Affiliate marketing has destroyed tech journalism | Hacker News Reader

Affiliate marketing has destroyed tech journalism

theverge.com

5 pointsbsanr8 comments

The earnings from Black Friday/Cyber Monday help fund tech journalism, as deep tech journalism has much lower ROI.

They're ads that aren't clearly identified as ads, and they've covered most of the frontpage. That's not journalism, and if any major newspaper did this, it would be outrageous.

They aren't ads, and sponsored articles on most media sites do have the required Sponsored disclaimer.

Each article also has the necessary FTC disclosure:

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Every major newspaper does do affiliate marketing, albeit to a lesser degree since they make their revenue via subscriptions/paywalls.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-gifts-sold-out-before-the-... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/technology/personaltech/b...

Let's then say that advertising has destroyed content altogether. But this is not so. Marketing supports any content and vice versa. There are many partner networks offering different types of verticals. For example, Smart Link https://traffcore.com/ with verticals offers access to exclusive trading platforms for daily cryptocurrency payments and lotteries. These include bitcoin wallets, crypto exchanges, cryptocurrency-related software, and much more!

The link is just to The Verge's home page because I think it speaks for itself, at least as of posting on the Saturday after Black Friday 2021.

This is a case where linking to the Internet Archive's copy of today's site would be more appropriate.

Future visitors will see the Verge homepage, but not the content on it right now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211127163540/https://www.theve...

That said, HN doesn't accept editorialised headlines. A short blog post, or heck, even a Tweet, would be a more solid basis for a submission, and you'd get to choose your own appropriate and descriptive title. (Keep it under 80 characters to fit HN submissions.)

Thanks I thought this was a Verge article and was surprised to find the link led to the home page and couldn't figure out what it was all about.

So if I'm understanding this right: OP actually posted a link to the Verge home page during Black Friday to showcase how "Affiliate marketing has destroyed tech journalism". But there was never an article on this topic?

Shouldn't it be titled "Show HN" or "Tell HN" then? Because the title and link were so confusing and I wouldn't have figured it out without this helpful comment.

Yes, it could (and would better have been) a Show/Tell post. Probalby the latter.

As I suggested above, an external reference, probably with a screencap of the page itself, would have made for a far better submission.

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