One of the most annoying things a news or lifestyle article can do is have a clickbait title. Not only is it disappointing, but it also wastes the time of readers for the sake of clicks. Artifact recognizes that flaw and adds a feature that lets you mark an article as clickbait, among others.
Flagging Clickbait Articles
Clickbait articles can pose a threat, especially when people decide to take the title alone as truth and decide not to open the article itself. It's one of the many ways that misinformation can spread across the internet, which is a major issue we have right now.
Even mainstream media uses the tactic in order to get more readers to open their articles. According to Newslab back in 2018, around 33.54% of headlines can be considered clickbait, while unreliable media are higher at 39.26%.
Acknowledging this predicament, Artifact now allows its readers to flag articles by selecting the three-dot menu when reading the article or long-pressing it in the feed. Each feedback will contribute to the ranking of the article, with more reports placing it lower.
This new feature will make sure that upon opening your feed, you will see the most reliable and informative articles first, as opposed to those that may be misleading or may contain false information, which frankly, is a breath of fresh air in news media.
Leaving Reactions
After reading the article, you can now let people know how you feel about it by leaving a reaction. All you have to do is tap the heart icon at the bottom of the article or long-pressing them from the feed.
There are various reactions, just like the ones you would find on Facebook such as the like, heart, laughing, impressed, crying, and angry emojis. This way, you'll also know how most people feel about the topic being discussed in the article.
More Ways Than One to Share an Article
Usually, sending a link to an article will include the cover photo, the headline, and the subtext. The AI-driven news app will now let you share a visual of an article, which gives an idea of what it is actually about, according to the company's blog post.
You can do so by tapping the "Share as Image" option. Other than that, you can also share it in Instagram Stories the way you would a song from Spotify, which allows you to share important news with a wider audience instead of sending it individually.
If you choose to, you can also include an excerpt when sharing it with others. By selecting the text you want to send and tapping the arrow icon that appears, you can send specific information from the article so the recipient will see it immediately.
This feature, however, is only available for iOS devices. Artifact plans on rolling out the "Share as Image" option for Android later this week. The clickbait and reactions feature appears to already be available for Android devices.
