The way media does headlines these days is awful. Like at no point was the headline of this article the one I read which is ‘Pentagon sparks fresh AUKUS doubts on anniversary of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine plans’. I don’t mind the one that got auto-suggested but why do they insist on playing these games.
Some explanation of both what is technically going on and my guess as to why it happens over in this other thread.
Yeah, I’m familiar with social media metatags. It sucks that they have to play these games. Especially for news like this.
There’s nothing wrong with metatags - those are great.
The real issue is editors are expected to give multiple titles to every article. The publishing software uses A/B Testing to figure out which one performs the best, and then stops using the other titles. It’s standard practice because it effectively gets more people to read the article.
Editors also monitor which ones failed and over time learn how to write good titles. Where “good” is “generates the most traffic”. A perfect example of what gets measured gets managed.
Often one of the original titles is written by the actual journalist - not the editor - and those tend to be a more accurate description of the content. Unfortunately they also don’t perform very well. With most software that title is used as the URL, which doesn’t change (because Google would penalise them for changing the URL).
The link to this article was “us-defence-announcement-raises-questions-on-aukus-anniversary”. Honestly that’s not a great title either, I can see why it failed to perform well and didn’t survive A/B testing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Defence Minister Richard Marles insists AUKUS partners are working “at pace” to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines after the United States revealed it would halve next year’s planned procurement of Virginia-class boats.
Under the Biden administration’s defence budget request released on Tuesday (Canberra time) the US Navy confirmed it would order just one of the fast-attack submarines in 2025, rather than two, pushing a projected saving of $US4 billion into future years.
Critics of the move, including vocal Democratic congressman Joe Courtney, who heads Washington’s so-called “AUKUS Caucus”, warned the decision would have a “profound impact” on both countries’ navies.
In March last year the AUKUS leaders detailed a plan to begin transferring the first of at least three US Virginia-class boats in 2032 to avoid a capability gap as Australia’s Collins-class fleet is retired and British-designed submarines are built in Adelaide.
This week marks one year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined British counterpart Rishi Sunak and US president Joe Biden at a San Diego Naval Base to outline the AUKUS “optimal pathway” for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
As part of the AUKUS deal, Australia will provide more than $4.5 billion to bolster America’s submarine industrial base, while the US aims to contribute a similar amount contingent on congressional negotiations over defence spending that are complicated by the Ukrainian war.
The original article contains 756 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
