[HN Gopher] CNN and USA Today have fake websites, I believe Forb...
___________________________________________________________________
CNN and USA Today have fake websites, I believe Forbes Marketplace
runs them
Author : greg_V
Score : 587 points
Date : 2024-09-27 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (larslofgren.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (larslofgren.com)
| ethagknight wrote:
| Interesting find, serious question: does it matter?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Yes I'd be disturbed if my news source was run by Forbes
| Marketplace. But it would explain a lot.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| Propaganda source
| belter wrote:
| Indeed.It's a nice effort...but specially for these two
| organizations, is a bit like taking a sinking ship and before
| it disappears underwater...Deciding to set it on fire...:-)
| stackghost wrote:
| Monoculture in journalism definitely matters. News media has a
| profound ability to shape and direct the discourse in society
| writ large, and the slow consolidation of news media in some
| countries is extremely problematic because it enables private
| individuals to exert undue influence in pursuit of their agenda
| that may or may not be at odds with the public interest.
|
| In Canada, for example, it's hard to throw a stone and _not_
| hit a foreign-owned PostMedia news outlet.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > slow consolidation
|
| Move slow, break countries.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| I don't particularly care who owns such outlets.
|
| What matters to me is the validity of the content being
| produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned
| outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at
| providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible
| reporting, that's fine with me.
|
| When I consider events or situations I've had direct
| knowledge of, or where I've had access to direct witness
| accounts and raw footage that I trust, some of the worst
| reporting in my opinion has been from CBC News. With CBC
| being a Crown corporation, CBC News could perhaps be
| considered the most inherently "Canadian-owned" of the
| mainstream news outlets.
|
| On the other hand, for such situations, I've generally found
| reporting from Postmedia's various outlets to be among the
| most accurate, complete, and objective of that from the
| mainstream outlets, even if it may be considered foreign-
| owned.
| stackghost wrote:
| >What matters to me is the validity of the content being
| produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned
| outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at
| providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible
| reporting, that's fine with me.
|
| As we've seen time and time again, the content produced is
| only "valid" if your personal interests happen to align
| with those of Rupert Murdoch, or whomever.
|
| CBC definitely has its own problems but being beholden to
| the biases of the billionaire class isn't one of them.
| afavour wrote:
| IMO it does. It's reflective of these news organizations not
| caring about their brand reputations and instead just looking
| at the $$$.
|
| Having an entirely separate staff, with a separate website,
| publish content under your name without your input _ought_ to
| be a five alarm fire for editorial staff. But there's some
| affiliate cash up for grabs so some senior exec somewhere
| okayed it.
|
| There's a tech angle here too: if it weren't for SEO they might
| we'll be operating out of cnnunderscore.com or whatever, but
| the SEO juice of a page on cnn.com is too tempting to pass up.
| azemetre wrote:
| Doesn't Google also punish small sites that do similar
| things? Like if I made a site that was sincere as an
| individual where I review kitchen utensils where I add
| affiliate links I'd be penalized, but the larger established
| domains are allowed to do the same thing without Google
| punishing them?
| greg_V wrote:
| Bingo. All the small shops who were doing actual reviews
| got wiped out, and this blog is basically documenting the
| new age of parasite spam eating the web and raking in
| millions.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Online reviews are completely gamed IMO. My wife still
| looks at them, talks about the "highly rated" stuff she
| finds, and I tell her it's all fake she doesn't believe
| it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I have been telling my mum the same thing and she don't
| listen. Googling for reviews used to work very well to
| like 3-10 years ago. I don't speak English nativly, and I
| suspect that it worked better in my native tongue for way
| longer then English. It is like it takes time for it to
| sink in for people, when they are trusting a process or
| institution.
|
| I wanted to buy a ultra-sonic cleaner for my
| garage/workshop. I need it to clean out parts. I searched
| for reviews on Youtube, and I noticed that the big
| "ultrasonic cleaner on Amazon" manufacturer Vev[*123]or
| seem to more or less have donated a cleaner to about
| every workshop genre Youtuber in the last 1 to 3 years.
| Or paid them to shill. Dunno.
|
| I mean I was flabbergasted to the extent of the
| manipulation. I didn't think it was this bad. And I did
| end up buying their cleaner ...
|
| *123 I just don't wanted to SEO help them.
| magic-michael wrote:
| Not all of those sites were innocent of doing it the
| correct way.
| azemetre wrote:
| Maybe not, but Google, with its monopoly, should play
| fair and not pick favorites because it increases their ad
| dollars bought.
| magic-michael wrote:
| How do you now they are completely separate? Or that there is
| no oversight?
|
| Answer: You don't know. You're just speculating.
| bityard wrote:
| From what I'm to gather by reading Part One, the author runs
| his own affiliate link SEO sites and is mad that big-name
| brands are doing it better by leveraging business deals and
| brand recognition.
| simmonmt wrote:
| Great. So he's well-motivated to dig up and publicize
| hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans from Forbes
| etc al, and he knows where to look.
|
| If he wasn't going to investigate this, who would? CNN? USA
| Today?
| w0m wrote:
| > publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans
|
| It's disclosed on a banner across the top of literally
| every cnn-uncensored page that's being 'outed' here. He
| could have saved the entire research/dig by simply
| screenshotting the top of any of the pages. That wouldn't
| have the same energy or 'Ahah!' though.
| concordDance wrote:
| It matters because we consider them reliable sources:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
|
| Wikipedia is the most reliable source of news/perspective on
| issued but it can get contaminated if entities given the
| "reliable sources" label republish unreliable or biased dreck.
| ethagknight wrote:
| I am absolutely shocked to read the replies from everyone
| thinking "journalistic integrity" was a thing practiced by
| American Media. Clearly, everyone runs the same stories, same
| soundbites, same focuses. How could one think "the news"
| nationwide across 1000s of different outlets just happened to
| hone in on the same dozen-or-so topics on a daily basis.
| lupire wrote:
| So?
|
| Every news site has advertising sections
|
| https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/about
|
| "Content is created by CNN Underscored's team of editors who work
| independently from the CNN newsroom. When you buy through links
| on our site, we may earn a commission."
| w0m wrote:
| Yea... I think I'm failing to understand the Gotcha here. If
| you go to underscored main page; It's disclosed in a banner
| across the top of every underscored page.
|
| I agree them functionally selling ad-space is annoying; but
| it's also exposed in clear text as such at the top of _every_
| underscored page and article.
|
| Giant nothingburger.
| dickiedyce wrote:
| > "Every news site has advertising sections"
|
| Ahem, bbc.co.uk/news * *?
|
| * Note, not bbc.com ;-)
|
| * Also, editorially, BBC News has also gone a little downhill
| in recent times. But it's all relative.
| dogleash wrote:
| Everyone who uses the web visually scans pages to hone in
| directly on where they think the content is. The question isn't
| whether or not whoever added that disclaimer meant for it to be
| visually ignored (they did), the question is whether they did
| eye-tracking testing to make sure it's ignored (yea, probably).
|
| The disclaimer is disingenuous, because they're trading on the
| idea people will ignore it, while they can turn around and say
| everyone is in group of people who not only read the text, but
| also understand what "independently from the CNN newsroom" is a
| euphemism for.
| w0m wrote:
| the disclaimer is at the top of _every_ page, and OP here is
| pretending his sleuthing anything other than an
| (idealogically /politically motivated?) disingenuous hit
| piece.
|
| "look at the HTML it catches the lie!" - meanwhile, the 'lie'
| also exposed in clear text in a banner across the top of
| page. 1337 h4xing indeed.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| "but everyone does it" is about the most pathetic, incurious
| defense you could muster
| smrtinsert wrote:
| There is no gotcha here, completely agreed. Having done content
| in the early web, it was very common for sites to buy sections
| and placements from each other as money was available,
| especially on competitors. It always irked editors at selling
| companies, but it happened nonetheless.
| hedora wrote:
| I noticed a steep dive in CNN news quality post acquisition.
| (Around when they fired a bunch of reporters people for claiming
| Trump lost in 2020 instead of hedging their statements).
|
| Anyway, I'm not surprised. As far as I'm concerned they're
| already out of business (just like National Geographic, which
| currently employs zero staff writers).
| drpossum wrote:
| CNN has been in decline since they started. ca 2000 their
| content was a shocking amount of what we call clickbait now
| with the wording and often misrepresentation we've come to
| expect. They've surprisingly improved but I abandoned them over
| 20 years ago as anything I consume because of it.
| hedora wrote:
| Their TV network has always been terrible, but in the early
| teens, their website seemed reasonably well run.
|
| I wouldn't seek it out, but it wasn't on my short list of
| sites to avoid in news aggregators and HN like it is today.
|
| (I've never heard of the reporters they fired for being too
| liberal, but that event marked a sharp change in their
| strategy, where they said they wanted to target Fox News and
| Newsmax fans, and that they were changing their reporting
| standards to cater to those audiences.)
| westcort wrote:
| https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
| sutra_on wrote:
| The steep dive in quality of the mainstream media started with
| the invention of the 24-hour news cycle. Focus shifted from
| quality to quantity.
| jefb wrote:
| Nice bit of sleuthing here, well done. Anyone know where those
| search traffic graphics are made from?
| greg_V wrote:
| ahrefs by the looks of it
| suyash wrote:
| What can you expect from main stream media? It's mostly either
| propaganda or commercials wrapped up as new stories.
| calimoro78 wrote:
| Welcome giant sweeping generalizations that are unsupported by
| data nor stringent arguments.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Where do you think people should get news? Most of the non-
| mainstream news is somehow worse and finding knowledgeable
| direct sources isn't really practical for people.
| suyash wrote:
| YouTube - tons of YouTubers who are independent, X - raw,
| fast, first hand news, Not saying don't go to mainstream
| news, just know the bias they may have.
| wredue wrote:
| You suggest that I get my news from a place that vehemently
| pushes flat earth videos to me because I happened to watch
| a video laughing at them?
|
| YouTube has an extreme bias to pushing conspiracy theory
| content.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| So for YouTube I haven't been able to find quality
| reporting for the most part (outside of an occasional niche
| issue).
|
| For X my experience is that it's essentially impossible for
| me to vet personal accounts that people have. Also it runs
| into the issue where everything is just anecdotal so it's
| easy to get an inaccurate picture from that sort of
| information. This is without even getting into the huge
| problem with bots and even state level disinfo on X (and
| social media in general). Not that I don't use it at all,
| it's just not trustworthy or accurate for most things.
|
| Edit: not that "mainstream media" doesn't have some of
| these issues. It's just not as bad as some of these other
| sources and it's much easier to get a sense for specific
| organizations than trying to understand the bias and
| veracity of a myriad of YouTubers and random people on X.
| Like it's much easier to understand the biases and issues
| of Reuters than a bunch of YouTubers and random people on X
| so for basic information I will go to places like Reuters
| first.
|
| Edit2: for issues with YouTubers you have to remember they
| make money through engagement (and real news is less
| engaging). I think this is a lot of what's killed
| traditional media so I doubt YouTube, which is if anything
| more tied to this, is unlikely to be better. Then also look
| at the recent Tenet Media scandal. Like yeah I get some
| news from YouTubers but it's a real minefield when it comes
| to good information.
| w0m wrote:
| Also make sure you take those same youtubers as what they
| are; raw, independent, and with less accountability than
| larger platforms insofaras accuracy of content. That isn't
| to say a smaller creators/channels are bad or not worth
| while, but being aware of context as you consume is
| important. We've unfortunately stopped caring about
| accuracy or accountability in many instances.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I agree that choices are limited. Nonetheless, the days of
| trusting "the news" media are long gone, at least for now.
| You can get *information* from CNN, etc. but that doesn't
| make it news, nor does it mean you're getting the full story
| and proper insights.
|
| Listen. Think about what is said. Think harder about what is
| not said. Check another source. Repeat.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, sadly it's a cliche but you have to "do your own
| research" and most people don't have the time or don't want
| to spend their time that way.
|
| Maybe there are still some monthly periodicals that do in-
| depth news, since they aren't trying to get an exclusive or
| be the first to break the story they would not be so
| motivated to just vomit clickbait continuously. But I don't
| know who they are.
|
| I've largely just stopped paying attention. It's sad in a
| way, as I grew up with the lesson that paying attention to
| the news and current events was important. But it's all
| garbage now.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I'm no different than anyone else in that I don't have a
| lot of time. Where I have noticed I'm different is how
| closely I listen, how critical I am of what I hear, and
| how often I question what I did not hear. The other
| difference is, my BS detector for editorial - positioned
| as "news" / "journalism" - is very well oiled. I accept
| opinion - I have no choice - but I don't in my mind treat
| it as fact.
|
| Most people seen to get caught up in looking for
| confirmation bias that they abandoned critical thinking.
| Most people hear what they want to hear, and the media is
| more than happy to feed them that comfort.
|
| Let me give you an example, a couple of weeks ago I saw a
| story that the Sahara Desert (Africa) is greening. I
| noticed that from a number of different sources and each
| source used the same phrase for this[1]: "unusual weather
| patterns". Huh? Why is greening from "unusual weather
| patterns" but when there's damage it's *always* from
| "climate change"? No one I know caught the Orwellian
| sleight of hand.
|
| Along the same lines, The Washington Post ran a story
| last week about the science of climate. It was even
| shared on HN. No one seemed to notice. Odd because it
| effectively said, up to now there was no definitive study
| on the history of the earth's climate. So up to now what
| were all "the experts" basing their "science" on then?
| Hearsay? Mindless parroting? Worst was this study
| effectively made a case for climate change might not be
| human-made, simply because over time climate has been
| very dynamic and at time extreme. Per this study and the
| graph it publish there is no "normal".
|
| These were both in plain sight. And yet crickets. Maybe I
| should stop thinking and put more time into keeping up
| with the Kardashians?
|
| [1] The fact that they used the same phrase also told me,
| they invested zero resources in this story and were
| merely parroting the narrative provided by the news
| service they were using. Note: This approach by
| definition is not journalism.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows.
| You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know
| well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You
| read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no
| understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
| article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--
| reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets
| cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
|
| In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
| multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of
| the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
| the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what
| you know." - Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
|
| I do not believe centralized content distribution channels
| will ever act as a reliable source of information.
|
| Find distribution channels that keep you plugged into the
| zeitgeist; some form of streaming our collective
| consciousness.
|
| And then do your own research on the topics that matter to
| you.
| chasebank wrote:
| The top comment in this hn post from a few years ago really
| stuck with me. I'll paste here.
|
| "Seems an appropriate time to post my favourite piece on news
| addiction by Charles Simic in the NYRB. "I'm having trouble
| deciding whether I understand the world better now that I'm
| in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I'm
| becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is
| somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn't make me
| rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had
| expected that after everything I had lived through and
| learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm
| and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a
| clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It
| hasn't happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year
| of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought
| serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching
| television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than
| he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do
| to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that
| those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict
| on their minds almost every hour of the day."
|
| https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/
|
| Edit: Charles Simic is a Serbian-American poet who lived
| through WWII and saw some really grisly things, some
| described briefly in the article, hence "after everything I
| had lived through and learned in my life...""
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23938007
| w0m wrote:
| honestly the base concept of 'mainstream media' is simply dumb.
| It's just a convenient way to group 'the other guy' up with
| conveniently ignoring 'not mainstream' media doing the same or
| worse.
|
| "they control the media you can't believe anything they say!"
| being spewed on the platform with by-far the largest market
| share/reach.
| calimoro78 wrote:
| It does not bother me that the Money and Shopping sections of CNN
| are run with content by another firm that specializes in interest
| based articles while the core of CNN remains focused on world
| news.
| greg_V wrote:
| The story is that it goes against google's guidelines and yet
| it continues to outrank sites that are within google's
| guidelines.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I haven't had cable for a long time so I can't say anything about
| the quality of the programming on the CNN channel. However,
| cnn.com has been full of affiliate links and barely detectable
| "sponsored" stories for years.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Its particularly comical because many of the recommendations,
| including from the US government, for identifying fake or
| untrustworthy news sites include factors that would indicate
| CNN's site is fake.
|
| A hard one to define is a common recommendation is that a legit
| news site will look and feel professional. A more specific one
| is that a fake news site will be filled with a large number of
| ads. That doesn't even touch on the other factors like unbiased
| articles that share both sides of an issue.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Let's be real, CNN, Fox News, etc are all fake/propaganda. On
| Fox News, Trump can do nothing wrong, Biden can do nothing
| right. On CNN it's nothing but sunshine and rainbows for
| Harris/Biden and the opposite for Trump...I mean look at this
| story title from CNN's current frontpage: "Roy Wood Jr.
| reacts to Trump's ongoing McDonalds remarks"
|
| I'm an independent and as far as I can tell there is zero
| attempt at unbiased factual reporting of the news.
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| You might have some luck with news wire services such as
| Reuters or the Associated Press.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I am so glad I decided to tune out of this election cycle.
| Is anyone really undecided? If you're not, just don't
| watch. I have no idea what Trump is saying about McDonald's
| and I like it that way.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Elections are all about turnout. Hence, election
| campaigns mostly aren't about convincing the undecided.
| They're mostly about motivating and energizing your
| voters to show up on election day (get out the vote!),
| and demoralizing and confusing the other side's voters to
| stay home (you're principled, but your candidate is un-
| yoursidesian and cannot be trusted).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm going to vote, as I always do. I don't need
| manufactured outrage as a motivator. Unfortunately that
| is what ad-driven social media and news needs to get
| eyeballs, so it's all we've got.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I'll sum it up for you:
|
| "Vote for the person we picked for you because they're
| not Trump."
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| > unbiased factual reporting
|
| I don't think that has ever existed, but the closest I've
| found is Wikipedia. It is surprisingly detailed,
| particularly on current events.
| moi2388 wrote:
| You find? I usually find it more and more edited to
| favour left-wing and work views on current and political
| events.
|
| I just go to severs social media sites so I get at least
| both biases
| internetter wrote:
| Wikipedia is free for everyone to edit. The policies are
| strongly aligned with the pursuit of truth. Both parties
| can have truths in their favour, if editors are in a left
| wing bubble they may just be more exposed to truths from
| a left perspective. Here's where you can help! If you
| identify bias, feel free to remove charged language, and
| add new ideas with reliable citations. Here's a list of
| sources considered reliable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Wikipedia%3AReliable_sources%2...
|
| Extensive discussions of the decision making process for
| each source is documented in this list.
| basil-rash wrote:
| For mainstream folks, perhaps. The second you even go
| slightly outside of what the media has declared kosher it
| goes off the rails. Take RFK's page, for instance, which
| is just a collection of inflamed opinions soured from
| "reputable" news outlets.
| internetter wrote:
| In your opinion, what is some misinformation on RFK's
| page?
|
| Have you read the discussions on the talk page?
|
| If your concern has not been extensively discussed, have
| you raised it on said page?
|
| Here is a link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Yes, the top chain in the talk page is exactly what I'm
| referring. And, as expected, the fair critique of the
| article for violating wiki guidelines has been shot down
| by passionate editors who want to push their narrative.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You massively overstate the political bias that CNN has. I
| can find articles that are critical of Biden/harris all day
| on CNN!
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13868889/cnn-
| attack...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/politics/fact-check-harris-
| ca...
|
| But please, keep lying about how CNN doesn't criticize
| Harris/biden! It fits into the destabilizing narrative that
| "the media" is "corrupt" or "bought and paid for".
|
| Also, if you want unbiased media, CSPAN is that. No bias
| except from how the camera is physically pointed into
| congress. You won't watch it because it's too boring and
| despite all the hatred your profess to have against biased
| news, the idea of news not as entertainment is alien to
| you.
| sutra_on wrote:
| Are you saying that if I don't enjoy watching live video
| of e.g. an anthill 24/7 then I am actually not interested
| in unbiased media and crave drivel like CNN? That's...
| one way to reason I guess.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The better analogy would be "If I don't enjoy watching a
| live video of an anthill 24/7 than I am actually not
| interested in studying or learning about ants".
|
| To which my response is "those who don't do, teach" and
| to point you to in-fact, do your ant observational
| studies anyway (i.e. watch CSPAN) because it really,
| really is the only way to stop seeing quite as many
| shadows on the wall and see a tiny glimpse of how
| politics actually works.
|
| Seriously, most of the folks making real discovery today
| in some animal studies field is doing it from long
| periods of observational studies in the field. Books from
| academics are so full of lies due to publish or perish,
| academic careerism, widespread, systemic, structural, and
| at the highest levels academic fraud/dishonesty, and
| more.
|
| Watch CSPAN, or you will be lied to. Sorry not sorry that
| it's boring as shit. That's the reality of politics, it's
| mostly boring.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Arguing that news outlets have a bias does not mean they
| are 100% biased. You will find examples of articles and
| segments against Harris on CNN, you will also find
| articles and segments against Trump on Fox News. It isn't
| the norm though.
|
| The most telling for me is generally the photos picked by
| a news outlet. On CNN for example, photos of Harris (and
| Biden) are almost always picked to show them in a
| favorable light. They'll be shot standing at a podium
| with an American flag behind them and a big, natural
| looking smile on their face. Photos of Trump are from off
| angles with an angry look on his face, often taken mid
| speech where a face will look more contorted than when
| smiling.
|
| Are news outlets 100% biased mouthpieces pieces? Of
| course not. But they have a strong bias towards one party
| or the other and they don't try very hard to hide it.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Saying stuff this obvious to debunk it's like AI skeptics
| saying "AI can't solve X" when it's literally trivial to
| try their query and then the AI system straight up just
| solves it.
|
| Let's look at some recent CNN photos of each of them!
|
| https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyima
| ges...
|
| https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/20240921
| -po...
|
| https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/2024-09-
| 26t...
|
| https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyima
| ges...
|
| https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/20240721
| -02...
|
| (sources)
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/27/politics/cnn-poll-harris-
| trum...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/27/politics/harris-southern-
| bord...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/media/abc-presidential-
| debate...
| _heimdall wrote:
| Two issues with you trying to debunk me here.
|
| First, part of my claim is that you absolutely can find
| examples where CNN puts Harris or Biden in a bad light.
| To properly debunk me you would need an analysis of how
| frequently they show either party candidate in a good vs.
| bad light.
|
| Second, and more importantly, you're trying to debunk
| what I clearly stated as my experience of viewing CNN. I
| didn't claim it to be a universal truth, only a pattern I
| have noticed when I have taken the time to browse CNN's
| site.
|
| Debunking is useful when someone is proposing an argument
| as a scientific, or logically based, argument. Its pretty
| useless when the statement is only based on personal,
| anecdotal experience.
| silexia wrote:
| X.com is the only reliable source of news now as people
| from all political views do independent reporting there and
| Community Notes fact checks them.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I was never much of a Twitter user, but I have a really
| hard time believing that any social network incentivizing
| short comments and social validation through likes/shares
| and an algorithmic feed will ever be a reliable source
| for unbiased views.
| kube-system wrote:
| That site is, and always has been, full of hot takes and
| sensationalism which are often out-of-context or
| misleading. Regardless of viewpoint. And most evidence
| shows it is a top target for intentional disinformation
| attacks by institutionally-sponsored troll farms. It is
| very easy for people to end way down the rabbit holes of
| an echo chamber on that site and find themselves exposed
| to niche accounts that don't receive any fact checking or
| counterarguments.
| tootie wrote:
| I know it's fun to hate on media but CNN is actually really
| solid. I watch the broadcast rarely but I visit the site.
| They have enormous breadth of coverage that includes
| international news as well as fluff like celebrity gossip.
| They have a ton of real reporters and are on the ground
| everywhere something is happening. I see sensationalized
| stuff sometimes but they're still highly factual and fair.
| I'm not sure what people think the alternative is. We
| wouldn't know anything if not for commercially successful
| news businesses. None of the Internet media critics
| actually gather any news for themselves
| smrtinsert wrote:
| False equivalence. One of those had to pay 700 million
| because it doesn't know how to stop lying.
| tootie wrote:
| They're called "native ads" designed to flow inline with their
| actual news but they're also labeled as sponsored content if
| you just look carefully.
| gjadi wrote:
| Also posted a week ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 In case you're
| interested in what was discussed before on this topic.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour
| Its Host_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 -
| Sept 2024 (297 comments)
| westcort wrote:
| Publishers sometimes have advertorial divisions. This is not a
| new phenomenon. No, this does not prove true your favorite
| candidate's lies or alternative realities.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| You're the only one bringing up politics
| westcort wrote:
| It is not about a particular politician--or are you reading
| this a particular way because of a truth about your favorite
| candidate you know, but do not want to be said?
|
| See also _partisan_ views from this thread (as opposed to
| this non-partisan comment):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41670882
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41671053
| bofadeez wrote:
| Many would agree that the official CNN and USA Today are already
| "fake" in a sense.
| greenchair wrote:
| yep and so is the stat showing cnn is the top news source.
| joshdavham wrote:
| The plot thickens! Also wouldn't this present some sort of a
| conflict of interest as each of these sites (Forbes, CNN, USA
| Today) are now competing with eachother for SEO?
| shipscode wrote:
| Let me break down how the media industry works nowadays since
| there's a lot of confusion in these comments.
|
| Most media organizations have a small number of in-house
| journalists on verticals that make sense.
|
| The rest of the content is curated and brought in from content
| partners and written outside of the news organization.
|
| In practice they function more like a social media feed than
| traditional newspapers. I'm no fan of CNN, but this isn't exactly
| a scandal, media had to adapt to keep up with so much being on
| social media these days, they all do this.
| WD-42 wrote:
| In the authors previous post he goes into Forbes marketplace
| which is the same company doing this garbage content farm for
| CNN that they have already been doing for Forbes.
|
| The content farm company is now trying to buy the original
| Forbes company.
|
| So when our media companies become small subsidiaries of
| affiliate content farms then yea I think it's a bit disturbing.
| weard_beard wrote:
| The news is the news: it isn't news that the news isn't news
| anymore.
| toss1 wrote:
| Au contraire, the fact that news is no longer news is the
| biggest news there is.
|
| Sure, the mere fact that the news is no longer news, is old
| news. But _how_ and _why_ it is happening is big and un-
| reported news.
|
| When six companies control 90% of the news outlets, that is
| unprecedented concentration and loss of the diverse
| viewpoints necessary for a robust society.
|
| When those corporations which normally sell-off any
| lossmaking division instead hold loss-making 'news'
| divisions in a now-chronically lossmaking industry, the
| payoff is not some potential future profits; the payoff is
| in influencing public opinion to favor policies
| advantageous to your larger corporation.
|
| So, of course the _how_ and _why_ it is happening is
| unreported by the organizations that are making it happen.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > loss of the diverse viewpoints necessary for a robust
| society
|
| This isn't wrong but let me put a finer point on it: when
| BigCompany Inc starts dumping sludge into your town's
| lake, you need independent journalists to figure that
| out. Corporate talking heads aren't going to do that. And
| certainly not the people running a link farm.
|
| What news is reported is as important as whether the
| facts are true. The easiest path to propaganda is to
| simply report other, more convenient, facts.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of people pay for deeper content. I basically
| hang out on yahoo finance all day (crazy awesome site),
| and they make a lot of news feeds available to their
| subscribers. But it takes quite a big commitment to
| subscribe at a level where you get all the news and
| analyst reports in a timely fashion. Google News feeds
| have been declining in quality and don't find them
| valuable anymore. Hacker News is one of the sites I scan
| for news. I check it all, and I belong to Ground News as
| well.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Good old days?
|
| https://todayinhistory.blog/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/ea30f...
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGLtwVmWwAAia-Y?format=jpg&na
| me=...
| coliveira wrote:
| The news industry was always a low profit business even
| in the best times, so one should ask why it is so
| interesting for powerful people. The answer is the same
| in the past as it is today, it just takes a little of
| critical thinking to understand.
| magic-michael wrote:
| Can you show me where the garbage content is? They seem to
| all have experts that have written in these areas for
| decades.
| itishappy wrote:
| Top google result for "best pet insurance" and "best CBD
| gummies" are Forbes (actually Forbes Marketplace), and
| they've moving into sports betting.
|
| https://larslofgren.com/forbes-marketplace/
| magic-michael wrote:
| That's what I mean, he doesn't look at the content itself
| alwa wrote:
| Well... that's the crux of the discomfort. These brands'
| _newsrooms_ do in fact have those people. That's the reason
| their names inspire trust.
|
| Now, they've decided to cash out that trust by lending
| their names to sleazy content farming affiliate marketer
| types.
|
| For now, that's valuable, since people (and Google) trust
| the names based on what they used to do--and they distrust
| the rest of the endless chorus of hucksters. But sooner or
| later, the world realizes there's no longer good reason to
| trust those names. They're just snake oil (and CBD gummy)
| salesmen like the rest.
|
| And then we're left without popular institutions that are
| trustworthy when we need to understand complicated and true
| things about the world. And we've punished people (and
| Google) for even trying to place more weight on honest
| reportage and institutional signals of expertise.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Let me break down how the media industry works nowadays_
|
| How free* media works. The media landscape has sadly divided
| into assuming only those who can pay for news want to be
| informed or have their views challenged. The poor get ads and
| echo chambers.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| Even prestige publications like The New Yorker use
| freelancers. This is the same thing, it's just lower brow
| content.
| ryandamm wrote:
| That's not a fair comparison, The New Yorker has always had
| a different relationship with its writers. A freelancer who
| writes for The New Yorker is likely a highly respected
| journalist/author/other luminary. Their staff writers are,
| I believe, technically contractors as they're not W2
| employees.
|
| Contractor-written slop at these content farms, as
| described by TFA, have nothing in common with how content
| works at The New Yorker.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| The New Yorker gets high tier freelancers, other outlets
| get dogshit freelancers. It's the same underlying model.
| Spivak wrote:
| Who is the mythical non-echo-chamber informative challenging
| news source?
| alexandre_m wrote:
| That would be an aggregator, like allsides.com
| tensor wrote:
| I think "non-echo chamber content" is only valuable as
| long as all of it is similarly high quality. In my
| opinion, reading diverse but low quality content (e.g.
| filled with misinformation, a lack of concrete
| information, and a lack of sensible reasoning) is not
| helpful.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for awhile
| and while I can't say that's what the GP is referring to,
| it absolutely sounds like the kind of deluded crap a WSJ
| subscriber would say to justify spending $40/mo on that
| crap to themselves :D
| janalsncm wrote:
| propublica.org is pretty good.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They wrote that these things can be found in paid sources.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Lots of people pay for The New York Times and they still
| operate their affiliate link site Wirecutter.
| hedora wrote:
| There are still counterexamples:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/
|
| Traditional newspapers would get stories from things like AP,
| and then the editors would decide what to run. They'd also have
| reporters that wrote local stories, etc.
|
| I'd argue that any news site that has eliminated all those
| roles is already out of business and is simply burning down
| their brand at this point.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| As Obama famously quipped during his last Whitehouse
| Correspondent dinner: Even reporters have
| left me. Savannah Guthrie, she has left the White House press
| corps to host the Today show. Norah O'Donnell left the
| briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left
| journalism to join CNN.
| ghaff wrote:
| Many publications have long relied on outside contributors
| with various degrees of transparency and conflicts of
| interest. When blogging was the hotness, as an analyst, I
| contributed to CNET (unpaid; they paid some bloggers but I
| didn't want that conflict of interest). After CBS bought them
| and the whole blog climate changed (and I moved to a vendor),
| I stopped doing that. But a ton of that sort of thing went on
| in the tech trade press--some good and some almost certainly
| not so good.
| input_sh wrote:
| The key difference is that ProPublica is a non-profit. There
| are very few non-profit investigative journalism orgs in the
| world, but their funding is fundamentally different than for-
| profit news orgs. They rely on public grants to keep things
| running, so therefore, they don't have to abuse their brand
| in similar ways.
|
| That's also why they publish only a couple of stories per day
| instead of hundreds, why they never cover breaking news, why
| there's a donate button (as opposed to now-standard
| paywalls), why there's no ads, why the interface appears
| cleaner etc. If we were talking about tech companies, it'd be
| like comparing Wikimedia/Mozilla/Internet Archive to
| traditional for-profit tech companies. To an untrained eye
| there is no difference, but a somewhat trained eye quickly
| realises that their incentives are completely different.
|
| (Disclaimer: I work for a different non-profit investigative
| journalism organization.)
| coliveira wrote:
| They are funded by NGOs controlled by billionaires, so in
| the end there is a number of things they cannot investigate
| if they want to maintain the NGO money.
| input_sh wrote:
| That's not how grants work, they don't come with a "you
| can't report on us specifically" clause.
| chihuahua wrote:
| But it could be that if you don't follow the unwritten
| rules, you don't get another grant next year.
| coliveira wrote:
| There is no such clause because that would be unlawful,
| but there is certainly the "unwritten clause" of whether
| the NGO likes your work or not.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| It's common wisdom that you "don't bite the hand that
| feeds you".
| klyrs wrote:
| While this is technically correct, it is the wrong
| response to GP.
|
| Yes. ProPublica is biased to look in certain directions.
| Every single reporter, editor, publisher, is biased in
| this way. The answer to this is more, not less.
|
| FIRE rose from decisions the ACLU took about representing
| cases. This is a fundamentally good thing, speaking as a
| diehard ACLU supporter.
|
| Speaking as a huge fan of ProPublica, I'm hoping that
| they're investigating _all_ of the supreme court justices
| (for example), because we won 't pass laws to reign in
| judicial corruption without bipartisan action. But if
| they aren't, I desperately hope that there's a market for
| a conservative-focus investigative outfit that can stick
| to the facts like ProPublica.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Hopefully there are multiple organizations with different
| funding sources who aren't beholden to each other, so
| they can fill whatever gaps in coverage they see. That
| would be a better outcome than everyone refusing
| journalism as a career because you will always have a
| conflict of interest with whoever is paying you.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| These aren't news sections that are being outsourced, they're
| things like "The 9 best leggings on Amazon, according to
| fitness experts1" and "Best pet insurance companies of
| September 20242".
|
| 1 https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/fashion/best-leggings-
| on...
|
| 2 https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/pet-
| insurance/best-..., https://www.cnn.com/cnn-
| underscored/money/best-pet-insurance
| pishpash wrote:
| News sections are outsourced to AP's essaybots.
| kube-system wrote:
| These sort of pay-to-play review marketing didn't originate
| on the internet. These are copies of arrangements that
| print media invented. My hometown newspaper had this kind
| of stuff too.
| smolder wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I saw a "Forbes" guide on how to beat some
| video game quest at some point, or some other video game
| thing people would have been searching for at the time. I
| understood it to be SEO spam but this whole comment section
| puts it into better context.
| hedora wrote:
| Click forbes.com, then hamburger icon, then scroll the list
| to the "advisor" or "health" news sections.
|
| Sample sections from advisor:
|
| - Cheap Car Insurance
|
| - Pet Insurance
|
| - How Much Is Pet Insurance?
|
| - Cheap Pet Insurance
|
| Under health, they have a sub-section "best cbd gummies". I
| clicked on a few articles and they're outsourced(?) amazon
| affiliate spam that claims Forbes actually tested the
| products.
|
| The health section is served from forbes.com, but the
| navigation is different and includes a "back to forbes.com"
| button.
|
| In some other parts of forbes.com they have clear
| disclaimers, like:
|
| Innovation -> SAP Brand Voice | Paid program
|
| So, they're definitely trying to pass off the marketplace
| content as legitimate news sections.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| I don't buy the claim that this is trying to pass as
| news. It just looks like 90% of the other review pages on
| the internet. Here's what I'm seeing:
|
| At the top of the page I see an Advertising Disclosure
| link. After that I see a byline for the actual human
| freelancer that wrote the article.
|
| After that I see a huge call-out that "Commissions we
| earn from partner links on this page do not affect our
| opinions or evaluations. Our editorial content is based
| on thorough research and guidance from the Forbes Health
| Advisory Board".
|
| Below that is a "Featured Partner Offer" with an info
| popover that reads "Partner Offers feature brands who
| paid Forbes Health to appear at the top of our list.
| While this may influence where their products or services
| appear on our site, it in no way affects our ratings,
| which are based on thorough research, solid methodologies
| and expert advice. Our partners cannot pay us to
| guarantee favorable reviews of their products or
| services". The offer contains no rating or editorial
| text.
|
| Below that are the reviewed items, which have ratings and
| editorial text. Some of the text is linked to full
| reviews of specific products (e.g.
| https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/cbdfx-gummies-review/).
|
| Below that is the methodology: "To determine the best CBD
| gummies, the Forbes Health editorial team analyzed data
| on over 100 CBD gummy products ... then ranked the CBD
| gummies based on price, potency, flavor options available
| and whether its ingredients are all natural, organic,
| gluten-free and/or vegan-friendly." They don't claim to
| have tested all of them.
|
| Again, this looks like 90% of the other review pages on
| the web, including things Forbes already publishes (e.g.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-
| shopper/article..., https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-
| personal-shopper/article...).
| tolerance wrote:
| What you've described does indeed sound scandalous irrespective
| of its scope.
| badlibrarian wrote:
| The contract reporters are also personally liable for what they
| submit. So there is absolutely zero incentive to risk going
| deep on a topic, let alone investigate anything.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Let me break down how the media industry works_
|
| It looks like you mean: "Let me break down how a certain
| portion of the media industry that I'm familiar with works."
|
| "The media industry" is vast, complex, diverse, and far more
| interesting than internet content farms, poorly-run legacy
| brands, or even most of what's on the internet.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| Freelancers have existed since the dawn of journalism.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| "interesting" isn't the word I would have chosen
| dawnerd wrote:
| Isn't even new. Demand Media was doing this 10+ years ago and
| sites like USA Today were buying content. These days you have
| companies creating their own sponsored content with platforms
| like Ceros and the sites just embedding it and cashing the
| checks. Of course the sites do the bare minimum legally
| required to disclose its sponsored content.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| I'm super confused as to why this is worth a blog post, let
| alone the conspiratorial tone.
|
| This seems to be a case of knowledge without context being a
| dangerous thing in the wrong hands.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I read this blog post and thought throughout the whole
| thing, "Is this person just completely unaware of how the media
| and branding industries work?" He tries to make it out to be
| some great "scandal" when literally tons and tons of media
| brands outsource sections of their website.
|
| Now, to be clear, I'm not exactly excusing CNN for this, but
| literally for years now I've rolled my eyes at the extremely
| spammy/low quality/clickbait ads that have appeared on CNN
| articles online. The fact that they've outsourced part of their
| "Underscored" site, which isn't exactly journalism to begin
| with, is not something I care about. And in case you missed it,
| journalism has had a blood bath over the past 25 years. While I
| think what CNN is doing in terms of affiliate ads is scammy,
| can I really blame them? Hardly anyone wants to pay for
| journalism these days, but journalists still want to eat. At
| least with these clickbait ads I find them so low quality that
| they don't confuse me into being "real" articles.
| ClownsAbound wrote:
| You're omitting how much influence / censorship our government
| have over these institutions now, and how much they apply
| pressure to prevent dissenting voices and opinions from
| reaching the main stream.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| The passive voice shit from the past couple years has gotten
| truly audacious and increasingly infuriating
| ddtaylor wrote:
| This doesn't make it acceptable. We can want better.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 'They all do this' isn't a good excuse when 'this' is deceiving
| the consumer. I am so sick of marketing/branding people faking
| everything, and wish they could all be shipped off
| Golgafrincham.
| beejiu wrote:
| The context is that Google has a new "Site reputation abuse"
| policy that some argue isn't applied fairly between small sites
| and massive media sites. The policy states:
|
| "Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published
| with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where
| the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking
| advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals. Such
| third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or
| other third-party pages that are typically independent of a
| host site's main purpose or produced without close oversight or
| involvement of the host site."
|
| https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-po...
|
| That's why it's all hush-hush within the industry.
| kube-system wrote:
| > That's why it's all hush-hush within the industry.
|
| I think a much more simple answer is that syndication has
| always been hush-hush because branding and brand trust is a
| key part of media marketing. Your local newspaper in the 90s
| had a ton of syndicated stories too but it was all published
| under your local paper's hometown moniker.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I wonder about the relationship between those two, column
| attribution in 90s newspapers doesn't have much to say
| about the incentive to stay quiet to avoid publicly
| announcing you're violating Google's rules in 2024.
|
| That aside, I'm not sure the assertion about 90s papers is
| accurate. There was syndication, of course, but that was
| attributed. Let's say there were articles written by other
| people published under the names of local writers. That
| sounds theoretically possible, but something that'd be well
| known. Let's say there were articles attributed to the
| paper at large. I don't recall that.
| kube-system wrote:
| Syndicated material was disguised all the time. Ask most
| people and they think that most of the stories in their
| local newspaper are written by people that work there.
|
| > The average American reader didn't necessarily notice
| the way syndicates and chains had come to dominate the
| news. Syndicates were careful to sell their material to
| only one newspaper per city. While syndicated features
| usually carried a small copyright symbol, the name that
| followed that symbol could be deliberately opaque.
| Readers wouldn't automatically know that "King Features"
| denoted Hearst material, or that "NEA" indicated content
| from the Scripps chain. Local papers sometimes purposely
| disguised syndicated material. The Milwaukee Sentinel
| bought a comic strip from the New York World syndicate in
| 1918, for example, but retitled it "Somewhere in
| Milwaukee." The same paper told readers to send in their
| letters for Dorothy Dix as though she could be reached in
| Milwaukee, and not in New York City, where she lived and
| sold her work to the Ledger syndicate.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-syndicated-
| column...
|
| Local newspapers didn't want to plainly advertise that a
| gigantic chunk of their content came from thousands of
| miles away. It undermines their value proposition.
|
| Likewise, CNN probably likes that a huge chunk of
| featured content on their page is driving them revenue
| but doesn't _look_ like a big ad to their audience.
| hedora wrote:
| That might have been true in the early days of the
| telegraph, but for as long as I can remember (and up
| until we cancelled our subscription), the bylines in our
| local paper were extremely clear on this point. Anything
| that was not local had a byline with the name of the
| reporter, their city, and "via Associated Press", or
| similar.
| kube-system wrote:
| "King Features" in the above quote is a contemporary
| example. Regardless, my point is not that these
| syndications are impossible to identify (as is the same
| with CNN's featured links), but that they are similarly
| opaque. Syndication as a concept isn't something that is
| obvious to a person of average media literacy, and
| neither is a tiny byline that states "via AP".
| refulgentis wrote:
| To me, it's clear that is attribution, and not
| attributing, or actively misattributing via signing your
| brand to other companies output, is the key to the
| article.
| kube-system wrote:
| Print media does it (and things worse than this) too:
|
| https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/national-
| press-b...
|
| And under work-for-hire arrangements, putting your name
| on something that someone else wrote is not even
| necessarily incorrect, either. Not every case of
| reprinting stories in a newspaper is a big reputable
| newspaper printing a story by a big reputable news
| syndicate who is licensing the story to multiple
| customers.
|
| I write copyrighted material all day, but since it is for
| hire, the person who has hired me owns the copyright to
| it, and puts their name on my work. And US law provides
| no right for me to be attributed.
|
| I appreciate the criticism of CNN in this case, but I
| just don't think this is somehow an egregious outlier in
| the history of media practices.
| wbl wrote:
| Every syndicated story had a byline indicating syndication.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; and they were generally extremely high quality.
| kube-system wrote:
| Major US newspapers in the 21st century did. But
| regardless, many of them were opaque in nature. "Via AP"
| may check the box of attribution but is lost on a reader
| of average literacy.
| xbar wrote:
| Newswires were well understood entities for all newspaper
| readers for more than 100 years.
| thekevan wrote:
| I disagree that it does not venture into scandal territory due
| to the fact that CNN is a news organization that is constantly
| defending their integrity.
|
| They are presenting content as their own under questionable
| sources that they don't reveal. It proves they are being less
| genuine when doing so makes them money.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Yes, and to add there's nothing wrong with it. The editor is
| responsible for curation. This has been a practice for many
| decades, there are news agencies primarily focused on selling
| syndicated content produced by their own journalists such as
| Associated Press or Reuters. You'll find this content in all
| newspapers even the best. Generally unless it's an exclusive or
| breaking news, there's a good chance it'll be syndicated at
| some point.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Isn't this literally the business model of AP News (Associated
| Press)?
|
| https://apnews.com
|
| They sell stories to other news outlets to publish on their own
| website.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Yes, and Reuters, and this predates the internet.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, AP sells stories that other outlets choose to buy and run
| based on editorial judgement, Marketplace buys access to
| brands with reputation and publishes its own material under
| those brands; its not at all the same model.
| corysama wrote:
| I've heard that a while back Google had a change to their algo
| that heavily prioritized widely used websites as "trusted". The
| very most well known sites in the world, such as cnn.com, would
| be treated as the best results for anything they contained.
|
| In response, many of the most used web sites flooded their own
| sites with transparently fake product reviews full of SEO phrases
| about "we spent N weeks testing K products to root out the very
| best" and very little else. The actual reviews would be pretty
| much copy-pasted from the description provided on the product
| producer's site.
|
| And, that's how Google made itself useless for finding product
| reviews.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What signals do you think Google should be using instead?
|
| I presume they made the change because their search results
| were filling up with blogspam, and there was no algorithm that
| could detect a high-quality review from a spam one.
|
| So what do you think would have been the right approach?
| hedora wrote:
| I don't use Google, but I used to pay for Apple News.
|
| Apple uses algorithmic ranking by story, and pays news sites
| by article views. It is basically all spam. If you block the
| spam sites, their stories still show up in your feed with a
| note that you blocked the site.
|
| Instead, they should let people structure their feeds by news
| organization, like podcast apps do. They should steer you
| back to reading the sources you've opted into, and mix in a
| bit of stories from related news organizations, not stories
| with high content similarity, or high "trending" scores.
|
| (As far as I know, Apple News+ is the only product still
| operating in the paid news aggregator space, but if there's
| another one, I'd love to hear about it.)
| saghm wrote:
| I've been using Feedly for a bit now after something
| changed with the Google aggregator that Android has
| available as an option on the home screen changed something
| and became impossible for me to filter out certain sources
| from (maybe related to the engine changes discussed in this
| thread and in the article?)
|
| It's solidly...okay. It's very good aggregating everything
| I want, and for the most part it's able to avoid things
| that I'd absolutely not be willing to overlook, but it has
| some quirks in terms of the filters weirdly not working for
| me on fairly benign topics (no matter how much I try, I
| can't get it to stop showing me content from various sports
| like soccer, basketball, and golf despite the only sport I
| care about being baseball). They seem to really hype their
| AI features in the app, which is a little weird because I
| don't care how they aggregate behind the scenes and they
| shouldn't need AI to be able to filter articles they
| literally already tag as "golf" when I have "golf" listed
| in my filters as "never show", but it's not annoying enough
| that I've bothered trying to find an alternative yet.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| I have to say showing you content from blocked channels is
| the most user hostile thing I encounter on a daily basis.
|
| The contempt for one's users is such a defining feature of
| this era of late-stage tech.
| gamacodre wrote:
| > Instead, they should let people structure their feeds by
| news organization
|
| Doesn't this immediately turn into the kind of problem TFA
| is bemoaning? Once a news organization gets traction (opt-
| ins in this case) on a platform, they'll inevitably start
| selling space in their feed to one or more crappy
| aggregators. To the C-suite this looks like free money,
| since somehow they always manage to convince themselves
| that the brand damage from it will be minimal or at least
| manageable.
|
| It sucks.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _If you block the spam sites, their stories still show up
| in your feed with a note that you blocked the site._
|
| Users' respect for Apple is matched in magnitude by Apple's
| disrespect for users.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> was no algorithm that could detect a high-quality review
| from a spam one_
|
| In that scenario, the search engine could show an empty page
| plus their screened ad network results.
|
| Perhaps a link for querying Reddit or other social media.
|
| For the most profitable/contested review queries, some
| combination of algo and paid humans for feedback/curation.
| scrivna wrote:
| IMO the internet is just a bad place to look for reviews
| nowadays, unless you really trust someone and know they
| aren't being paid to review the product. Likewise Amazon
| reviews I consider mostly fake. For products I want to buy I
| look at what brick and mortar stores sell, they have skin in
| the game and can weed out the truly bad.
| realusername wrote:
| > there was no algorithm that could detect a high-quality
| review from a spam one.
|
| I really hope for them it does exist because otherwise Google
| is screwed.
| jerf wrote:
| People pointing out problems are not obligated to provide
| solutions. I don't know where this idea comes from, but it's
| just wrong.
|
| If there was a solution to this problem from the search
| engine's point of view 5 years ago, which I do not stipulate
| but let's roll with it, there isn't one now. ChatGPT can
| overcome basically all detection techniques when combined
| with the current amount of efforts already largely
| successfully avoiding detection, and it will continue to get
| better. There are no signals for random unattested web
| content that will separate what we want from stuff
| constructed to look like what we want but with embedded
| motivations or content we don't.
|
| A web of trust may be inevitable, but it's not like that
| can't be attacked either, especially past the first hop. It
| seems inevitable that slowly but very surely our trust is
| going to get pulled in much, much more tightly than it is
| now. I don't see much that can be done about that, even in
| theory. It was a historical accident that we ever could trust
| random websites to not be 100% focused on their own
| interests, simply because the tech to do that wasn't there
| yet. Now it is, and we will be entering a world where we can
| not trust any free resources, whether we like it or not.
| photonthug wrote:
| > a world where we can not trust any free resources
|
| Or paid ones, really. If you think a company is
| trustworthy, that means a) you believe it cares about
| losing you as a customer, or b) you believe the company has
| the obligation or the luxury of acting with integrity (or
| the people working there do).
|
| Especially with news media, none of these things are likely
| to be true. For paid news I'd just expect less typos but
| not more integrity.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _People pointing out problems are not obligated to
| provide solutions._
|
| And nobody said they were obligated to. So I don't know
| what you think you're responding to.
|
| I assume it's OK to _ask_ people what they think a solution
| should be, though?
|
| Seems like a pretty natural, conversational follow-up, if
| you ask me.
|
| Presumably if you know a situation well enough to
| criticize, you have at least _some_ ideas of what
| alternatives might or might not be better. Or can elucidate
| why you think there might not be any better ones.
|
| Or do you think the entire act of asking questions is "just
| wrong", to use your phrase?
| jerf wrote:
| It is an extremely common tactic used to shut down
| conversations about problems. If that wasn't what you
| were doing, I apologize to you for being wrong this time,
| but I don't apologize for making the mistake in the first
| place, because it's fairly well-founded based on
| extensive experience.
| kuschku wrote:
| It's really easy to find real reviews. The magic trick is
| -affiliate -amazon. You can add other qualifiers as well.
|
| Try it: https://www.google.com/search?q=macbook+m3+pro+review
| +-affil...
|
| Reviews financed via affiliate links are just camouflaged
| ads. So Google should offer a filter to remove all of them.
|
| I add similar qualifiers to almost all of my searches. They
| make the web feel like it's 2010 again.
| sherr wrote:
| That seems to be a great tip. Thanks.
| eproxus wrote:
| Awesome tip. I made a Kagi lens with these settings:
|
| https://kagi.com/lenses/0MqOTt5t5MajrIkHAqHEgDeoKzF1a4TS
|
| (Can't share example results since Kagi doesn't let you
| share results from lenses)
| janalsncm wrote:
| The results would only be notable if they were
| substantially better than the Google results.
| richwater wrote:
| Doesn't Kagi currently pay to access Google's index?
| janalsncm wrote:
| I think so, but they do rerank the results. The only
| major engines that run their own indexes are Google,
| Bing, Yandex, and Baidu.
| kuschku wrote:
| EDIT: If Google decides to ever remove this useful feature
| as well, here's an archive link showing what the results
| used to look like at the time of posting:
| https://archive.is/5KwA6.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| DoubleClick slowly killed Google search because the best way
| to make money in display ads is to run clickbait.
|
| In the one hand, Google paid good quality websites more money
| for trash content and engagement bait than quality content.
| So they adapted to that new market reality.
|
| Meanwhile, the real money maker - Search - gradually got
| filled up with lower quality content and now it's imploding.
|
| Google buying DoubleClick has a lot of parallels to what
| happened with Boeing.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The right approach would've looked something like what the
| author of this article did. None of it was that technically
| complicated.
| stickfigure wrote:
| These days I ask chatgpt what the people of reddit think.
| bitwize wrote:
| Before Google, unscrupulous web sites would try to SEO
| themselves into the top page of search results with repeated
| META tag bombs or sometimes just good old fashioned
| whitefonting. One of the innovations of PageRank was that more
| widely linked-to web sites would be ranked as more
| authoritative, doing an end run around the kind of keyword spam
| that plagued the early web. If the most widely linked-to web
| sites wish to play ball with SEO marketroids, that undermines
| the trustworthiness that PageRank assumes for those sites.
|
| The upshot of this is that no system is impossible to game.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| The above poster speaks to the crux of the issue. CNN, Forbes
| and other sites are doing things that a normal webmaster could
| be nuked from orbit for, after a "manual review". Yet, these
| are the manually curated sites which Google claims have high
| trust signals.
|
| There are a few disparate incentives. One is a political desire
| to buttress the "official truths" of the legacy media. The
| other is a market incentive for the dying legacy media sites to
| earn revenue.
|
| There is a third, related market incentive for the dissatisfied
| media consumers. CNN isn't as compelling as it was two decades
| ago. Eyeballs and ears are naturally straying towards the
| perceived value of alternative media sources. Therefore, to
| continue the ancien regime, it becomes necessary for Google to
| prop up CNN and others.
|
| There is a possible world where Google creates value by
| indexing and sorting through a decentralized and open Internet.
| This chain of events does not support that. The trend is for
| gatekeepers to panic. The search results have been sabotaged as
| a result.
|
| Is Google more valuable as a gatekeeper for established
| institutions? Can that amount to more value than the potential
| ad revenue of a larger web? Time will tell.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I feel gaslighted when "fake news" is brought up by people,
| that consider CNN etc to be somewhat reputable. Like, the
| atmosphere on those sites are surreal nowadays. There are
| fake news, fake ads etc.
|
| Like a article with a picture of some fat person, a picture
| of a child star, and the headline "you can't believe how
| child star whatever looks like today!". But the fat person is
| not the former child and nowhere to be seen in the article,
| etc.
|
| Those sites are as reputable as pornsites.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > we spent N weeks testing K products to root out the very best
|
| Does the Wirecutter no longer actually do the leg work?
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Whether they do or not, Wirecutter was such a successful
| format that everybody else copies the style when when writing
| fake reviews. The giveaway is when every item in a category
| happens to be the best at something that could be read off
| the spec sheet and they never actually recommend one: This
| one has the best sound quality, this one is the budget pick,
| this one is best for people with cats, this one has more
| battery life, etc.
| vundercind wrote:
| > I've heard that a while back Google had a change to their
| algo that heavily prioritized widely used websites as
| "trusted".
|
| They super-obviously did that some time around '08 or '09.
| Basically just gave up on the cat-and-mouse game they'd played
| with spam for years, based on actual content and (what they
| hoped they managed to suss out as) organic linking, and
| switched to heavy reputation- and size-weighting instead. It
| was a giant shift in their search's behavior and unlike
| anything they'd done before, not subtle at all.
| streptomycin wrote:
| In 2005, some scammy ad company paid me to do similar stuff - let
| them completely control some pages on a high ranking domain.
| Google figured it out after a few months and blacklisted my
| entire domain until I removed them. Crazy that this is still an
| issue.
| hedora wrote:
| I've noticed that certain companies become too big to fail, and
| then they just start breaking the rules.
|
| For instance, Experian stole my credit card number once. The
| fraud department at my national megabank said that Experian was
| responsible for over half their case load.
|
| You'd think that the credit card processing networks would have
| blocked the Experian payment processing account at that point.
| I think they would have blocked pretty much any other company
| on earth.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| Who in the hell reads CNN, USA Today or Forbes?
|
| They are all rags.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| usatoday owns soooo many local newspapers. Where I live if I
| want local news it's either them or my local NPR station and
| pretty much nothing else.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My local paper was sold to Gannett (USA Today) a few years
| ago. It's a complete shadow of what it used to be (to be fair
| the decline started long before the sale, as with many local
| papers). They are down from a full newsroom to a handul of
| local reporters, I'm not even sure all of them are full-time.
| Most of their content is just USA today stories or news from
| other Gannett papers.
|
| There are a couple of bloggers who cover local government,
| otherwise there's really no in-depth local reporting on
| anything anymore.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I can't speak for every local but the "local paper" where I
| live is effectively the RSS feeds of the local CBS & NBC
| news stations' websites and the reporting is actually quite
| good, or at least, it's a LOT better than receiving no
| local reporting.
|
| The actual local paper is as you describe. I don't
| understand why local TV has weathered the digital
| transition better, exactly, but I find that I get a LOT of
| the local coverage that I want this way and I'm eager to
| recommend this to strategy to others (as you can see)
| burkaman wrote:
| CNN is the most popular news website in the US by a huge margin
| and they are confident enough in their position that they're
| going to start testing out a paywall next month.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Source?
| dewey wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24255900/cnn-paywall-
| digi...
| alecco wrote:
| These SEO garbage subsites rank high in Google results. That's
| the point of the article.
| jmull wrote:
| Is "fake" the right word?
|
| I was under the impression that the generic "news"/"information"
| on many sites is purchased (or otherwise obtained through some
| kind of business relationship) from some other organization.
|
| And I just don't get this perspective from the article:
|
| "For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the
| fuck CNN? You're CN fucking N. What in god's name convinced you
| this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate
| program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?"
|
| I guess I can't figure out what the problem is supposed to be
| here. I don't think there's necessarily a problem with fleshing
| out a site with generic content. I would guess CNN has an
| agreement with the content provider on the general character of
| content, and can surely opt out of things they don't want to be
| associated with.
|
| FWIW, I opened "CNN underscored money" and at the top of the page
| it says:
|
| "Content is created by CNN Underscored's team of editors who work
| independently from the CNN Newsroom. CNN earns a commission from
| partner links on the site but the reporting here is always
| independent and objective." (plus there's an "advertiser
| disclosure" link but I didn't click on it).
|
| I just don't get what the problem is here.
| RobRivera wrote:
| >"For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the
| fuck CNN? You're CN fucking N. What in god's name convinced you
| this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate
| program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?"
|
| Anytime I hear outrage rhetoric i lose all interest in the
| author's words.
|
| Its like they have completely forgotten what relativity is.
| yriehhdjf wrote:
| What would you consider the relative element in this scenario
| that explains the decision then? Or was your point simply
| that emotive language automatically discredits a speaker's
| point?
| hindsightbias wrote:
| My eyes read it as reality. I think it fits too.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The problem is that Google defines what these sites are doing
| as spam:
| https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-po...
|
| > Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published
| with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where
| the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking
| advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals. Such
| third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or
| other third-party pages that are typically independent of a
| host site's main purpose or produced without close oversight or
| involvement of the host site.
|
| It means that consumers will be shown reviews written by
| affiliate marketers rather than real people because the
| affiliate marketers get to leech off of Forbes's, CNN's, or USA
| Today's domain reputation. Despite this, Google is either
| unwilling or unable to derank major sites over this issue.
| jmull wrote:
| RE "...with little or no first-party oversight or
| involvement..." and "...without close oversight or
| involvement of the host site..."
|
| Why do you think there isn't oversight or involvement from
| CNN?
| magic-michael wrote:
| Absolutely, spot on. These publishers aren't just letting
| anyone post. If you actually check, the writers are legit
| experts in their fields.
|
| Take a look at the authors and their LinkedIn profiles--
| they've been covering these topics for years
| dfc wrote:
| Which of these authors have LinkedIn profiles documenting
| their employment history?
| ndiddy wrote:
| For the CNN Underscored Money example, none of the writers
| or editors on the site work for CNN. They're all
| contractors who work for Marketplace, an affiliate
| marketing company. The site is hosted on completely
| separate infrastructure from CNN Underscored, just skinned
| to look similar to it. They even have a different privacy
| policy just for CNN Underscored Money. If CNN had major
| oversight or control of the content on CNN Underscored
| Money, you would think they would host it themselves rather
| than allowing an affiliate marketing company to
| independently operate the category.
| jmull wrote:
| > They're all contractors who work for Marketplace ...
| The site is hosted on completely separate infrastructure
| from CNN Underscored, just skinned to look similar to it.
| They even have a different privacy policy just for CNN
| Underscored Money.
|
| But those things have nothing to do with whether or not
| CNN has involvement and oversight over the CNN
| underscored content.
|
| I have no idea myself, but you certainly can't infer it
| from irrelevant facts.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| > FWIW, I opened "CNN underscored money" and at the top of the
| page it says: "Content is created by CNN Underscored's team of
| editors who work independently from the CNN Newsroom.
|
| You are effectively saying 'what's the big deal if they admit
| it'. The big deal is that _that 's not what they're admitting_.
| CNN Underscored is a separate team within CNN, running an in-
| house content farm, and that's what they're admitting to. CNN
| Underscored Money is an entirely separate company, running a
| third-party content farm, which they are going to lengths to
| _hide_ the separation from CNN Underscored.
|
| Google's TOS permits you to run terrible content farms. It even
| permits you to rehost third-party terrible content farms with
| zero oversight. But it does not allow you to claim this content
| as your own and hide its third-party origin, if you rehost it
| with zero oversight.
| karol wrote:
| Milking old established brands such as Telegraph, Guardian and
| the likes with affiliate and sponsored content has been going on
| for ages in the UK.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Eh, I never considered the Underscored sites to be a part of the
| main site anyway. I just think of them as "Outbrain"-type
| subsites.
|
| This just confirms it.
|
| I feel the title of the blog entry is maybe a bit "extreme," but
| it does show some well-done sleuthing.
|
| Media companies have had to drastically change their business
| models, lately, and this is just another part of it.
| alsance wrote:
| So, what's the big deal? We've seen this same sort of thing
| happen with literally thousands of news media sites over the last
| 10 years.
|
| Seems the real intention here is say that since there are
| affiliate ads and advertorials on the site, the entire site is
| somehow "fake news".
|
| That's quite a stretch.
|
| A fake news site would say something like Covid is "just the
| flu". Or maybe, let's say, endorse lies about an election being
| rigged.
|
| Or focus on new conspiracy theories. Every. Single. Week.
|
| Neither site does anything like that -- No reputable news
| organization would ever do something that irresponsible, right?
|
| That would be fake news.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The only reason to pay any attention to CNN, USA Today or Forbes
| is to understand what's on the minds of the corporate oligarchy
| in the United States. They're just propaganda feeds, the modern
| version of the tin-horn propaganda blared out by speakers
| installed in Red Square in Moscow in the 1970s.
|
| This doesn't mean the stories published are false, or even
| inaccurate - but there's a big negative space in their media
| coverage. E.g. if culture war issues are amplified, but there are
| no stories on industrial policy, infrastructure problems,
| manufacturing job and supply chain analysis - that's deliberate.
| No, it's not 'what the public wants', it's what the owners of
| these media outlets want their readers to be thinking about.
| hereme888 wrote:
| That's why my main source of meaningful news is X.
|
| Just follow a few high quality independent journalists and also
| let the open-source algorithm rank content to show you.
| mylons wrote:
| what if i told you Forbes 30u30 was paid advertising?
| arbuge wrote:
| It's good research but whatever you think about the value of the
| content on those sites, I think the word "fake" in the headline
| is misleading clickbait.
|
| These sites are officially linked to from the parents (CNN and
| USA Today in this case), with whom they no doubt have a revenue-
| sharing agreement. They're very real in all senses of the word.
| The third party in question (Forbes marketplace) is not trying to
| fraudulently set up some parallel CNN and USA Today websites
| without their authorization.
| doodda wrote:
| There are SEO agencies that do this as a model. I know because I
| have been pitched by them.
|
| 1. You run a content website with a strong domain rating. 2. They
| approach you with an offer of creating a subsite (your brand +
| advisor, marketplace, etc) on your domain 3. They write all the
| content and completely manage the subsite - you have 0 risk
| (aside from brand risk) 4. You split the affiliate revenues from
| the subsite 5. The internet is now full of shitty content
| shilling diet pills and google can't figure it out
| ec109685 wrote:
| I am seeing questions about why this is a big deal?
|
| The issue is that CNN is using their domain authority to boost
| this drivel affiliate Money content, and hiding the fact that
| they are doing it by using layer 7 routing to cloak the site. If
| CNN used a subdomain, e.g. money.cnn.com, Google could learn that
| this content should be judged independently from the rest of the
| site.
|
| This money content isn't competing fairly. Google is being
| tricked to think these Money articles should have the same
| inherent authority as other CNN articles.
|
| Where this impacts the consumer is that the first articles for
| popular search terms aren't the best, but instead written by
| content marketers chasing the highest affiliate. This crowds out
| legitimate sites (e.g. in depth reviews of the best mortgage
| lenders) because they can't hope to rank higher than CNN for the
| same term.
|
| At the very least, this "path based" cloaking of content
| authorship should be detectable by Google, but it's a game of
| whack a mole, unfortunately.
|
| I think if you had a human curate the best content written for
| these popular SEO'd search terms, they'd be able to find the
| diamonds from the rough. That gives some hope that algorithms can
| improve to rank the most useful content for readers.
|
| It's also why Reddit is so popular as a source of content in
| Google.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In related news, almost everything you can find through a Google
| search is unmitigated crap. Finding it on Google is an indictment
| of the quality. Back in the day, something like Wikipedia was
| what people dreamed the Internet would be. How naive of us.
|
| I half expect to start seeing new incarnations of things like
| Prodigy or Compuserve spin up, aiming to provide an Internet-
| within-Internet type of experience. Without advertising, purely
| pay-to-play. Sure, a lot of regular people will never pay for
| such a thing, but I bet there are enough of us that will pay for
| good quality content (and shielding from crap) that it could be
| viable. Maybe the 'net gets balkanized and the 'free' part left
| as a wasteland.
|
| (or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man and I should go get a cup of
| coffee and quit my bitching)
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > Finding it on Google is an indictment of the quality. Back in
| the day, something like Wikipedia was what people dreamed the
| Internet would be.
|
| Well there is good news: Wikipedia is still around and it's as
| good as ever.
|
| I share your sentiments about Google results. I've thought
| before about setting myself up a little terminal which denies
| access to everything on the web besides Wikipedia and .edu.
| That's where most of the good stuff online is. (ok, maybe Atlas
| Obscura and Sheldon Brown's bicycle page are allowed too)
| Dotnaught wrote:
| I'd be interested to see whether the Federal Trade Commission
| sees a problem with privacy policies and disclosures varying on
| the same website. I think there's a case to be made that the
| differences in data gathering fall short of informed consent and
| that the unified branding for different entities constitutes
| deceptive advertising.
| silexia wrote:
| CNN became unreliable and started turning out propaganda years
| ago. Monetizing it is just the next step.
| tills13 wrote:
| ok and?
| stevebmark wrote:
| I'm guessing that Forbes Marketplace offers revenue sharing with
| each website they make this deal with, so it's profitable for all
| parties. Is there actually an issue here - legal or ethical or
| deceptive? This seems like business as usual. Is the main
| complaint that the integrity of these news websites is weakened
| by having affiliate marketing? Asking seriously because while no
| one likes ads, I'm trying to understand what the moral/ethical
| implication of this is, if any.
| tootie wrote:
| A large media organization on two tech stacks for the web
| presence is not really evidence of anything. Any large
| organization struggles to maintain cohesive infrastructure.
| Especially if they've acquired sub brands. Or just because
| different editorial teams have different requirements. That's not
| to say CNN money isn't shady but this isn't proof of anything.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Buy placements on another content website is as old as the web
| itself. Not sure what the shock here is.
| bze12 wrote:
| A good article about a somewhat similar scheme by Taboola
| https://www.readmargins.com/p/taboola-outbrain-and-the-chum-...
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