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Teen Vogue published and then deleted an uncritical story about Facebook
- tempsy 7y agoI don't think "fears" is really the right word, and is not part of the original headline... Regardless, sponsored editorial content is one of those icky things that I'm surprised remotely reputable journalistic outlets get into. You're renting out your reputation to those that could use it (e.g. likely not very reputable themselves and thus can easily drag you down). How much does an article like this go for? Six-figure range? It just seems like the monetary reward doesn't make up for the possible damage to your perceived journalistic integrity.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoSix figures? My guess is in the low thousands -- if that. Teen Vogue is not that big of a website -- according to SimilarWeb it gets 4M visits every six months, which is less than ~22k visits a day. A reasonable CPC for native content is under 10 cents. Assuming a 5% CTR (high), that's 1k clicks, for ~$100. A reasonable CPM is also under 10 cents. That comes in at ~$200. News articles don't stay on the front page very long. It's amazing and pathetic how willing companies are to throw their reputation into the ground for almost no money.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tempsy 7y agoThe math is different when a company is paying for it. It's not the same economics as a random ad that shows up on the page.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoI know. They overpay for stuff like this. But in the order of 10s, not thousands. The point was, the OP guessed six figures. I was trying to make it clear that I can't imagine this being above the low four figures.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tempsy 7y agothis is dumb, but I don't think vogue is that dumb. for < $10k many individuals and corporations seeking to wash their reputation by pumping "fake news" could afford it, and if that were true you'd see a lot more of this. I can't imagine it would be that cheap.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIt might cost more than $10,000 to publish something like this, but not all of that money goes to the venue. Just because Teen Vogue didn't have to write it doesn't mean nobody had to write it.
- gowld 7y agoWe do see a lot more of this. In all the papers all the time. Usually it's free (except for salaries of PR people) because the propaganda victims pay for it with their monetized eyeballs.
- downerending 7y ago> and is not part of the original headline... These days, how can we even know?
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago>TeenVogue > surprised remotely reputable journalistic outlets get into Not seeing it. Edit: blind defense of a very biased site in an article showing they are literally shilling for Facebook... Ok.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoTeenVogue has done some of the best political and cultural reporting over the last few years. Teenage girls these days apparently care very deeply about the issues that matter. Today's scandal was surprising to me.
- makomk 7y agoTo be more accurate, Teen Vogue has done some of the most consistently and aggressively anti-Trump political and cultural reporting over the last few years. (They've gained quite a following online for it.) Which is why this caught people's attention in the first place - it's pretty much the exact diametrical opposite of that. A soft-pedalled fluff piece like this about women in tech doing important and powerful things would be right on brand for Teen Vogue's traditional role as a magazine for teenage girls, but that's not their audience anymore. For additional context, a lot of the folks who like Teen Vogue respect the New York Times less despite their investigative reporting because they're just not anti-Trump enough. In particular, there's a lot of resentment online over them pushing back against that bizarre conspiracy thoery about Trump's DNS-based secret communication channel with Russia that was obviously nothing of the sort. Not even particularly strongly - they just responded to an incredibly viral tweet by Clinton's campaign demanding the FBI investigate it by reporting that they already did and concluded all the evidence pointed to it just being ordinary mailservers processing ordinary hotel mass marketing emails - but that was enough.
- Jamwinner 7y agoDo you have any examples? I picked one up and saw ads, some soft-hitting feelgood near-politics, and some social justice stuff, but nothing of any substance. It looked like what it was... a medium for serving ads to little girls.
- Alex3917 7y ago> How much does an article like this go for? Six-figure range? Anywhere between $800 and $5,000. Most of these articles aren't written by the company paying the magazine, but rather the company hiring a firm to pay off one of the hundreds of people who has publishing access to the magazine's CMS.
- tempsy 7y agodo you have data? a source? for that price nearly any individual in the world could "publish" an article on a major news outlet and make it look like it was written by the editorial staff. this was a dumb move by vogue, but I hardly believe they were paid off for a few hundred dollars by a $500B company and ok with that.
- deogeo 7y ago> this was a dumb move by vogue No. This was a dumb move by Advance Publications, who owns Teen Vogue. If companies want the benefits of owning half the market, then let them share the stink of their corruption as well.
- notatoad 7y agoi get what you're trying to say here, the parent company deserves blame, but ultimately those parent companies are only worth what their brands are worth. The reason they have generic and forgettable names like "Advance Publications" is so they can absorb the stink of corruption without it tainting their consumer-facing brands. Putting the blame on a recognizable and valuable brand instead of a faceless parent company is the better way to get accountability. If you really want to spread the blame around, you can mention that it's the owner of Reddit and the parent company of Ars Technica, Wired and The New Yorker as well as Teen Vogue.
- deogeo 7y agoYou're right, I phrased myself poorly. Putting the blame also on all their subsidiaries, as you suggest, is what I meant.
- dang 7y agoThe submitted title was "Teen Vogue story on Facebook prompts sponsored content fears, vanishes". That was a decent attempt to squeeze the title down to HN's 80 char limit, but we've replaced it with the article's first subheading, which seems more factual and neutral.
- JohnFen 7y ago> I'm surprised remotely reputable journalistic outlets get into. They don't. They may have been reputable before they do this sort of thing, but that reputation is toast once they sell out.
- FisDugthop 7y agoWhat's really galling is not the apologetics for spreading genocide and hate, but the venue in which the editorial was published. Teenagers are having their reality distorted by Facebook.
- smabie 7y agoJust like HN, no?
- FisDugthop 7y agoI would like to think that people are not using HN to actively support the genocide in Myanmar, and there doesn't seem to be evidence to support that position. I cannot easily claim that Facebook is as guilt-free. [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Rohingya_persecution_in_Myanmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Rohingya_persecution_in_M... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-un/myanmar-generals-had-genocidal-intent-against-rohingya-must-face-justice-u-n-idUSKCN1LC0KN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-un/myanm...
- madcow2011 7y ago"Literally IDK" snicker I got a kick out of that response.
- rchaud 7y agoIs it possible that it was an A/B test with one variant showing the "sponsored content" byline, and the other hiding it? I'm remembering the Stanford study in 2016 that showed 4 out of 5 middle school students weren't able to distinguish sponsored content from the publication's own content. Maybe an enterprising Teen Vogue marketer decided to push that number up to 5 out of 5. https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-students-have-trouble-judging-credibility-information-online https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-stude...
- jashkenas 7y agoTwitter thread about the mislabeling/misattribution/removal, for context: https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1214957104206876672 https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1214957104206876672 Mashable story tracking the takedown and statements by Teen Vogue: https://mashable.com/article/facebook-teen-vogue-sponsored-content-election-integrity/ https://mashable.com/article/facebook-teen-vogue-sponsored-c... Update: Sadly, it looks like the Internet Archive copy has now turned into a 404. Mods should probably replace this link with the Mashable writeup above instead.
- dang 7y ago(This comment was posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996263 and merged hither along with the rest of that thread.)
- hnaccy 7y agohttps://archive.is/8J1qB https://archive.is/8J1qB Since Internet Archive chucked it in memory hole.
- Thorrez 7y agoThe Internet Archive is working for me: https://web.archive.org/web/20200108170304/https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-facebook-is-helping-ensure-the-integrity-of-the-2020-election https://web.archive.org/web/20200108170304/https://www.teenv...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mirimir 7y agoPlease see my post in the other thread about how TFA images fared on the Internet Archiv. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998463
- throwaway365924 7y ago
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoLooks like somebody accidentally hit the "make visible to the entire planet" button on Teen Vogue's CMS instead of the "make visible to just Lauren so she can edit it and submit it to her editor". That's the way submarine articles are written and the way a CMS works these days, no surprise to most of the people here I assume, but I still find it surprising that CMS vendors sell systems that have minimal friction required to publish something. You don't quite need an air-gapped multi-key cryptographically secure system, but a few checks by various parties that articles have been copy-edited, fact-checked, verified for browser support and accessibility, and approved by an editor would seem to alleviate a lot of embarrassing publication errors.
- mirimir 7y agoWordpress can be like that.
- reilly3000 7y agoIndeed it can, but there are plenty of ways to bolt on an approval workflow. I would be genuinely shocked if a large publisher didn’t have such controls. No this was a sponsored piece that somebody sold to Facebook. This happens all the time, but Facebook’s PR activities are now under scrutiny.
- tempsy 7y agoThe problem with the "it's Teen Vogue's fault for fat fingering the publication" is that Sheryl Sandberg immediately shared the article on her personal Facebook page. I mean, are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company (PR/comms falls under her leadership) that it was "mistakenly" published and was organic content (in which case she should've known as well as they had access to FB employees with pictures inside the office). Mistake or not, FB leadership clearly cheer led it's publication, and then walked back and claimed they had no idea this was sponsored, and only in the last hour or so said it was a "mistake" to deny it was sponsored.
- tmpz22 7y ago
- mirimir 7y agoAnyone have the actual content? Just curious.
- casefields 7y agohttps://archive.is/8J1qB https://archive.is/8J1qB
- minimaxir 7y ago> Newest in teenvoguegate: Facebook sponcon was supposed to be sponcon: “We had a paid partnership with Teen Vogue related to their women’s summit, which included sponsored content. Our team understood this story was purely editorial, but there was a misunderstanding.” - FB spox https://twitter.com/pkafka/status/1215034900375433216 https://twitter.com/pkafka/status/1215034900375433216
- CaptainZapp 7y agoWhenever a FB spokes drone, or senior manager opens their mouth they lie. That, at least, is my take.
- sincerely 7y agoReminder that only something like 10% of Teen Vogue’s leadership is under 20 years old
- jyrkesh 7y agoI'm assuming you mean *readership rather than leadership? It would be kinda weird if they had even 10% teens as their execs. But yes, I've also heard it's a bunch of creepy older folks
- somebodythere 7y agoCreepy by virtue of being older than 20?
- jyrkesh 7y agoBy virtue of 96% being older than 24? For a magazine called Teen Vogue that's about dating tips and makeup advice for teenagers. Yeah. While it's not exactly an unbiased source, Wikipedia trusts this citation enough... https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/teen-vogue-promotes-prostitution-to-an-audience-of-minors-and-thats-not-even-its-biggest-problem https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/teen-vogue-promot...
- sincerely 7y agoLol yes I did mean readership. Typed that on my phone, appreciate the correction
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stefan_ 7y agoThe middle aged social media marketing person, responding in the faux speech of a 14 year old to shrug it all off: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENxrpCCX0AATVYd.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENxrpCCX0AATVYd.png:large
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.md/i4iuG http://archive.md/i4iuG
- deogeo 7y agoSuppose the story was marked as sponsored content - what is Facebook's motivation for publishing it in Teen Vogue? Presumably Facebook shouldn't have trouble reaching people. The only sensible explanation is that they had hoped the 'sponsored content' tag would go unnoticed, so that readers would mistakenly attribute the story to Teen Vogue. No matter how you look at it, the aim was deception.
- jrochkind1 7y agoThat various people at both Teen Vogue and Facebook don't even know if it was sponsored content or not (and in some cases thought they did) says a lot all on it's own.
- casefields 7y agoNo. The issue is they all weren't sure how much truth to admit to, until it went up the chain of command. Decisions like this are hard when you have a web of deceit to navigate.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoNot surprised that Facebook initially denied it. Planting news stories covertly has been part Facebook's PR playbook since the beginning. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-lies-2011-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-lies-2011-5 https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612424/facebook-is-being-accused-of-hiring-a-pr-firm-to-smear-its-opponents/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612424/facebook-is-being-...
- JohnFen 7y agoYep. I assume that any "news" story that fawns over Facebook is a PR plant.
- leftyted 7y ago> Facebook spokesperson Lisa Stratton said: "This piece is purely editorial. We pitched this to Teen Vogue and worked with their team on the piece over the past few months." (Companies' communication teams will sometimes pitch news outlets on possible stories, in the same way news outlets will reach out to companies to ask for interviews and access, and it's not a sign of a financial relationship or underhand behaviour.) Maybe I'm naive but the idea that Facebook (or whatever company) is "pitching possible stories" to news outlets seems bizarre to me.
- mox1 7y agoWell if it makes you feel any better, most large corps do this, especially brand conscious ones. If they have a public relations department, they are pitching stories like this.
- susijdjdjxa 7y agoThink about how when an announcement is made, a bunch of detailed news stories drop at the same moment. This is pre-arranged. Companies employ PR professionals (or contract with PR firms) who have relationships with news outlets and they pitch stories via those relationships. The news outlet does need to be careful about whether to take these stories at face value if it has a reputation to protect. It also goes for politicians, sports teams, all sorts of entities who care about public relations.
- jimhi 7y agoI will let you in on a secret then, this is how 1/3 of stories work. I have gotten such stories written about my companies. These writers are under constant pressure to churn out stories and welcome someone doing most of the work for them. Here is a general rule of thumb when reading an article. If what you are reading is not news, you are being marketed to.
- shard972 7y agoPeople are amazed when they talk to a retired journalist for the first time to discover what the job actually entails. That combined with the current media landscape being decimated and the ads that holds it all up constantly facing pressure its more amazing people still buy the idea that most journalists are some kind of freedom fighting saints. At the very least, the idea that they would be mostly occupying the pages of established media outlets as opposed to independents.
- RickJWagner 7y agoOutside my circle, but it just strikes me odd that Teen Vogue would have an article of this type. Shouldn't Teen Vogue be about teenage fashion stuff? Isn't Facebook the 'old people' platform? Would real teens care?
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Shouldn't Teen Vogue be about teenage fashion stuff? Isn't Facebook the 'old people' platform? Would real teens care? Teen Vogue has been noted (quantitatively, and in some circles qualitatively as well) for its social and political coverage for several years. Yes, real teens care.
- astura 7y agoThe fashion stuff stopped selling so they pivoted to include more political content, which found success. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/teen-vogue-politics/510374/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/te...
- umeshunni 7y agoTo get with the times, Teen Vogue recently pivoted from fashion to wokeness.
- dragonwriter 7y agoIs it a pivot, or is wokeness an element of fashion in the demographic it targets?
- Jamwinner 7y agoBingo. Even the fashion is a signaling medium for wokeness now.
- gowld 7y agoWomen's careers are interesting to teen girls. This was a "women in business" puff piece.
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- tus88 7y ago> But Teen Vogue then added a note saying it was sponsored content, before removing it again. A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider it wasn’t sponsored content, then finally admitted it was. Did they let interns run the PR department for a day?
- theFeller00 7y agoWhat about their fantastic guide for teen anal sex? A really terrific read!