A harassment campaign on Goodreads

The original title, "Lax Security and Moderation at Goodreads Allows Trolls to Spoof People, Harass Authors" seemed pretty straightforward to me.

How is it misleading or "linkbait"?

In my observation of the edit patterns being used by moderators, titles are frequently edited when they contain emotionally charged words ("spoof" "trolls" "harass" in this one) to create bland, boring titles no matter what the source article is titled (not violating guidelines).

One person's idea of making titles more boring is probably another person's idea of removing bias. Bland might not necessarily be bad in these cases.

People who read the article will be exposed to this "bias" anyway. Leaving the title as-is would then be more informative.

Here, the change is okay. Other times, the change rendered the title nonsensical: "XYZ is now closed source" -> "XYZ Changelog".

I would default to a much stronger preference for the original article-the author/editor probably put more thought into the title, and destroying their creative work shouldn't be routine.

And what's with the bias-paranoia? People, including journalists, are allowed to have opinions and emotions. They do not have to equivocate: "The sanitary situation in the camp is becoming dangerous" does not require "...but someone on YouTube believes germ theory is a hoax, so who is to say if sleeping in feces isn't just a good way to stay warm".