Rating Websites: The Honest Solution Against Clickbait
Do you ever regret clicking on a website?
Picture this, you are browsing online, looking for new information to finish your work and then you see a link that promises to have the answer that you’ve been looking for. You click on it without hesitation, of course, only to be disappointed when you are met with a badly designed website filled with pop-up ads and potential malware.
Congratulations, my friend! You just became an unfortunate victim of clickbait.
This is what happens when we trust every single title we read on the internet. Why? Because there’s no way to know for sure if a website will use shady techniques to get you to click on their content or if it will have some legitimately valuable information.
The only way to know if you can trust a website is if you are already familiar with the site you are visiting and it’s held with prestige. However, those websites are less than 5% of all the content that you can find online, and even supposedly trustworthy websites like news sites can be found using clickbait to gather more attention.
Clickbait is the act of using misleading titles or pictures to attract unsuspecting users to a particular website, article or video. Some are very obvious, while others are more subtle. But, the underlying problem is that many websites use clickbait to make a quick buck without the effort of actually developing quality content.
Having said that, what can we do to stop this practice? Do we ban or punish websites that use clickbait? Who decides what is and what isn’t clickbait?
The answer is more simple than you might imagine. We don’t need to prohibit clickbait, we only need to discourage it. How? By giving the users a voice about the websites they visit and giving the web developers a better alternative that rewards quality over quantity.
The Trust Rating System
The main reason why clickbait works and attracts thousands of users is that there is no warning before you click on it. You don’t know until it’s too late and every misleading click means more money for that website.
Our team at Online.io has thought of a simple solution to fix this problem. We want to introduce the Trust Rating System, a new way to browse the internet.
Would you stay at a 1-star hotel? Probably not.
We want to apply that same logic to websites on the internet to assure their quality before you click on them. And who would know their quality better than you? We are giving the power to the people to voice their opinions and rank websites from 1 to 5 stars. That way, you will think twice before you enter a bad quality website and every web developer will aim to have a good review.
Websites with no ratings will have a default 2.5 stars, and as more traction starts to come their way, that number will increase or decrease based on the opinion of the community. This system will make sure that clickbait gets recognized upfront by other users and if that is the case, it will be reflected on the rating.
On the other hand, web developers might be thinking how does it benefit my website? Well, we are planning to launch a better alternative to earn money with your website without relying on ads or clickbait. Online.io will reward websites for the time of engagement of their users rather than the number of clicks. This will more accurately represent the quality of the content and will allow for a better experience for developers and users alike.
All of this is possible thanks to blockchain technology. We will be able to store users' statistics for each website and the total of minutes spent per session. More minutes of user engagement means more profit for that website.
Help Us Curate the Internet!
But, we can’t change the internet without your help. If we can work together as a community to rate websites based on their quality, we will be able to navigate in a safer and more effective online environment.
That’s why we invite you to discover the Online.io Solution. We are developing an extension that will protect your internet from the biggest threats out there. Plus, provide new systems like the Trust Rating to improve your experience.
Our demo is already available and it comes with protection against ads, malware, and tracking software.
Try the Online Demo for Google Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onlineio-cyber-security-p/pkhboldlpfikllgljcmijlpcgonkojhn
So, have you fallen into the trap of clickbait lately? Don’t worry!
We are currently developing the Trust Rating System for websites, so you can expect that function coming very soon. On the meantime, what would you rate this article?
