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Comment by tjwds | Hacker News Reader

They also have extensive partnerships with certain brands — their homepage currently serves ads disguised as content from a handful of companies.

(I say this as a user of and contributor to Unsplash)

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So ads? I thought it would be something a little more inspired.

Yes. Of the first 7 images 3 are adverts. Then you can scroll down a long way on mobile without any more ads.

That's pretty clever, actually. If you're just browsing, you're not going to hover over every image to see that it's sponsored, but a subtle product placement within that image might not be enough for your brain to recognize it as an ad bait. Not bad...

So that's acceptable? Not having any easily visible marks? I'm surprised to see this sentiment on HN which is so averse to ads of any kind.

Acceptable? That's a frame of reference. Is it widely practiced on the internet, on every social channel? Oh, yeah, it's everywhere. They are not doing anything different, but they are executing the ads rather well.

I am curious how far they are going to grow before they turn the ad machine full throttle, and whether or not that will have a huge adverse effect.

We all kind of know that Instagram is a giant online store for everything, at least it has been for a few years now. Unsplash contributors seem to think that free will last forever. It'd be very interesting to see if they stay or leave.

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