Totally. I have luckily been spared the focus on clickbait, but anecdotally I’ve heard that the drive for measurable hits and re-posting is pretty pervasive. When I was Editor of …might be good, I know my director went through Google Analytics on a biweekly or monthly basis to collect data on the issues. He was generally impressed with me and told me that our subscribers, hit numbers, and amount of time spent on a page went up during my tenure, with the Editor’s Letter being the most-clicked-on page. For that reason, I started writing more about goings-on in the TX art world, because we were a nonprofit that received funding from various sources in state.
In my current job, I’ve found that titles of articles have sometimes been truncated and sensationalized a notch to attract more hits, but I haven’t had a ton of hardline criticism about the way I write. I have gotten some notes about using words that are too sophisticated for the website (Artinfo), but I don’t know how common that editorial attitude is. (The Editor in Chief is formerly of the New York Times, which of course has different language standards.)