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Comment by fortythirteen | Hacker News Reader

> No, it called public interest journalism.

There is little to no "public interest journalism" anymore, only click interest journalism.

> You can not have a character assassination on a corporation.

This is metaphor for the pattern of behavior. They are taking the same methods they use for the news cycle's "horrible person of the week" and turning it on Facebook.

> I'm more disturbed by your labeling something as "propaganda"

Considering the media's hyper focus on how the RNC used FB with the CA story, and an almost complete omission of how the DNC did the same thing, and more, with CTR, I'm comfortable sticking with "propaganda".

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>"There is little to no "public interest journalism" anymore, only click interest journalism."

What an incredibly uninformed and naive statement to make. Just because inferior sources of something are abundant does not mean that quality alternatives don't exist. This is as absurd as drawing the conclusion that fine dining doesn't exist any more and pointing to the prevalence of fast food restaurants as evidence of this.

There is no shortage of quality public interest journalism or entities committed to it. Here are some examples - The Marshall Project, First Look Media and ProPublica.

>"Considering the media's hyper focus on how the RNC used FB with the CA story, ..."

There was no mention of the RNC in the news piece being discussed here.

if the article had done minimal research, they would have included taboola, which is the affiliate scam of news publishers. the fact that they didn't hint that this thread assumptions are correct, and you are being slightly naive

So a 3,500 word piece that written over a 6 month period is suspect because a single vendor was omitted from the piece during? Right. It sounds like you definitely naive about both how the editorial process and how journalism works.

6mo and missed something under their nose that plays a huge part on the topic... but I now know the scammer latest diet at least :(

So anything which doesn't fit your prescribed narrative is bad journalism? That seems like you have a disagreement with external realities. I heard they make pills for that now.

You don't get a free pass on hosting deceptive ads because your platform is automated. Just like you don't get a free pass on any other crime by automating it. Further, when it's clear your staff is very aware of the illegal practice and is encouraging it by taking meetings with the people committing the crime, that removes any defense that the behavior is incidental to legal behavior.

But yes, clearly this is all just a character assassination planned by the lizard people. Definitely the only reason at play here.

> There is little to no "public interest journalism" anymore, only click interest journalism.

What was wrong with this piece? I thought it was well-researched and, speaking as someone with little knowledge of digital advertising, pretty fascinating.

The author was pretty clear that this isn't Facebook's problem entirely; he was just as hard (if not harder) on the affiliate-side guys who are running the scam. He just noted that FB didn't mind the fraudulent ads as much about 5 years ago, which seems like a fair point to include.

>"What was wrong with this piece? I thought it was well-researched and, speaking as someone with little knowledge of digital advertising, pretty fascinating."

Indeed it was just under 3,500 words, the journalist also conducted two separate interviews with the main subject Mr Gryn. And those interview took place in both Berlin and Santa Monica, CA. That would be considerable effort to put forth for both journalist and publisher for "click bait."

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