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The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

theatlantic.com

101–110 of 261 posts

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#101

I understand that this is "sponsoderd content" AKA an ad. I have seen "sponsored pages" in newspapers for many years about a lot of crap, is there a reason to consider this one worse than the average? (Yes, scientology is evil but they are not forbidden from making ads I reckon?) edit: the "sponsored" bit is right on top of the page, as it is in dead-tree-form newspapers too.

In newspapers and magazines, sponsored content is very clearly labeled (which arguably this is) and made to look _different_. For example, most magazines require advertorial to be in a different typeface and font size, so that readers have a sense that it's somehow "different." The difficulty here is that, unlike a magazine in which you're flipping pages, you probably only saw _this_ page and thus have no sense about whether it "looks different."

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#102
post #57

UPDATE: Mat Mullen, Disqus employee got a comment past the moderator (maybe he knows someone): This is the weirdest thing I've ever read on the Atlantic. You're actually letting the Church of Scientology sponsor content on your website?

His comment is now gone ... it was by far the most up-voted and I'm a bit shocked that Disqus is in collusion with The Atlantic.

They probably have a contract that Disqus wouldn't want the Atlantic to cancel.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#103
post #26

wasn't The Atlantic a reputable magazine?

Wasn't The Atlantic blacklisted from Reddit a while back for spamming links? [1] So, they're not exactly known for being 'white knights'. In fact, I'm a little surprised that the greater HN community didn't remember this episode.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/reddit-bans-atla...

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#104
I have been one of the biggest submitters of Atlantic links to HN in the past year (and, no, The Atlantic doesn't pay me to post links) and I will now cease submitting Atlantic links. I used to submit a lot of Atlantic links to my Facebook wall too, also never, ever being paid to do so, and I will cease posting Atlantic links there too. And I think I had better write to the editors of The Atlantic, like James Fallows, and tell them why I no longer recommend their publication. I will read The Atlantic from time to time based on recommendations from other readers I trust, but I will not put my own trust on the line to support their business anymore.

AFTER EDIT: For those of you who need to detox after seeing a Scientology puff piece on the Atlantic website, I recommend the Village Voice website, which has an extensive set of articles

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/scientology/

in a humorous but fact-checked manner on the inside story of Scientology.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#105
post #66

The Atlantic editorial team is not involved in the creation of this content. I imagine the editorial team are currently drinking a shit ton of whiskey praying that nobody associates them with this.

Haha ... I think you're probably correct, but I'll bet the writers who show up in the sidebar on the right need something a little stronger.

s/be/bet/

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#108
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…

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.

Re: The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments

#110
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other interesting thing is that it seems to have -1 downvotes. Hax? Or a javascript bug?

Someone is trying to delete downvotes as fast as they can, except more votes are arriving even faster. Stare at the counter for a few minutes, and you'll see the vote count go up and down.

Looks like the comment moderator went on break.
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