I wanted to check out the app and found it hilarious that I had to go through a rabbit hole of links to other articles about the app to actually get to a direct link to the app. lithub --> mentalfloss --> WaPo --> AppStore
Any idea why articles do this--is it for engagement or SEO?
Honestly, I'd guess it's just laziness and/or naivety; one publication does a story and puts in their referrer link, and then the person at the next publication just copy/pastes the link they found to the first story rather than doing the extra work to get the direct link. Then the next publication sees that story, and pastes a link to that one, etc...
Any idea why articles do this--is it for engagement or SEO?