Because with everything clickbait there is no reason to focus on content since articles without it "sell" just as well. And since good content doesn't bring money anymore why bother?
As a user it becomes much harder to find good content, which reduces the usefulness and desire to read and continue the subscription.
But with the internet everything is the front page, and stories only get promoted based on how clickbaity they are. I can look past the top headline, this is several orders of magnitude worse.
Paywalls made this much worse, now every single link has to sell you a subscription. Which is bad enough if you don't pay for a subscription but absolutely devastating if you actually paid for content that only serves as bait for people that don't.
Look how much of the conversation is driven by traditional media outlets. If people really believe we can lose all that and still have a functioning civil society with an informed citizenry, I fear for the future.