> Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, with a defining characteristic of being deceptive, typically sensationalized or misleading. A "teaser" aims to exploit the "curiosity gap", providing just enough information to make readers of news websites curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content. Click-bait headlines add an element of dishonesty, using enticements that do not accurately reflect the content being delivered.
I don’t feel this applies in this case because it fails to be deceptive, misleading or dishonest. (Parts of the definition certainly apply, but not enough.)
Sure, you could have a title like “Intel just slowed down their CPUs with a microcode update” (and I do prefer explicit titles like this—you should see the titles I write myself, 70- and 80-character limits severely cramp my style), but the article’s title isn’t particularly bad.
you didn't ask me, but I feel strongly about the question asked.
Effective but unethical, but unethical in the sense that marketing psychology is unethical.
Unethical because it uses well known human psychological weaknesses to help nudge a target towards an action that they themselves may not have chosen to perform without the nudge.
If I was asked, i'd wager that most motivated persuasion is unethical to some degree.
