We, the public, should reject outright all stories with link-bait headlines.
Compare the two headlines from Huffington Post and The Chive below to the one from The Verge. Notice a difference? The first two rely on that abominable technique of leaving out a key piece of information to make the reader curious. On the HuffPo article, you're forced to think "What was the mistake??" On The Chive one, it wants us all to wonder what was the idea about?
The Verge's headline, in contrast, offers up the key facts as a proper journalistic headline should.
If we wanted to rewrite the Verge headline to use the same awful technique as the first two, it'd probably turn out something like: "Google makes Photos better with this one weird trick."
The purposeful obfuscation of headlines in order to drive traffic is an appalling trend and one we should all reject by never clicking on them. The same should be said for overtly hyperbolic headlines (e.g., 'Trump campaign devastated by new leaks' -- the word "devastated" shouldn't be used in headlines unless a massive earthquake took out a significant city...then it's appropriate).
Seriously, until we hold "news" sources to a higher standard, we're never going to have better news sources. And until we start drawing a clearer line between news sources and entertainment/opinion outlets, we will continue to have people confusing/conflating the two.
