Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Lying clickbait: Pretty ladies edition

Lots of lying clickbait articles use photos of pretty ladies to get men to click on sponsored links. It’s a honeypot and the photos are a ruse.
Here are some recent examples.
A Taboola-sponsored link titled “Old camera dug up near a WWII battlefield in Europe shows us a different side of the war” uses a photo of a fetching young lady in uniform.
Everything in that headline is wrong. The photo is one of a series of pictures taken by David Woolley. They’re certainly not historical.





A sponsored post from Outbrain titled “12 mysterious photos that cannot be explained” features a photo of a buxom blonde. The photo is actually very easy to explain: It’s a picture of late Playboy bunny and actress Dorothy Stratten.



A promoted link by Taboola advertised “50 rarely seen historical photos that will leave you speechless.” It features a photo of actress Goldie Hawn taken by Robert Erdmann. This photo is hardly rarely seen. It’s prominently featured on Erdmann’s own website.



A Taboola link headlined “Long-lost mobster photos that will make your skin crawl” features a man embracing a pretty young woman on the beach.
The photo was apparently taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s in San Diego. The grandson of the man in the picture posted it to Reddit. No mob connection.



Yet another clickbait article on Yahoo Finance promised “Long lost mob photos that are hideous.” What is it with lying clickbait articles about mobsters, circus freaks and old cameras found with undeveloped photos in them?
Anyway, this article uses a photo that isn’t old or mob-related. It was taken in 2015 backstage at a lingerie fashion show by Secrets in Lace. (See article and photos by Un-covered.)



Many sponsored links about new rules and regulations are customized to the town you live in. But they often feature photos of bikini-clad women not taken anywhere near you.
Here are two examples.
I can’t identify where the photo of the two handcuffed girls in the back of a police squad car was taken. But it certainly wasn’t Great Falls, Va.



A photo of a pretty black girl in handcuffs was taken in May 2013 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (See articles by the New York Daily News and the Daily Mail.) It definitely was not taken in Great Falls, Va., or Portsmouth, N.H.




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