Lies, damn lies and clickbait

Fake news continues to find a home with online content promoters like Taboola and Revcontent. These services need to be held accountable by the websites that use them.
Here are some recent examples of the types of stories they and their ilk are peddling.

A Taboola-sponsored article titled “China’s new jet is straight out of a sci-fi movie” used a detailed model of a Vic Viper spacecraft from the Gradius Series of video games by Konami. The model was assembled and photographed by blogger RoboRay. (See article by Kotaku.)

Another Taboola article titled “30 Amish facts that’ll make your skin crawl” used a photo of a model (Sophie Letyago) wearing Amish-inspired clothing. (See description of the photo on DeviantArt.)

A Taboola article titled “15 Walmart shoppers captured these photos” didn’t use a Walmart picture, but a “plandid” (planned candid) photo of smoking hot Swedish Instagram model Anna Nystrom from August 2015.

This next type of clickbait keeps popping up.
An article titled “Shocking images of the Titanic taken by a passenger’s camera” used a still from James Cameron’s 1997 movie “Titanic.” Also, Jack and Rose are fictional characters, people!

Another common clickbait tactic is promoting an article on dead celebrities using the photo of a live celebrity to exploit the curiosity gap.
Revcontent implied that actress Julia Stiles is dead by using her picture with a story titled “She died but no one said a word, here’s why.”
Another recent clickbait article implied that actor-director Clint Eastwood had died.

And finally, here’s a blast from the past.
A recent clickbait post titled “15 chilling photos you will not find in history books” uses a photo of attractive young lady in a revealing dress. This photo is neither historic nor chilling, unless you’re horrified by side boob.
I first wrote about use of this photo in May 2016.