The nepotistic linker

I don't think it's bad per se, but many of these online "content sites" really overdo it, I assume to keep people on the site, or perhaps out of some kind of internal-link SEO black magic. Some of the links are even auto-generated, not inserted because the article author genuinely thought they were relevant.

A different version of the debate comes up in academic paper citations. Of course, some of your own previous papers, or those of your friends and collaborators, are likely to be relevant, since you often build on that work. But if 50% of your citations to are to papers by yourself and a small clique, some of them related only by a stretch, then reviewers may start asking if you're really citing the most relevant papers in your bibliography, or have some kind of ulterior motive to give more attention to your own work and less to others' work (or are even trying to game impact factors).