Metadata headlines, specially with larger publications are what is sourceless. The actual visible headline is written by editorial staff, which indeed can be a problem on it’s own. But In many instances this metadata veers from the editorial headline, and written by a 3rd person, who with-in the publications own standards, only qualified to respond to social media customer support inquiries about why the physical paper delivery is late, not editorial journalism. The more advanced publications even frequently switch this meta data out, making it more and more sensational, to test and optimize for click through.

There could be an opportunity for integration with a nostr concept like highlighter, where a client assists in crafting a highlight, or other similar creative innovation.

Just dropping the headline and byline metadata I think is enough to encourage some proof of read. Now the body of the note is at lest sourced to the pubkey, instead of some unaccounted social media staff. The signature functions similarly, to how X is leveraging this so the content of the tweet is able to used in community notes. I think for X this is in part a way to farm some exclusive content in the form of community notes, and this is a bit agro itself, but being able to quote note, and contest that the content of the note is misleading about the content of the link, promotes some accountability and reputation where there previously wasn’t any.

I even have some sympathy for mainstream editorial staff who’s being blamed for these manipulative practices when they only contributed one headline that’s being contorted ten ways by some marketing communications grad in social media c. 2015.