I wonder why it's still here after all these years? It seems both useless and harmful, one of those features whose lifecycle consists of someone rolling it out because of some idea they had and then removing it three hours later after having to fix multiple headlines because they didn't think it through.

What is it even supposed to do?

A lot of clickbait titles start with "How..." and removing it was an attempt to make titles more neutral. Unfortunately it sometimes has nonsensical results.