• Common Issues
• • Whether or not something is clickbait depends on context.
  • You might see issues where something isn't clickbait to you because of the website it's under or other contextual information. Questions, for example, are usually clickbait when used as a title, especially if they can be answered in a single word. For example, we classify "What is the most shocking family secret you have been told by a three-year-old?" as clickbait. If this was under a forum like reddit's askreddit, it would be fine. If that was the title of an article or a link without that information that could easily be clickbait.
  • Clickbait is very subjective.
  • You might disagree with some of the things we think are clickbait, or think that we should be more certain of our estimates. Clickbait means different things to different people and everyone has different tolerances. What is clickbait to you might not be clickbait to others and vice versa. However, if you agree or disagree with what we think, please let us know by pressing the corresponding button!
  • The text area cannot be empty.
  • If you try to determine whether or not something is clickbait but it's just white space or no text at all you will get this message. It doesn't make sense to try to guess whether or not something is or isn't clickbait if it's blank.
  • There must be at least one letter in order to process the input title correctly.
  • If you try to determine whether or not something is clickbait but it's just numbers, white space, or special characters you will get this message. Like the blank message, it doesn't make any sense to try to classify a bunch of number or special characters as clickbait or not.