The viewers are not the customers. They never were. If any money is made off of them, it is pure gravy.
edit: And that I'm being grayed-out this quickly tells me there will be an exposé in the next month or so--verifying my original comment.
But hey, nice job putting words in my mouth.
As for evidence, you also have bing and google. There’s no shortage of it.
On Hacker News, presenting speculative claims without evidence to back them is unpopular, yes. I have desire to put words in your mouth, but I felt that there wasn't all that many ways to interpret a downvoting ring and an exposé you say this points towards.
To respond to your additional edit: presenting your claims and telling me to search online for evidence to support it…is not helping your point, nor is it really what I meant when I asked for you to support your claims.
But I'm not a journalist, and I'm not going to scrounge through all of my books for a post that's probably going to get flagged and removed anyway. I'm sure the good journalists will eventually pick up the slack. There's bound to be another Robert Caro out there for this generation. We just have to wait and see.
It's not quite obvious. Payment processors won't work with it because of its high rates of chargebacks and other messiness, advertisers don't want their products next to that content; not sure what you mean by "logistics" or what this has to do with organized crime.
IMO, you're being downvoted not because of the position you're taking, but for being coy about clearly explaining your theory.
For nearly every time I’ve been accused of bullshit, vindication is right around the corner.
You can be upvoted on HN for pretty out-there theories, but you have to actually make a good case. Talking vaguely about a conspiracy and telling people to google things will get you downvoted.