Five Guys, Chick-fil-A Are Not Closing. It’s Just Clickbait
Five Guys, Chick-fil-A, and McDonald’s Are Not Closing or being sold to foreign companies.
A clickbait ad campaign has been circulating the internet using images of popular, American fast-food restaurants like Five Guys or McDonald’s, that mislead the viewer into thinking they are going out of business or even being sold.
The misleading “articles” have been appearing as ads on several sites, (see below an example from youtube.com) with headlines like “Five Guys Closing Down All Restaurant Locations in 2024” or “America’s Most Famous Burger Brand Is Now Chinese Owned.” with a picture of a Five Guys restaurant or an image of a Big Mac burger as the cover.
Example of a clickbait ad currently circulating the internet.
Five Guys is still headquartered in Virginia, by the way, and is not owned by a company in China. And don’t worry, Ol’ Ronald McDonald is still headquartered in Illinois, and the same massive mutual funds that have the largest stakes in seemingly all the big American brands still have the largest stake in McDonald’s. (The Vanguard Group Inc, SSgA Funds Management Inc, BlackRock Fund Advisors, Wellington Management Co. LLP, and Geode Capital Management LLC).
Example of a clickbait ad currently circulating the internet. Via Snopes.com
Chick-fil-A is also not closing all its locations next year.
Example of a clickbait ad currently circulating the internet. Via Snopes.com
What is the point of this clickbait?
The ads with the photos of burgers were false and misleading clickbait that were most likely created to lure readers to click or scroll through nearly 200 slides, in the hopes that they click on other ads in the fake article.
According to the fact-checking site Snopes.com all of these ads led to a lengthy article that was hosted on either Investing.com or StreetInsider.com. The articles were very long and listed nearly 200 businesses and had close to 400 paragraphs. but never mention anything about any American burger brands being bought by a company in China, or even list the companies being displayed in the cover image.
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It’s a strategy called “Advertising arbitrage”. The clickbaters hope to make more money on ads displayed in a lengthy article than it would cost for the initial clickbait ad. It’s just a big waste of everyone’s time.
If you are tired of seeing misleading ads, then tell the site that is displaying the ad! If enough people report this kind of nonsense to the platforms, they will stop running this kind of nonsense.
How to report and get rid of clickbait ads
Large platforms like YouTube, have very easy and quick ways to report malicious advertising. In fact any google display ad can be reported on. See below:
- Click on the ad prompt (not on the ad itself) in YouTube’s case it’s the 3 dots on the side of the ad.
- Either block or report the ad to the site.
- You can tell them why you don’t want to see the ad anymore, or not, that’s up to you.
- That’s it, you’ve done your part!
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