Right-Wing Websites Scam Loyal Followers with Phony Celebrity Pitches
propublica.org
propublica.org
Maybe scam websites and charities find it easier to get money from people who aren't apathetic.
And then we need to deal with the long-standing left-bias problem of reality.
They go into the history of the technology used to build these customer databases and exploit them.
> The lists got bigger, the technology better (“Where are my names?” he nervously asked, studying the surface of the first computer tape containing his trove): twenty-five million names by 1980, destination for some one hundred million mail pieces a year
What's amusing from today's perspective is that it spends quite a lot of time in the intro pointing out how blatant a liar Mitt Romney was. Which of course seems quaint to us all now after Trump.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
> The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.
Welcome to politics.
Seriously though, I never understood this right vs left wing fight in US. It baffles me how common problems such as affordability crisis in a lot of big north easter and west coast cities (where most jobs are concentrated) and ballooning cost of healthcare and education are almost never at the spotlight. It’s as if it’s designed this way to keep the public consumed in these fights that would almost never going to improve the quality of their lives.
It's literally about ads that make false claims. "But there was no such dispute. Winfrey’s quote was fake, and her name and likeness were used without permission. The product, a low-dose, cannabis-derived gummy supplement, does not treat dementia, let alone reverse it."
Who are finding these “ pro publica studies” and who benefits? How does your average person in HN who is prone to have issues from student loan debt, rising healthcare costs, or cost of living going to benefit from these?
Definitely the people being tricked into buying gummies would benefit from knowing they don't work and that they shouldn't spend money on them would benefit.
Not every post needs to be solving world cancer. Plus the point of HN is entertainment.
I don’t know about propublica but Media tends to underestimate how flimsy the thread where the balance is hanging for the social order while being busy covering these right vs left bullshit. As recent riots in France and other places show, it’s rather thin.
It's a worthwhile question and I would answer this way. Where most national news desks all run the same 7 headlines, ProPublica tends to bring more new topics to the table. This particular topic isn't novel; just less covered.
I have a positive example of PP reporting; you might appreciate it. An early PP story reported on how campaign ads heavily fund news orgs covering elections. It seems a significant conflict of interest and it's gotten little discussion before or since.
When news orgs were first forced to be transparent about campaign ad buys, most outlets released the data in pdf images to hamper tracking of ad buy dollars. PP setup a site to crowdsource (I was one) converting those PDFs to data. The data got converted and the ad buys got released as intended.
Biden has made some good attempts at rebuilding government infrastructure and restoring environmental policy and gets an E for effort at student loan debt, but he's still pro cop, pro military, supports business over labor, and buys into the myth of American exceptionalism too much to be considered "leftist."
Even AOC seems like more smoke than fire lately.
When the D behind a politician's name is expanded is usually expanded as Democrat, not as Democratic.
It is.
> Or is it like some kind of natural law that scams are evenly distributed?
But it's also close to a natural law that it's practically impossible to have an even-handed comparison, because the incentives to be biased to one side or the are too hard to resist. That bias often manifests itself as selective attention (e.g. invest time to uncover and report embarrassing true facts about one side, but invest much less time doing that to the other side). Other times it manifests as selective presentation (e.g. when side A does it, it's presented as a massive scandal; but when site B does it, it's presented as much less of a problem).
I think it's true that there's an uptick in deceptive ads. It's also true that rw media has a history of running more questionable ads.
This last bit used to frustrate me a lot. AM radio fare was well supported by selling products that ranged from overpriced (Bose wave radio) to outright scams (Enzyte). Even local advertisers sold services where the only standout attribute was the cost.
And the ads worked. One friend of mine had every product advertised on our talk radio station. For what it's worth, he had ALS and buying that stuff made him happy. Who am I to complain.