Facebook has accrued great power, but when faced with taking responsibility for any of that power has simply shrugged its shoulders. The same goes for Google.
It has nothing to do with the validity of the article. This is a "character assassination" because of singling Facebook out. I understand putting Facebook in the headline will get you clicks right now, but why not paint a more full picture?
> Google banned Voluum over cloaking concerns, but that didn’t derail the company—Facebook was where the action was.
vs.
> It’s not just affiliates who think Gryn is at the pinnacle of the industry. In June, just before the conference, Facebook’s newly installed executive in charge of fighting shady ads, Rob Leathern, had invited him to the company’s London office to explain the latest affiliate tricks.
This feels like responding "Of course Harvey Weinstein's been creepy to young women, people has been saying he's creepy for years."...
Don't underestimate how well this works for the traditional media. It both help undermine one of their biggest competitors and it creates traffic by keep sensationalizing what is really completely normal practice and have been for as long as there have been advertising.
Shady advertisers, pollute... those aren't the media reporting thats the media shaming what they themselves do all the time.
Yes, the old media are being hypocrites and are seemingly dragging their big rivals down with them.
For the standpoint of the average person with no financial investments in these companies, why is this so problematic?
Of course, a lot of these articles are going to be good old fashioned self-serving opportunism, but another possibility might be behind the scenes coordination. Impossible? Has there ever been a coordinated propaganda initiative in the history of the world?
A coordinated propaganda campaign rarely has anything to do with the underlying business of the various media outlets being used to run it.