When content creators get paid for the number of views their videos have, those whose natural way of writing titles is a bit more clickbait-y will tend to get more views, and so over time accumulate more influence and social capital in the YouTube community, which makes it harder for less clickbait-y content producers to compete.
Wouldn’t this be the case regardless of whether clickbait is profitable?
If instead you had to pay for every view (such as in environments where bandwidth costs are expensive, such as interviewing candidates for a job), then you would do the opposite of clickbait, attempting to get people to not ‘click on your content.’ (Or people who didn’t attempt to get their audience to self-screen would lose out because of the costs to those who did.)
I agree that there’s a monetary incentive for more people to write clickbait, but the mechanism the post described was “naturally clickbaity people will get more views and thus more power,” and that doesn’t seem to involve money at all.
Good point, there’s selection pressure for things which happen to try harder to be selected for (“click me! I’m a link!”), regardless of whether they are profitable. But this is not the only pressure, and depending on what happens to a thing when it is “selected” (viewed, interviewed, etc.) this pressure can be amplified (as in OP) or countered (as in Vaniver’s comment).
Wouldn’t this be the case regardless of whether clickbait is profitable?
If instead you had to pay for every view (such as in environments where bandwidth costs are expensive, such as interviewing candidates for a job), then you would do the opposite of clickbait, attempting to get people to not ‘click on your content.’ (Or people who didn’t attempt to get their audience to self-screen would lose out because of the costs to those who did.)
I agree that there’s a monetary incentive for more people to write clickbait, but the mechanism the post described was “naturally clickbaity people will get more views and thus more power,” and that doesn’t seem to involve money at all.
Good point, there’s selection pressure for things which happen to try harder to be selected for (“click me! I’m a link!”), regardless of whether they are profitable. But this is not the only pressure, and depending on what happens to a thing when it is “selected” (viewed, interviewed, etc.) this pressure can be amplified (as in OP) or countered (as in Vaniver’s comment).