From a marketing perspective, Upworthy co-founder Peter Koechley summed it up perfectly at the Native Advertising Summit when he said, “Headlines are one of the most undervalued parts of online messaging. People care about them, people know to care about them, but still it’s the easiest way to dramatically increase the virality of everything you do and I guarantee that you’re not spending enough time on it.”

There are a large number of restaurants in the US that source their entire menus from the same food distributor. These businesses are not actual restaurants. They don't make the food, and they don't think about how to make their mash potatoes taste better. Their goal is to get you to eat the food items with the highest profit margin. They crunch the numbers, look at their data, then optimize the menu. They are in the business of selling a restaurant experience. Upworthy is not in the business of content. It is in the content consumption business. Aside from providing a general theme (like the kitschy items hanging on the wall at TGIFridays), Upworthy is in the business of getting content consumed quickly. They crunch the numbers, look at the data, then optimize the menu.

The author makes a mistake in assuming that headlines are going to result in a loss of trust. That can't happen for sites like Upworthy. Deep down, people know that jalapeno popper was not cooked from scratch in the kitchen. The real danger is that genuine publishers forget what business they are in and thus enter competition with Upworthy when they never needed to.

EDIT: BTW, have you noticed how Medium started putting 'x minute read' in the upper right? Medium competes with Upworthy.