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cropbait

A type of clickbait used on social media sites such as Facebook where the user is presented with a cropped image designed to entice the user to click on it to see the full image. The manner of presentation implies that the full image may be seen by clicking on the post, when in actuality the image shown is the full image and was intentionally cropped to entice the reader to click through. It might, for instance, appear to have "before" and "after" images where most of the "after" is cropped out, or have a screencap of someone's post about how they got revenge on their HOA that's cropped to cut off the rest of the story just as it's getting interesting. Clicking through will take the user to a website article with a title like "30 Ways Businesses Cleverly Gave Difficult Customers What They Deserved" that is loaded with banner and sidebar ads. The user may be required to scroll or click through many stories before finding the one from the original cropped image (if it's present at all, which it might not be).

That Facebook post about a neighbor's dog may look interesting, but it's cropbait and isn't worth your time to find out what happens next.

by mwalimu June 11, 2024