I read the headline, I read the discussion. If the discussion convinces me to read the article myself, I will. If there’s broad consensus, generally it’s not worth my time to confirm what I’ve learned already.

I do this for several reasons:

1. Ads. Even with ad blocker the frequent text breaks are exhausting.

2. Overeditorialization. I want the facts, not a narrative. I get why that’s the way the information is presented, but my time is limited and I’m not into it. Same reason I don’t really like (non-nature) documentaries

3. Perspective. The author has their own unitary perspective, and I prefer to consume multiple perspectives on an issue so I can explore the problem/solution space.

If it’s short, data heavy, and plays nice with Simplified Mode then I’ll read it real quick, but the less navigation I have to do to obtain information the better.

I didn’t read your question but “yes”

Sometimes. I’ll often read the comments to get the highlights, but I’ll also read the article if it interests me or when I need to know more details.

Depends on the article. Political or most other real world news, probably gonna either just read the headline and any comments. If it’s something that interests me, I feel more compelled to read it, though.

I try to, when I have the time, but I don’t sweat it if I don’t, I just try to avoid forming too many opinions about the topic.

Also, a good chunk of the time I try, I get paywalled. Which I can usually bypass if I’m on PC, but that’s not really feasible on mobile.

Props to all the heroes copying the article into the post, or pointing out when the headline is misleading.

My conservative inlaws read headlines aloud like it’s a fact without reading the article.

And make up a scenario about the headline. Its like angry improve for distressing yourself.

If the headline sounds interesting I’ll read the article.

Worked for a newspaper for many years. This is a great question.

Good headlines are both intended to give reasonable summaries and drive readers toward articles they’d like to read, because newspapers – and news media congregation systems in general – don’t have a true table of contents, only a series of categories under which article types live. Headlines, at a glance, function as a table of contents in newsprint formats because of this: you can scan for what you find interesting, but don’t have to intake the whole newspaper page to understand what’s being reported.

App scrolling through headlines, then, is functionally the same thing. Just a different UX, is all.

I read the article if when I open the link, I am not immediately slapped in the face with ads that aren’t blocked by uBlock Origin, an ad block blocker, or a paywall. But I’m not also not reading multiple articles on the same exact topic just because they come from different outlets. 9 times out of 10, they’re exactly the same but with slight variation on verbiage because they all took the same original information from the actual original source and just re-worded it.

If I’m going to comment then I read. Always seeing mfs asking questions answered in the article or raging about shit they imagined based on the headline alone. It’s embarrassing

I just read the comments.

Just the headline so I can ensure I misinterpret the context fully when drunkenly ranting at my mates about it.

Interestingly, I read the full article more often now on lemmy vs back on reddit. Maybe because there aren’t a ton of comments on posts here so I don’t have context and need to just read it myself. Either way, it’s better because I get to form my own opinion instead of basing it off on other people’s comments.

Personally I wish there was a way to filter out all the comments by people who haven’t read the article.