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Comment by swang | Hacker News Reader

So they're essentially letting Scientology use The Atlantic's "brand" to trick people into reading this? (Yes, I know it says Sponsored Post)

This, on top of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108929 and http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/06/13/reddit-... makes me pretty weary of trusting anything I read on TheAtlantic ever again

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> makes me pretty weary of trusting anything I read on TheAtlantic ever again

I agree.

It's a shame. Sometimes they have great content. I'd be happy to pay for that content. I even post links to that content in various places. But the sleazy way they submit posts everwhere, and this, and etc, all make me much less likely to pay them anything.

The Atlantic isn't what you think...

http://shameproject.com/?s=atlantic&x=0&y=0

This site reads an awful lot like a bunch of left-wing conspiracy nutters. I don't know if it actually is or not, but that's the impression I get after scanning through it a bit. Not exactly a bastion of journalistic neutrality.

http://shameproject.com/report/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-lif...

I read this a while ago and I looked into it and it's pretty convincing, so the site meshes with me at least.

There's some anger there, but it calls out shills as it sees it. It's not a "left wing conspiracy" if those being targeted are literally being paid to sell a narrative.

Certainly - I'll readily admit that I didn't dig deep enough to form a solid opinion. It was just my impression after a quick scan through several pages. It's also worth noting that I didn't call it a "left wing conspiracy" - I said "left-wing conspiracy nutters", which is quite different!

I can appreciate the desire to call out shills, but if you're going to pin someone to the wall for being biased, it's best to try to do it in as unbiased and neutral a way as possible, IMO. Otherwise, you just end up looking like any other fringe whacko with a bone to pick with the people they don't like.

The facts are ~usually~ pretty good, but I'll cop that the language and phrasing is very preach-to-the-choir unnecessary. That's somewhat The Exiled's shtick, though. I just roll my eyes, they often have interesting things amid the shrillness.

Yeah, their style is off-putting to some at first glance, but the Exiled (and now nsfwcorp.com, where a bunch of exiled contributors continue to write) is pretty solid with the investigative journalism.

I fear what will happen when the market for pure misinformation is fully realized. When it can be delivered as seamlessly as the real thing, the opportunity for profit is massive. The Atlantic is an example of media engineering for profit that fails to trick us -- but it is much closer than sponsored content has been in the past and certainly more effective at getting me to consume it than a regular ad.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but one thing the future holds for us is more of this. Except it will take place in scientific literature, respected publications, maybe in our own homes and (purposefully or not) by the people we know and trust. We'll need a factcheck.org for regular news.

"Sponsor post" is probably as good as we will ever get from The Atlantic.

If you haven't read Stephenson's "Anathem", one of the characters makes a reference to Bogons, false pieces of information inundating the Internet.

There are low-quality bogons (the example given is a file full of gibberish) and high-quality bogons, masquerading as legitimate data but differing in only a few places, and hard to detect as such.

This is definitely a fairly high quality bogon, at first glance.

For a (hopefully) fictional example of how this could already be happening without our knowledge, check out the film "The Joneses". Pretty entertaining film too.

I don't know. Although we are talking tail end of the 90s, there's passing reference in No Logo/The Shock Doctrine (forget which, but think the former) by Naomi Klein to lifestyle marketers that would follow a couple of people in their target demo around without their knowledge.

I found this advertorial (common in newstand rags) to be incredibly informative. First, Scientology is expanding around the world. Second, I thought Scientology was banned in Germany but they opened a Church in Hamburg. Perhaps I'm just ignorant, but that was a surprise to me given their problems in the EU. They have clearly figured out how to "manage" there. Third, politicians from both parties, federal and local officials attended these events. They are becoming more and more "mainstream"

Finally, this expansion and the choice of buildings means they have a lot of money. They also have a very good taste when it comes to architecture (IMO) - they didn't build giant $100M sun temples or edifices, they've found what appear to be amazing examples of local architecture and have adapted it to their purposes.

Would that most "real" editorials were so informative.

Yep, will never read anything from the atlantic again, just added it to my host file.

Thanks for the idea - just added here as well.

For anyone else who wants to do this too:

  theatlantic.com        38.118.71.170

</tongue in cheek>

Isn't that a bit much?

The human tendency to overreact should never be underestimated. The baby and bathwater idiom is not used often enough.

With Scientology's history? Hardly.

Nah, I'd prefer my news sources not report based on who gives the most money. There are plenty of other options.

It would be if this were some kind of isolated case of bad journalism. But in my opinion of the Atlantic (formed well before this debacle) I'd say:

"Isn't that a bit late?"

Not the first time they've published complete horseshit: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-ha...

You have to wonder what it says about a group that they aren't afraid that their potential converts would find it weird that they need to pay for people to say how awesome they are.

Edit: fixed typo

Converts. It took me a minute.

Well, Hubbard flat out said that he should invent a religion in order to get rich long before he wrote Dianetics, so that tells you something about the typical scientology candidate's capacity for deductive reasoning.

The Church denies that though. Actually, the story surrounding that quote is a little murky but I'm sure it's true. I believe James Randi claims to have heard it. Anyway, followers of Scientology have a lot of other crazy stuff about Hubbard to make them weary of it, yet they persist.

Compared to their forced labor camps and harrassment campaigns of their critics, I'd say there are definite better things to focus on than apocryphal (but certainly possible) stories that persuade no one. It may be published in several unauthorized biographies and "vouched for" by a bunch of people who may or may not have even been at the convention, but it might as well be a story overhead in a bar for all it's going to persuade the credulous, who want to believe them with every fiber of their beings.

Logic and fact is needed, not conjecture.

If I were to read something on there ever again, I now feel that I need to first look to see if it is a sponsored story or not every time.

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