I recently posted on LinkedIn about a live Webcam of the fish tanks at work that I added to my Bloomberg monitor. The post got 202 LIKES and 22 comments.

My more thoughtful posts about news analytics that I fancy insightful and unique? They get at best 50 likes and 3 comments.

In News analytics we refer to this as the Kim Kardashian problem. People like and share stories that are entertaining, but not necessarily essential.

And that drives writers motivated by clicks to post more frivolous stuff.

Which is why recommendation algorithms that overweight readership can be a problem.

Editorial selection can suffer from the same bias as editors come to pay more attention to clicks than quality.

For sites that live or die by readership traffic that’s fine. But for professional platforms like Bloomberg that can be corrosive over time.

It can be hard to avoid the siren song of clickbait.

Today, while watching the fishcam I noticed some human activity near the tank. It was just after 9 a.m. in the morning. The fish were being fed!

The internal email and instant messages flew fast and furious.

LOOK AT THE FISH CAM!

I managed to snap a blurry photo.

And of course, I posted about it.