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Comment by gen220 | Hacker News Reader

Most "news" in the tech industry is funded by VCs, if you follow the money.

It's not a terrible fact, but it's one to be aware of. All the `"X Technology" [that Y VC firm has recently raised $4Bn of capital to chase, cough cough] has massive potential to upend [big industry], here's why` articles are compensated-for boosterism.

There's still signal in there, although it's mostly in the meta-facts of what they choose to talk about and what they choose not to talk about.

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When you compare the press coverage of "X VC-backed startup with product A" to "Y bootstrapped startup with product A," it's sort of evident how corrupt startup media actually is. Taking it at face value is not usually a good idea.

There's only so much money you can make off of banner ads and at a certain point native advertisements are way more lucrative. I wonder how they get around disclosure requirements but I guess it's probably because the articles are never directly funded but there's some other form of compensation in the backend.

Tom Scott made an interesting video about internet advertising regulations a while back. [1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-x8DYTOv7w

"Traditional" media makes a bulk of their income from things they remain silent on.

Thypicaly, there are "majority advertisers". Their [combined] advertising spend is itself negotiating power, which typically includes PR fluff articles for agencies.

On top of that, PR agency gives instructions what to write and organizes utterly expensive ads from unrelated entities. Everytime you see an article that screams "that's an ad" or is disclosed as such, well... It is most likely payment for something else.

What is native advertising?

I wasn't familiar with the term, either, but it's in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

This becomes very obvious when you turn up to a conference and half the talks are by developer advocates running you through their product.

It extends beyond the tech industry.

https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Thanks for the link. This hasn't aged too well (for parts), PR has taken over most of the internet too, bloggers have become "influencers".

Just switch YouTubers and Instagram models for bloggers. His point is that everything is advertising

I'm about as interested in Andreesan's take on company's they own/copmete-with as I am in Zuck's take on apple vision pro.

Zuckerberg’s take on Vision Pro was pretty interesting

Zuck's take on the Apple Vision Pro is mostly aligned with my own (disinterested) take, having tried both the Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.

This shouldn't be a surprise to any of us here on news.ycombinator.com.

why not. verve has revenue in the millions, and can move private market perception by millions so there's both desperation and incentives

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