Headlines are sampled randomly for the first few hours of an article going live to measure exposure. The headline that gets the most clicks wins.

There are a lot of sites that do this.

It causes headaches when it comes to social. Usually the original headline is preserved in the url, but sometimes they’ll use a unique id and then include the editorialized headline option so they can track which headline you clicked on.

Also editorial decisions on wording based on pushback, legal threats, etc.