We’ll admit, clickbait articles are annoying. Our recent article about a car company selling cars that catch fire in Malaysia was clickbait. But the information, from our sources, is true as far as we can tell.
We’ve received confirmation from various sources who are sworn to secrecy. Exposing any of the actual information may lead us and them to being sued.
Cars catching fire is serious business. But we also want to protect our sources. You may say, justifiably, that the article is irresponsible or clickbaity. But think of the actual consequences given our knowledge of this.
A) We could sit on the information forever, and wait till someone gets hurt
B) We could name the brand and model, and get sued, have ourselves and our sources in big legal trouble
C) We could do an annoying clickbait article, annoy some readers, BUT get the brand to wake up and understand there are people outside their control with their dirty laundry.
The worst that could happen? Our readers get annoyed, your time gets wasted, some rumours. It’s an article that takes 20 seconds to skim through with no indication as to who it is. You can have that, we’re the bad guys.
But what’s the positive effect? Oooh, we got X number of clicks? Big deal. Clicks to articles come and go. Somedays it’s up, somedays it’s down. But if it moves them to take measures immediately, we’re vindicated. You can take the moral high ground in the comment section, but we may actually be saving lives here.
Happy New Year, from all of us at dsf.my, gohedgostan.com and automacha.com.
