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The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#81

Post by batgaijin »

DanBC2 wrote: post #24
swang wrote: post #18

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

> 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

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#82

Post by sentiental »

swang wrote: post #18

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

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.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mikedmiked wrote: post #30

The current top comment by Matt Mullen is being upvoted at a rate of about 3 votes/second! He appears to work at discus - did he use admin powers to comment on the article? edit: "Tom Cruise • a few seconds ago I paid you for this?! Thats not nearly enough confetti"

[deleted]

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#84

Post by rdl »

This doesn't seem worth the brand damage it causes.

I actually love the Economist "special advertising sections" about countries ("Mongolia: Open for Business", etc.). Those are clearly identified and also not damaging. Maybe Mongolia isn't worthy of 16-32 pages in the Economist on its own, but the content they do publish about it tends to be at least somewhat legitimate. Not sure if that's even possible to do about Scientology.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#87

Post by cheald »

batgaijin wrote: post #81
DanBC2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#88

Post by pavel_lishin »

sentiental wrote: post #82
swang wrote: post #18

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

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 con…

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.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#89

Post by a_bonobo »

joezydeco wrote: post #70
coloneltcb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely Scientology's army of Astro-turfers are working overtime tonight

And Reddit is probably on the case as well...

HN seems to be much more active on this topic, if you check Reddit's posted links here, some links, few votes, few comments yet: http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlanti...

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#90

Post by bicknergseng »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #72
ryguytilidie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.
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