this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Why do some non-paywalled webpages have a READ MORE button I have to click on before it reveals the rest of the article?

top 17 comments
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[–] Endmaker@ani.social 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Perhaps to mess with bots that scrape content?

Maybe some kind of bot detection is done in the background, and humans are able to pass the check easily when they click on the button. Crawlers, on the other hand, would have a harder time getting through.

I guess this is to prevent others from reposting their content easily.

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Good question. Analytics maybe?

[–] Alph4d0g@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm betting on this one. Registering a human click may be a way to show traffic and engagement vs what may be attributed to bots or some other artificial means.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

Engagement 100%

[–] tal@lemmy.today 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'd think that it'd be possible to do that less obtrusively. I mean, the "infinite scroll" model just loads content when hitting the bottom if the page. I inagine that a webpage could phone home once someone hits a given point in the page (and probably does).

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Yep it definitely could but people might scroll without reading the article, maybe they think there's another article underneath or maybe they're just scrolling to see how long it is. Clicking read more gives a less noisy signal I would think.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Stops a lot of basic bots.

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 5 points 1 week ago

But not a basic bitch, so I got through.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 18 points 1 week ago

In some web browsers, a mouse click gives the site permission to do things like open pop-up windows and play videos.

But it's still probably more often about collecting data to add to your profile, recording which topics interested you sufficiently to get you to click the button.

[–] zxqwas@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Analytics and robot defense have been mentioned.

They may also want to show you what's at the bottom of the site earlier. Ad or click to next story or whatever.

Can also save bandwidth/load time. If they have a metric fuckton of garbage other than the text you were after on the site.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 week ago

Most often though my browser has already loaded the rest as clicking "more" just slides the box down.

[–] franzbroetchen@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure its in order for you to see more ads. If the article shows a read more button after a paragraph there's more room for ads and you're more likely to accidentally scroll down and view them.

[–] n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

Wouldn't I see more of them if they were just there rather than needing an extra click?

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

IN ORDER? THE WHOLE WORLD IS OUT OF FUCKING ORDER!

[–] Zier@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Advertising. Click to see MORE ads.

[–] papalonian@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wouldn't they benefit from just showing the whole article with all the ads at once?

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

Not saying this is the case but imagine- someone comes to your site, they read half an article, you show an ad. If they're interested, they click "more", they get served the rest of the article and another ad. They now know that you like this article enough to want more, and every time you click that "more" button it's really more like a "yes" button, and in advertising and sales getting a "yes" is a psychological barrier you want overcome, because once someone said yes to something, cognitive things happen in the brain that makes us more likely to keep saying yes, keep generating attention, and, as is the case, another sale- the ads.

Just brainstorming, but at this point we are so deep into the capitalist dystopian nightmare of advertising that for these guys, micro measurements make a difference, we may not know the particulars, but the purpose is engagement and make you stay, by employing common psychological tactics.