15 ms·

CNN and USA Today have fake websites, I believe Forbes Marketplace runs them

760 points by greg_V 2y ago

ethagknight 2y ago
Interesting find, serious question: does it matter?
- belter 2y ago
  Indeed.It's a nice effort...but specially for these two organizations, is a bit like taking a sinking ship and before it disappears underwater...Deciding to set it on fire...:-)
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Yes I’d be disturbed if my news source was run by Forbes Marketplace. But it would explain a lot.
  - mpalczewski 2y ago
    Propaganda source
- stackghost 2y ago
  Monoculture in journalism definitely matters. News media has a profound ability to shape and direct the discourse in society writ large, and the slow consolidation of news media in some countries is extremely problematic because it enables private individuals to exert undue influence in pursuit of their agenda that may or may not be at odds with the public interest. In Canada, for example, it's hard to throw a stone and not hit a foreign-owned PostMedia news outlet.
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    > slow consolidation Move slow, break countries.
  - VancouverMan 2y ago
    I don't particularly care who owns such outlets. What matters to me is the validity of the content being produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible reporting, that's fine with me. When I consider events or situations I've had direct knowledge of, or where I've had access to direct witness accounts and raw footage that I trust, some of the worst reporting in my opinion has been from CBC News. With CBC being a Crown corporation, CBC News could perhaps be considered the most inherently "Canadian-owned" of the mainstream news outlets. On the other hand, for such situations, I've generally found reporting from Postmedia's various outlets to be among the most accurate, complete, and objective of that from the mainstream outlets, even if it may be considered foreign-owned.
    - stackghost 2y ago
      >What matters to me is the validity of the content being produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible reporting, that's fine with me. As we've seen time and time again, the content produced is only "valid" if your personal interests happen to align with those of Rupert Murdoch, or whomever. CBC definitely has its own problems but being beholden to the biases of the billionaire class isn't one of them.
- afavour 2y ago
  IMO it does. It’s reflective of these news organizations not caring about their brand reputations and instead just looking at the $$$. Having an entirely separate staff, with a separate website, publish content under your name without your input ought to be a five alarm fire for editorial staff. But there’s some affiliate cash up for grabs so some senior exec somewhere okayed it. There’s a tech angle here too: if it weren’t for SEO they might we’ll be operating out of cnnunderscore.com or whatever, but the SEO juice of a page on cnn.com is too tempting to pass up.
  - azemetre 2y ago
    Doesn't Google also punish small sites that do similar things? Like if I made a site that was sincere as an individual where I review kitchen utensils where I add affiliate links I'd be penalized, but the larger established domains are allowed to do the same thing without Google punishing them?
    - greg_V 2y ago
      Bingo. All the small shops who were doing actual reviews got wiped out, and this blog is basically documenting the new age of parasite spam eating the web and raking in millions.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Online reviews are completely gamed IMO. My wife still looks at them, talks about the "highly rated" stuff she finds, and I tell her it's all fake she doesn't believe it.
        rightbyte 2y ago
        I have been telling my mum the same thing and she don't listen. Googling for reviews used to work very well to like 3-10 years ago. I don't speak English nativly, and I suspect that it worked better in my native tongue for way longer then English. It is like it takes time for it to sink in for people, when they are trusting a process or institution. I wanted to buy a ultra-sonic cleaner for my garage/workshop. I need it to clean out parts. I searched for reviews on Youtube, and I noticed that the big "ultrasonic cleaner on Amazon" manufacturer Vev[*123]or seem to more or less have donated a cleaner to about every workshop genre Youtuber in the last 1 to 3 years. Or paid them to shill. Dunno. I mean I was flabbergasted to the extent of the manipulation. I didn't think it was this bad. And I did end up buying their cleaner ... *123 I just don't wanted to SEO help them.
- bityard 2y ago
  From what I'm to gather by reading Part One, the author runs his own affiliate link SEO sites and is mad that big-name brands are doing it better by leveraging business deals and brand recognition.
  - simmonmt 2y ago
    Great. So he's well-motivated to dig up and publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans from Forbes etc al, and he knows where to look. If he wasn't going to investigate this, who would? CNN? USA Today?
    - w0m 2y ago
      > publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans It's disclosed on a banner across the top of literally every cnn-uncensored page that's being 'outed' here. He could have saved the entire research/dig by simply screenshotting the top of any of the pages. That wouldn't have the same energy or 'Ahah!' though.
- concordDance 2y ago
  It matters because we consider them reliable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... Wikipedia is the most reliable source of news/perspective on issued but it can get contaminated if entities given the "reliable sources" label republish unreliable or biased dreck.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ethagknight 2y ago
  I am absolutely shocked to read the replies from everyone thinking "journalistic integrity" was a thing practiced by American Media. Clearly, everyone runs the same stories, same soundbites, same focuses. How could one think "the news" nationwide across 1000s of different outlets just happened to hone in on the same dozen-or-so topics on a daily basis.
lupire 2y ago
So? Every news site has advertising sections https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/about https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/about "Content is created by CNN Underscored’s team of editors who work independently from the CNN newsroom. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission."
- w0m 2y ago
  Yea... I think I'm failing to understand the Gotcha here. If you go to underscored main page; It's disclosed in a banner across the top of every underscored page. I agree them functionally selling ad-space is annoying; but it's also exposed in clear text as such at the top of every underscored page and article. Giant nothingburger.
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    I disagree that this is a nothingburger. I would say it's more like the side of fries you get with your nothingburger. It's an expose showing how deep the rabbit hole goes on this one topic, a reminder that people with money are using their money to make more money by taking control of the internet, to keep all eyes on them, to lie, cheat, manipulate, and inveigle their way into your eyeballs by any means necessary, and that they will continue to do so as long as there is a penny to be made by it. It shows that Google is implicitly permitting this system of deception, that there is a financial conglomerate that is eviscerating the corpse of a once-proud financial giant like FORBES in order to wear its skin and work its mouth like a Muppet advertising face creams and cockroach repellents. If you're not viscerally affected by this inhuman grotesquery, you are made of sterner stuff than I. It's appalling and a powerful metaphorical reminder of our individual insignificance against the power of money, how nothing is sacred, and nothing is safe and sane on the internet.
    - w0m 2y ago
      Your statement is that that ad space is 'viscerally inhuman grotesquery'. Like... Where have you lived for the last 100 years? I do agree Google should punish clear paid advertising in ranking though; that is a clear problem. Maybe because of this article, but the sample queries from the article now show the underscored links on page 5, so it seems 'fixed' now at least.
hedora 2y ago
I noticed a steep dive in CNN news quality post acquisition. (Around when they fired a bunch of reporters people for claiming Trump lost in 2020 instead of hedging their statements). Anyway, I’m not surprised. As far as I’m concerned they’re already out of business (just like National Geographic, which currently employs zero staff writers).
- drpossum 2y ago
  CNN has been in decline since they started. ca 2000 their content was a shocking amount of what we call clickbait now with the wording and often misrepresentation we've come to expect. They've surprisingly improved but I abandoned them over 20 years ago as anything I consume because of it.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Their TV network has always been terrible, but in the early teens, their website seemed reasonably well run. I wouldn’t seek it out, but it wasn’t on my short list of sites to avoid in news aggregators and HN like it is today. (I’ve never heard of the reporters they fired for being too liberal, but that event marked a sharp change in their strategy, where they said they wanted to target Fox News and Newsmax fans, and that they were changing their reporting standards to cater to those audiences.)
- westcort 2y ago
  https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020 https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
- sutra_on 2y ago
  The steep dive in quality of the mainstream media started with the invention of the 24-hour news cycle. Focus shifted from quality to quantity.
jefb 2y ago
Nice bit of sleuthing here, well done. Anyone know where those search traffic graphics are made from?
- greg_V 2y ago
  ahrefs by the looks of it
suyash 2y ago
What can you expect from main stream media? It's mostly either propaganda or commercials wrapped up as new stories.
- calimoro78 2y ago
  Welcome giant sweeping generalizations that are unsupported by data nor stringent arguments.
  - seivan 2y ago
    [dead]
- tdb7893 2y ago
  Where do you think people should get news? Most of the non-mainstream news is somehow worse and finding knowledgeable direct sources isn't really practical for people.
  - suyash 2y ago
    YouTube - tons of YouTubers who are independent, X - raw, fast, first hand news, Not saying don't go to mainstream news, just know the bias they may have.
    - wredue 2y ago
      You suggest that I get my news from a place that vehemently pushes flat earth videos to me because I happened to watch a video laughing at them? YouTube has an extreme bias to pushing conspiracy theory content.
    - tdb7893 2y ago
      So for YouTube I haven't been able to find quality reporting for the most part (outside of an occasional niche issue). For X my experience is that it's essentially impossible for me to vet personal accounts that people have. Also it runs into the issue where everything is just anecdotal so it's easy to get an inaccurate picture from that sort of information. This is without even getting into the huge problem with bots and even state level disinfo on X (and social media in general). Not that I don't use it at all, it's just not trustworthy or accurate for most things. Edit: not that "mainstream media" doesn't have some of these issues. It's just not as bad as some of these other sources and it's much easier to get a sense for specific organizations than trying to understand the bias and veracity of a myriad of YouTubers and random people on X. Like it's much easier to understand the biases and issues of Reuters than a bunch of YouTubers and random people on X so for basic information I will go to places like Reuters first. Edit2: for issues with YouTubers you have to remember they make money through engagement (and real news is less engaging). I think this is a lot of what's killed traditional media so I doubt YouTube, which is if anything more tied to this, is unlikely to be better. Then also look at the recent Tenet Media scandal. Like yeah I get some news from YouTubers but it's a real minefield when it comes to good information.
calimoro78 2y ago
It does not bother me that the Money and Shopping sections of CNN are run with content by another firm that specializes in interest based articles while the core of CNN remains focused on world news.
- greg_V 2y ago
  The story is that it goes against google's guidelines and yet it continues to outrank sites that are within google's guidelines.
  - seivan 2y ago
    [dead]
jccalhoun 2y ago
I haven't had cable for a long time so I can't say anything about the quality of the programming on the CNN channel. However, cnn.com has been full of affiliate links and barely detectable "sponsored" stories for years.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Its particularly comical because many of the recommendations, including from the US government, for identifying fake or untrustworthy news sites include factors that would indicate CNN's site is fake. A hard one to define is a common recommendation is that a legit news site will look and feel professional. A more specific one is that a fake news site will be filled with a large number of ads. That doesn't even touch on the other factors like unbiased articles that share both sides of an issue.
  - GiorgioG 2y ago
    Let's be real, CNN, Fox News, etc are all fake/propaganda. On Fox News, Trump can do nothing wrong, Biden can do nothing right. On CNN it's nothing but sunshine and rainbows for Harris/Biden and the opposite for Trump...I mean look at this story title from CNN's current frontpage: "Roy Wood Jr. reacts to Trump’s ongoing McDonalds remarks" I'm an independent and as far as I can tell there is zero attempt at unbiased factual reporting of the news.
    - InvisibleUp 2y ago
      You might have some luck with news wire services such as Reuters or the Associated Press.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      I am so glad I decided to tune out of this election cycle. Is anyone really undecided? If you're not, just don't watch. I have no idea what Trump is saying about McDonald's and I like it that way.
      - 2y ago
nickphx 2y ago
[flagged]
gjadi 2y ago
Also posted a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 In case you're interested in what was discussed before on this topic.
- dang 2y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 - Sept 2024 (297 comments)
westcort 2y ago
Publishers sometimes have advertorial divisions. This is not a new phenomenon. No, this does not prove true your favorite candidate’s lies or alternative realities.
- CryptoBanker 2y ago
  You’re the only one bringing up politics
  - westcort 2y ago
    It is not about a particular politician--or are you reading this a particular way because of a truth about your favorite candidate you know, but do not want to be said? See also partisan views from this thread (as opposed to this non-partisan comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41670882 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41670882 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41671053 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41671053
bofadeez 2y ago
Many would agree that the official CNN and USA Today are already "fake" in a sense.
- greenchair 2y ago
  yep and so is the stat showing cnn is the top news source.
joshdavham 2y ago
The plot thickens! Also wouldn’t this present some sort of a conflict of interest as each of these sites (Forbes, CNN, USA Today) are now competing with eachother for SEO?
shipscode 2y ago
Let me break down how the media industry works nowadays since there’s a lot of confusion in these comments. Most media organizations have a small number of in-house journalists on verticals that make sense. The rest of the content is curated and brought in from content partners and written outside of the news organization. In practice they function more like a social media feed than traditional newspapers. I’m no fan of CNN, but this isn’t exactly a scandal, media had to adapt to keep up with so much being on social media these days, they all do this.
- tolerance 2y ago
  What you’ve described does indeed sound scandalous irrespective of its scope.
- WD-42 2y ago
  In the authors previous post he goes into Forbes marketplace which is the same company doing this garbage content farm for CNN that they have already been doing for Forbes. The content farm company is now trying to buy the original Forbes company. So when our media companies become small subsidiaries of affiliate content farms then yea I think it’s a bit disturbing.
  - weard_beard 2y ago
    The news is the news: it isn't news that the news isn't news anymore.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - toss1 2y ago
      Au contraire, the fact that news is no longer news is the biggest news there is. Sure, the mere fact that the news is no longer news, is old news. But how and why it is happening is big and un-reported news. When six companies control 90% of the news outlets, that is unprecedented concentration and loss of the diverse viewpoints necessary for a robust society. When those corporations which normally sell-off any lossmaking division instead hold loss-making 'news' divisions in a now-chronically lossmaking industry, the payoff is not some potential future profits; the payoff is in influencing public opinion to favor policies advantageous to your larger corporation. So, of course the how and why it is happening is unreported by the organizations that are making it happen.
corysama 2y ago
I’ve heard that a while back Google had a change to their algo that heavily prioritized widely used websites as “trusted”. The very most well known sites in the world, such as cnn.com, would be treated as the best results for anything they contained. In response, many of the most used web sites flooded their own sites with transparently fake product reviews full of SEO phrases about “we spent N weeks testing K products to root out the very best” and very little else. The actual reviews would be pretty much copy-pasted from the description provided on the product producer’s site. And, that’s how Google made itself useless for finding product reviews.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  What signals do you think Google should be using instead? I presume they made the change because their search results were filling up with blogspam, and there was no algorithm that could detect a high-quality review from a spam one. So what do you think would have been the right approach?
  - hedora 2y ago
    I don’t use Google, but I used to pay for Apple News. Apple uses algorithmic ranking by story, and pays news sites by article views. It is basically all spam. If you block the spam sites, their stories still show up in your feed with a note that you blocked the site. Instead, they should let people structure their feeds by news organization, like podcast apps do. They should steer you back to reading the sources you’ve opted into, and mix in a bit of stories from related news organizations, not stories with high content similarity, or high “trending” scores. (As far as I know, Apple News+ is the only product still operating in the paid news aggregator space, but if there’s another one, I’d love to hear about it.)
    - saghm 2y ago
      I've been using Feedly for a bit now after something changed with the Google aggregator that Android has available as an option on the home screen changed something and became impossible for me to filter out certain sources from (maybe related to the engine changes discussed in this thread and in the article?) It's solidly...okay. It's very good aggregating everything I want, and for the most part it's able to avoid things that I'd absolutely not be willing to overlook, but it has some quirks in terms of the filters weirdly not working for me on fairly benign topics (no matter how much I try, I can't get it to stop showing me content from various sports like soccer, basketball, and golf despite the only sport I care about being baseball). They seem to really hype their AI features in the app, which is a little weird because I don't care how they aggregate behind the scenes and they shouldn't need AI to be able to filter articles they literally already tag as "golf" when I have "golf" listed in my filters as "never show", but it's not annoying enough that I've bothered trying to find an alternative yet.
streptomycin 2y ago
In 2005, some scammy ad company paid me to do similar stuff - let them completely control some pages on a high ranking domain. Google figured it out after a few months and blacklisted my entire domain until I removed them. Crazy that this is still an issue.
- hedora 2y ago
  I’ve noticed that certain companies become too big to fail, and then they just start breaking the rules. For instance, Experian stole my credit card number once. The fraud department at my national megabank said that Experian was responsible for over half their case load. You’d think that the credit card processing networks would have blocked the Experian payment processing account at that point. I think they would have blocked pretty much any other company on earth.
  - qnleigh 2y ago
    > The fraud department at my national megabank said that Experian was responsible for over half their case load. Wait, what? This is beyond wild. How did you know it was Experian? Have you since found any other evidence for this?
farceSpherule 2y ago
Who in the hell reads CNN, USA Today or Forbes? They are all rags.
- jabroni_salad 2y ago
  usatoday owns soooo many local newspapers. Where I live if I want local news it's either them or my local NPR station and pretty much nothing else.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    My local paper was sold to Gannett (USA Today) a few years ago. It's a complete shadow of what it used to be (to be fair the decline started long before the sale, as with many local papers). They are down from a full newsroom to a handul of local reporters, I'm not even sure all of them are full-time. Most of their content is just USA today stories or news from other Gannett papers. There are a couple of bloggers who cover local government, otherwise there's really no in-depth local reporting on anything anymore.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      I can't speak for every local but the "local paper" where I live is effectively the RSS feeds of the local CBS & NBC news stations' websites and the reporting is actually quite good, or at least, it's a LOT better than receiving no local reporting. The actual local paper is as you describe. I don't understand why local TV has weathered the digital transition better, exactly, but I find that I get a LOT of the local coverage that I want this way and I'm eager to recommend this to strategy to others (as you can see)
- burkaman 2y ago
  CNN is the most popular news website in the US by a huge margin and they are confident enough in their position that they're going to start testing out a paywall next month.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
hofo 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
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jmull 2y ago
Is "fake" the right word? I was under the impression that the generic "news"/"information" on many sites is purchased (or otherwise obtained through some kind of business relationship) from some other organization. And I just don't get this perspective from the article: "For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the fuck CNN? You’re CN fucking N. What in god’s name convinced you this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?" I guess I can't figure out what the problem is supposed to be here. I don't think there's necessarily a problem with fleshing out a site with generic content. I would guess CNN has an agreement with the content provider on the general character of content, and can surely opt out of things they don't want to be associated with. FWIW, I opened "CNN underscored money" and at the top of the page it says: "Content is created by CNN Underscored’s team of editors who work independently from the CNN Newsroom. CNN earns a commission from partner links on the site but the reporting here is always independent and objective." (plus there's an "advertiser disclosure" link but I didn't click on it). I just don't get what the problem is here.
- RobRivera 2y ago
  >"For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the fuck CNN? You’re CN fucking N. What in god’s name convinced you this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?" Anytime I hear outrage rhetoric i lose all interest in the author's words. Its like they have completely forgotten what relativity is.
  - yriehhdjf 2y ago
    What would you consider the relative element in this scenario that explains the decision then? Or was your point simply that emotive language automatically discredits a speaker's point?
    - hindsightbias 2y ago
      My eyes read it as reality. I think it fits too.
- 2y ago
karol 2y ago
Milking old established brands such as Telegraph, Guardian and the likes with affiliate and sponsored content has been going on for ages in the UK.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Eh, I never considered the Underscored sites to be a part of the main site anyway. I just think of them as “Outbrain”-type subsites. This just confirms it. I feel the title of the blog entry is maybe a bit “extreme,” but it does show some well-done sleuthing. Media companies have had to drastically change their business models, lately, and this is just another part of it.
alsance 2y ago
So, what's the big deal? We've seen this same sort of thing happen with literally thousands of news media sites over the last 10 years. Seems the real intention here is say that since there are affiliate ads and advertorials on the site, the entire site is somehow "fake news". That's quite a stretch. A fake news site would say something like Covid is "just the flu". Or maybe, let's say, endorse lies about an election being rigged. Or focus on new conspiracy theories. Every. Single. Week. Neither site does anything like that — No reputable news organization would ever do something that irresponsible, right? That would be fake news.
photochemsyn 2y ago
The only reason to pay any attention to CNN, USA Today or Forbes is to understand what's on the minds of the corporate oligarchy in the United States. They're just propaganda feeds, the modern version of the tin-horn propaganda blared out by speakers installed in Red Square in Moscow in the 1970s. This doesn't mean the stories published are false, or even inaccurate - but there's a big negative space in their media coverage. E.g. if culture war issues are amplified, but there are no stories on industrial policy, infrastructure problems, manufacturing job and supply chain analysis - that's deliberate. No, it's not 'what the public wants', it's what the owners of these media outlets want their readers to be thinking about.
hereme888 2y ago
That's why my main source of meaningful news is X. Just follow a few high quality independent journalists and also let the open-source algorithm rank content to show you.
mylons 2y ago
what if i told you Forbes 30u30 was paid advertising?
arbuge 2y ago
It's good research but whatever you think about the value of the content on those sites, I think the word "fake" in the headline is misleading clickbait. These sites are officially linked to from the parents (CNN and USA Today in this case), with whom they no doubt have a revenue-sharing agreement. They're very real in all senses of the word. The third party in question (Forbes marketplace) is not trying to fraudulently set up some parallel CNN and USA Today websites without their authorization.
doodda 2y ago
There are SEO agencies that do this as a model. I know because I have been pitched by them. 1. You run a content website with a strong domain rating. 2. They approach you with an offer of creating a subsite (your brand + advisor, marketplace, etc) on your domain 3. They write all the content and completely manage the subsite - you have 0 risk (aside from brand risk) 4. You split the affiliate revenues from the subsite 5. The internet is now full of shitty content shilling diet pills and google can't figure it out
ec109685 2y ago
I am seeing questions about why this is a big deal? The issue is that CNN is using their domain authority to boost this drivel affiliate Money content, and hiding the fact that they are doing it by using layer 7 routing to cloak the site. If CNN used a subdomain, e.g. money.cnn.com, Google could learn that this content should be judged independently from the rest of the site. This money content isn’t competing fairly. Google is being tricked to think these Money articles should have the same inherent authority as other CNN articles. Where this impacts the consumer is that the first articles for popular search terms aren’t the best, but instead written by content marketers chasing the highest affiliate. This crowds out legitimate sites (e.g. in depth reviews of the best mortgage lenders) because they can’t hope to rank higher than CNN for the same term. At the very least, this “path based” cloaking of content authorship should be detectable by Google, but it’s a game of whack a mole, unfortunately. I think if you had a human curate the best content written for these popular SEO’d search terms, they’d be able to find the diamonds from the rough. That gives some hope that algorithms can improve to rank the most useful content for readers. It’s also why Reddit is so popular as a source of content in Google.
rootusrootus 2y ago
In related news, almost everything you can find through a Google search is unmitigated crap. Finding it on Google is an indictment of the quality. Back in the day, something like Wikipedia was what people dreamed the Internet would be. How naive of us. I half expect to start seeing new incarnations of things like Prodigy or Compuserve spin up, aiming to provide an Internet-within-Internet type of experience. Without advertising, purely pay-to-play. Sure, a lot of regular people will never pay for such a thing, but I bet there are enough of us that will pay for good quality content (and shielding from crap) that it could be viable. Maybe the 'net gets balkanized and the 'free' part left as a wasteland. (or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man and I should go get a cup of coffee and quit my bitching)
- tomjakubowski 2y ago
  > Finding it on Google is an indictment of the quality. Back in the day, something like Wikipedia was what people dreamed the Internet would be. Well there is good news: Wikipedia is still around and it's as good as ever. I share your sentiments about Google results. I've thought before about setting myself up a little terminal which denies access to everything on the web besides Wikipedia and .edu. That's where most of the good stuff online is. (ok, maybe Atlas Obscura and Sheldon Brown's bicycle page are allowed too)
throwaway984393 2y ago
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Dotnaught 2y ago
I'd be interested to see whether the Federal Trade Commission sees a problem with privacy policies and disclosures varying on the same website. I think there's a case to be made that the differences in data gathering fall short of informed consent and that the unified branding for different entities constitutes deceptive advertising.
silexia 2y ago
CNN became unreliable and started turning out propaganda years ago. Monetizing it is just the next step.
tills13 2y ago
ok and?
stevebmark 2y ago
I'm guessing that Forbes Marketplace offers revenue sharing with each website they make this deal with, so it's profitable for all parties. Is there actually an issue here - legal or ethical or deceptive? This seems like business as usual. Is the main complaint that the integrity of these news websites is weakened by having affiliate marketing? Asking seriously because while no one likes ads, I'm trying to understand what the moral/ethical implication of this is, if any.
tootie 2y ago
A large media organization on two tech stacks for the web presence is not really evidence of anything. Any large organization struggles to maintain cohesive infrastructure. Especially if they've acquired sub brands. Or just because different editorial teams have different requirements. That's not to say CNN money isn't shady but this isn't proof of anything.
smrtinsert 2y ago
Buy placements on another content website is as old as the web itself. Not sure what the shock here is.
bze12 2y ago
A good article about a somewhat similar scheme by Taboola https://www.readmargins.com/p/taboola-outbrain-and-the-chum-supply https://www.readmargins.com/p/taboola-outbrain-and-the-chum-...
nashashmi 2y ago
Way back when I remember cnnmoney.com was a separate company to cnn owned by the same people who owned forbes
IAmGraydon 2y ago
And what happens when an organism (Google) becomes overrun with parasites? It dies because it can no longer sustain the functionality that is essential to life. That is, unless it suddenly grows an immune system.
mike50 2y ago
Gannet and CNN are already bottom of the barrel for journalism. Both are just rewritten wire articles at best. Both companies were obsolete 10 years ago at best.
bankcust08385 2y ago
CNN is first a chumbox marketplace.
pyuser583 2y ago
A few years ago I went online and looked at the articles my local paper was putting out in the 1800s. There weren’t any. Instead they had little blurbs, online they’d be called “tweets” or “posts” mostly submitted by readers. That was journalism in a midwestern city in the 1800s.
- qnleigh 2y ago
  That sounds interesting. Can you share?
Chinwe888 2y ago
[dead]
lotharcable 2y ago
There are liability issues for any sort of "money" or finance paper that don't exist for regular news reporting. Under regular news reporting journalists have no legal obligation to their readers or the truth. They can say anything they want, essentially. It can be accurate, or not. It can be the truth, or not. It really doesn't matter. You can be lying for personal profit or political effect or any reason you want and it really isn't something you can get sued over. Just have to avoid tripping over defamation laws. Where as if you are dealing with financial reporting there is legal liability. It is possible to get busted for committing fraud, it is possible to get sued for misleading information. So keeping these sides of the business completely separated is probably a good way to limit liability.

760 points by greg_V 2y ago

ethagknight 2y ago

Interesting find, serious question: does it matter?

belter 2y ago
Indeed.It's a nice effort...but specially for these two organizations, is a bit like taking a sinking ship and before it disappears underwater...Deciding to set it on fire...:-)
Mistletoe 2y ago
Yes I’d be disturbed if my news source was run by Forbes Marketplace. But it would explain a lot.
- mpalczewski 2y ago
  Propaganda source
stackghost 2y ago
Monoculture in journalism definitely matters. News media has a profound ability to shape and direct the discourse in society writ large, and the slow consolidation of news media in some countries is extremely problematic because it enables private individuals to exert undue influence in pursuit of their agenda that may or may not be at odds with the public interest. In Canada, for example, it's hard to throw a stone and not hit a foreign-owned PostMedia news outlet.
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  > slow consolidation Move slow, break countries.
- VancouverMan 2y ago
  I don't particularly care who owns such outlets. What matters to me is the validity of the content being produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible reporting, that's fine with me. When I consider events or situations I've had direct knowledge of, or where I've had access to direct witness accounts and raw footage that I trust, some of the worst reporting in my opinion has been from CBC News. With CBC being a Crown corporation, CBC News could perhaps be considered the most inherently "Canadian-owned" of the mainstream news outlets. On the other hand, for such situations, I've generally found reporting from Postmedia's various outlets to be among the most accurate, complete, and objective of that from the mainstream outlets, even if it may be considered foreign-owned.
  - stackghost 2y ago
    >What matters to me is the validity of the content being produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible reporting, that's fine with me. As we've seen time and time again, the content produced is only "valid" if your personal interests happen to align with those of Rupert Murdoch, or whomever. CBC definitely has its own problems but being beholden to the biases of the billionaire class isn't one of them.
afavour 2y ago
IMO it does. It’s reflective of these news organizations not caring about their brand reputations and instead just looking at the $$$. Having an entirely separate staff, with a separate website, publish content under your name without your input ought to be a five alarm fire for editorial staff. But there’s some affiliate cash up for grabs so some senior exec somewhere okayed it. There’s a tech angle here too: if it weren’t for SEO they might we’ll be operating out of cnnunderscore.com or whatever, but the SEO juice of a page on cnn.com is too tempting to pass up.
- azemetre 2y ago
  Doesn't Google also punish small sites that do similar things? Like if I made a site that was sincere as an individual where I review kitchen utensils where I add affiliate links I'd be penalized, but the larger established domains are allowed to do the same thing without Google punishing them?
  - greg_V 2y ago
    Bingo. All the small shops who were doing actual reviews got wiped out, and this blog is basically documenting the new age of parasite spam eating the web and raking in millions.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Online reviews are completely gamed IMO. My wife still looks at them, talks about the "highly rated" stuff she finds, and I tell her it's all fake she doesn't believe it.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        I have been telling my mum the same thing and she don't listen. Googling for reviews used to work very well to like 3-10 years ago. I don't speak English nativly, and I suspect that it worked better in my native tongue for way longer then English. It is like it takes time for it to sink in for people, when they are trusting a process or institution. I wanted to buy a ultra-sonic cleaner for my garage/workshop. I need it to clean out parts. I searched for reviews on Youtube, and I noticed that the big "ultrasonic cleaner on Amazon" manufacturer Vev[*123]or seem to more or less have donated a cleaner to about every workshop genre Youtuber in the last 1 to 3 years. Or paid them to shill. Dunno. I mean I was flabbergasted to the extent of the manipulation. I didn't think it was this bad. And I did end up buying their cleaner ... *123 I just don't wanted to SEO help them.
bityard 2y ago
From what I'm to gather by reading Part One, the author runs his own affiliate link SEO sites and is mad that big-name brands are doing it better by leveraging business deals and brand recognition.
- simmonmt 2y ago
  Great. So he's well-motivated to dig up and publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans from Forbes etc al, and he knows where to look. If he wasn't going to investigate this, who would? CNN? USA Today?
  - w0m 2y ago
    > publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans It's disclosed on a banner across the top of literally every cnn-uncensored page that's being 'outed' here. He could have saved the entire research/dig by simply screenshotting the top of any of the pages. That wouldn't have the same energy or 'Ahah!' though.
concordDance 2y ago
It matters because we consider them reliable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... Wikipedia is the most reliable source of news/perspective on issued but it can get contaminated if entities given the "reliable sources" label republish unreliable or biased dreck.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ethagknight 2y ago
I am absolutely shocked to read the replies from everyone thinking "journalistic integrity" was a thing practiced by American Media. Clearly, everyone runs the same stories, same soundbites, same focuses. How could one think "the news" nationwide across 1000s of different outlets just happened to hone in on the same dozen-or-so topics on a daily basis.

lupire 2y ago

So? Every news site has advertising sections https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/about https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/about "Content is created by CNN Underscored’s team of editors who work independently from the CNN newsroom. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission."

w0m 2y ago
Yea... I think I'm failing to understand the Gotcha here. If you go to underscored main page; It's disclosed in a banner across the top of every underscored page. I agree them functionally selling ad-space is annoying; but it's also exposed in clear text as such at the top of every underscored page and article. Giant nothingburger.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  I disagree that this is a nothingburger. I would say it's more like the side of fries you get with your nothingburger. It's an expose showing how deep the rabbit hole goes on this one topic, a reminder that people with money are using their money to make more money by taking control of the internet, to keep all eyes on them, to lie, cheat, manipulate, and inveigle their way into your eyeballs by any means necessary, and that they will continue to do so as long as there is a penny to be made by it. It shows that Google is implicitly permitting this system of deception, that there is a financial conglomerate that is eviscerating the corpse of a once-proud financial giant like FORBES in order to wear its skin and work its mouth like a Muppet advertising face creams and cockroach repellents. If you're not viscerally affected by this inhuman grotesquery, you are made of sterner stuff than I. It's appalling and a powerful metaphorical reminder of our individual insignificance against the power of money, how nothing is sacred, and nothing is safe and sane on the internet.
  - w0m 2y ago
    Your statement is that that ad space is 'viscerally inhuman grotesquery'. Like... Where have you lived for the last 100 years? I do agree Google should punish clear paid advertising in ranking though; that is a clear problem. Maybe because of this article, but the sample queries from the article now show the underscored links on page 5, so it seems 'fixed' now at least.

hedora 2y ago

I noticed a steep dive in CNN news quality post acquisition. (Around when they fired a bunch of reporters people for claiming Trump lost in 2020 instead of hedging their statements). Anyway, I’m not surprised. As far as I’m concerned they’re already out of business (just like National Geographic, which currently employs zero staff writers).

drpossum 2y ago
CNN has been in decline since they started. ca 2000 their content was a shocking amount of what we call clickbait now with the wording and often misrepresentation we've come to expect. They've surprisingly improved but I abandoned them over 20 years ago as anything I consume because of it.
- hedora 2y ago
  Their TV network has always been terrible, but in the early teens, their website seemed reasonably well run. I wouldn’t seek it out, but it wasn’t on my short list of sites to avoid in news aggregators and HN like it is today. (I’ve never heard of the reporters they fired for being too liberal, but that event marked a sharp change in their strategy, where they said they wanted to target Fox News and Newsmax fans, and that they were changing their reporting standards to cater to those audiences.)
westcort 2y ago
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020 https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
sutra_on 2y ago
The steep dive in quality of the mainstream media started with the invention of the 24-hour news cycle. Focus shifted from quality to quantity.

jefb 2y ago

Nice bit of sleuthing here, well done. Anyone know where those search traffic graphics are made from?

greg_V 2y ago
ahrefs by the looks of it

suyash 2y ago

What can you expect from main stream media? It's mostly either propaganda or commercials wrapped up as new stories.

calimoro78 2y ago
Welcome giant sweeping generalizations that are unsupported by data nor stringent arguments.
- seivan 2y ago
  [dead]
tdb7893 2y ago
Where do you think people should get news? Most of the non-mainstream news is somehow worse and finding knowledgeable direct sources isn't really practical for people.
- suyash 2y ago
  YouTube - tons of YouTubers who are independent, X - raw, fast, first hand news, Not saying don't go to mainstream news, just know the bias they may have.
  - wredue 2y ago
    You suggest that I get my news from a place that vehemently pushes flat earth videos to me because I happened to watch a video laughing at them? YouTube has an extreme bias to pushing conspiracy theory content.
  - tdb7893 2y ago
    So for YouTube I haven't been able to find quality reporting for the most part (outside of an occasional niche issue). For X my experience is that it's essentially impossible for me to vet personal accounts that people have. Also it runs into the issue where everything is just anecdotal so it's easy to get an inaccurate picture from that sort of information. This is without even getting into the huge problem with bots and even state level disinfo on X (and social media in general). Not that I don't use it at all, it's just not trustworthy or accurate for most things. Edit: not that "mainstream media" doesn't have some of these issues. It's just not as bad as some of these other sources and it's much easier to get a sense for specific organizations than trying to understand the bias and veracity of a myriad of YouTubers and random people on X. Like it's much easier to understand the biases and issues of Reuters than a bunch of YouTubers and random people on X so for basic information I will go to places like Reuters first. Edit2: for issues with YouTubers you have to remember they make money through engagement (and real news is less engaging). I think this is a lot of what's killed traditional media so I doubt YouTube, which is if anything more tied to this, is unlikely to be better. Then also look at the recent Tenet Media scandal. Like yeah I get some news from YouTubers but it's a real minefield when it comes to good information.

calimoro78 2y ago

It does not bother me that the Money and Shopping sections of CNN are run with content by another firm that specializes in interest based articles while the core of CNN remains focused on world news.

greg_V 2y ago
The story is that it goes against google's guidelines and yet it continues to outrank sites that are within google's guidelines.
- seivan 2y ago
  [dead]

jccalhoun 2y ago

I haven't had cable for a long time so I can't say anything about the quality of the programming on the CNN channel. However, cnn.com has been full of affiliate links and barely detectable "sponsored" stories for years.

_heimdall 2y ago
Its particularly comical because many of the recommendations, including from the US government, for identifying fake or untrustworthy news sites include factors that would indicate CNN's site is fake. A hard one to define is a common recommendation is that a legit news site will look and feel professional. A more specific one is that a fake news site will be filled with a large number of ads. That doesn't even touch on the other factors like unbiased articles that share both sides of an issue.
- GiorgioG 2y ago
  Let's be real, CNN, Fox News, etc are all fake/propaganda. On Fox News, Trump can do nothing wrong, Biden can do nothing right. On CNN it's nothing but sunshine and rainbows for Harris/Biden and the opposite for Trump...I mean look at this story title from CNN's current frontpage: "Roy Wood Jr. reacts to Trump’s ongoing McDonalds remarks" I'm an independent and as far as I can tell there is zero attempt at unbiased factual reporting of the news.
  - InvisibleUp 2y ago
    You might have some luck with news wire services such as Reuters or the Associated Press.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I am so glad I decided to tune out of this election cycle. Is anyone really undecided? If you're not, just don't watch. I have no idea what Trump is saying about McDonald's and I like it that way.
    - 2y ago

nickphx 2y ago

[flagged]

gjadi 2y ago

Also posted a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 In case you're interested in what was discussed before on this topic.

dang 2y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466 - Sept 2024 (297 comments)

westcort 2y ago

Publishers sometimes have advertorial divisions. This is not a new phenomenon. No, this does not prove true your favorite candidate’s lies or alternative realities.

CryptoBanker 2y ago
You’re the only one bringing up politics
- westcort 2y ago
  It is not about a particular politician--or are you reading this a particular way because of a truth about your favorite candidate you know, but do not want to be said? See also partisan views from this thread (as opposed to this non-partisan comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41670882 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41670882 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41671053 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41671053

bofadeez 2y ago

Many would agree that the official CNN and USA Today are already "fake" in a sense.

greenchair 2y ago
yep and so is the stat showing cnn is the top news source.

joshdavham 2y ago

The plot thickens! Also wouldn’t this present some sort of a conflict of interest as each of these sites (Forbes, CNN, USA Today) are now competing with eachother for SEO?

shipscode 2y ago

Let me break down how the media industry works nowadays since there’s a lot of confusion in these comments. Most media organizations have a small number of in-house journalists on verticals that make sense. The rest of the content is curated and brought in from content partners and written outside of the news organization. In practice they function more like a social media feed than traditional newspapers. I’m no fan of CNN, but this isn’t exactly a scandal, media had to adapt to keep up with so much being on social media these days, they all do this.

tolerance 2y ago
What you’ve described does indeed sound scandalous irrespective of its scope.
WD-42 2y ago
In the authors previous post he goes into Forbes marketplace which is the same company doing this garbage content farm for CNN that they have already been doing for Forbes. The content farm company is now trying to buy the original Forbes company. So when our media companies become small subsidiaries of affiliate content farms then yea I think it’s a bit disturbing.
- weard_beard 2y ago
  The news is the news: it isn't news that the news isn't news anymore.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - toss1 2y ago
    Au contraire, the fact that news is no longer news is the biggest news there is. Sure, the mere fact that the news is no longer news, is old news. But how and why it is happening is big and un-reported news. When six companies control 90% of the news outlets, that is unprecedented concentration and loss of the diverse viewpoints necessary for a robust society. When those corporations which normally sell-off any lossmaking division instead hold loss-making 'news' divisions in a now-chronically lossmaking industry, the payoff is not some potential future profits; the payoff is in influencing public opinion to favor policies advantageous to your larger corporation. So, of course the how and why it is happening is unreported by the organizations that are making it happen.

corysama 2y ago

I’ve heard that a while back Google had a change to their algo that heavily prioritized widely used websites as “trusted”. The very most well known sites in the world, such as cnn.com, would be treated as the best results for anything they contained. In response, many of the most used web sites flooded their own sites with transparently fake product reviews full of SEO phrases about “we spent N weeks testing K products to root out the very best” and very little else. The actual reviews would be pretty much copy-pasted from the description provided on the product producer’s site. And, that’s how Google made itself useless for finding product reviews.

crazygringo 2y ago
What signals do you think Google should be using instead? I presume they made the change because their search results were filling up with blogspam, and there was no algorithm that could detect a high-quality review from a spam one. So what do you think would have been the right approach?
- hedora 2y ago
  I don’t use Google, but I used to pay for Apple News. Apple uses algorithmic ranking by story, and pays news sites by article views. It is basically all spam. If you block the spam sites, their stories still show up in your feed with a note that you blocked the site. Instead, they should let people structure their feeds by news organization, like podcast apps do. They should steer you back to reading the sources you’ve opted into, and mix in a bit of stories from related news organizations, not stories with high content similarity, or high “trending” scores. (As far as I know, Apple News+ is the only product still operating in the paid news aggregator space, but if there’s another one, I’d love to hear about it.)
  - saghm 2y ago
    I've been using Feedly for a bit now after something changed with the Google aggregator that Android has available as an option on the home screen changed something and became impossible for me to filter out certain sources from (maybe related to the engine changes discussed in this thread and in the article?) It's solidly...okay. It's very good aggregating everything I want, and for the most part it's able to avoid things that I'd absolutely not be willing to overlook, but it has some quirks in terms of the filters weirdly not working for me on fairly benign topics (no matter how much I try, I can't get it to stop showing me content from various sports like soccer, basketball, and golf despite the only sport I care about being baseball). They seem to really hype their AI features in the app, which is a little weird because I don't care how they aggregate behind the scenes and they shouldn't need AI to be able to filter articles they literally already tag as "golf" when I have "golf" listed in my filters as "never show", but it's not annoying enough that I've bothered trying to find an alternative yet.

streptomycin 2y ago

In 2005, some scammy ad company paid me to do similar stuff - let them completely control some pages on a high ranking domain. Google figured it out after a few months and blacklisted my entire domain until I removed them. Crazy that this is still an issue.

hedora 2y ago
I’ve noticed that certain companies become too big to fail, and then they just start breaking the rules. For instance, Experian stole my credit card number once. The fraud department at my national megabank said that Experian was responsible for over half their case load. You’d think that the credit card processing networks would have blocked the Experian payment processing account at that point. I think they would have blocked pretty much any other company on earth.
- qnleigh 2y ago
  > The fraud department at my national megabank said that Experian was responsible for over half their case load. Wait, what? This is beyond wild. How did you know it was Experian? Have you since found any other evidence for this?

farceSpherule 2y ago

Who in the hell reads CNN, USA Today or Forbes? They are all rags.

jabroni_salad 2y ago
usatoday owns soooo many local newspapers. Where I live if I want local news it's either them or my local NPR station and pretty much nothing else.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  My local paper was sold to Gannett (USA Today) a few years ago. It's a complete shadow of what it used to be (to be fair the decline started long before the sale, as with many local papers). They are down from a full newsroom to a handul of local reporters, I'm not even sure all of them are full-time. Most of their content is just USA today stories or news from other Gannett papers. There are a couple of bloggers who cover local government, otherwise there's really no in-depth local reporting on anything anymore.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    I can't speak for every local but the "local paper" where I live is effectively the RSS feeds of the local CBS & NBC news stations' websites and the reporting is actually quite good, or at least, it's a LOT better than receiving no local reporting. The actual local paper is as you describe. I don't understand why local TV has weathered the digital transition better, exactly, but I find that I get a LOT of the local coverage that I want this way and I'm eager to recommend this to strategy to others (as you can see)
burkaman 2y ago
CNN is the most popular news website in the US by a huge margin and they are confident enough in their position that they're going to start testing out a paywall next month.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago

hofo 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jmull 2y ago

Is "fake" the right word? I was under the impression that the generic "news"/"information" on many sites is purchased (or otherwise obtained through some kind of business relationship) from some other organization. And I just don't get this perspective from the article: "For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the fuck CNN? You’re CN fucking N. What in god’s name convinced you this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?" I guess I can't figure out what the problem is supposed to be here. I don't think there's necessarily a problem with fleshing out a site with generic content. I would guess CNN has an agreement with the content provider on the general character of content, and can surely opt out of things they don't want to be associated with. FWIW, I opened "CNN underscored money" and at the top of the page it says: "Content is created by CNN Underscored’s team of editors who work independently from the CNN Newsroom. CNN earns a commission from partner links on the site but the reporting here is always independent and objective." (plus there's an "advertiser disclosure" link but I didn't click on it). I just don't get what the problem is here.

RobRivera 2y ago
>"For some unfathomable reason, CNN agreed to a deal. What the fuck CNN? You’re CN fucking N. What in god’s name convinced you this was a good idea? And you already had a ramped up affiliate program. I say again: what the fuck CNN?" Anytime I hear outrage rhetoric i lose all interest in the author's words. Its like they have completely forgotten what relativity is.
- yriehhdjf 2y ago
  What would you consider the relative element in this scenario that explains the decision then? Or was your point simply that emotive language automatically discredits a speaker's point?
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    My eyes read it as reality. I think it fits too.
2y ago

karol 2y ago

Milking old established brands such as Telegraph, Guardian and the likes with affiliate and sponsored content has been going on for ages in the UK.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

Eh, I never considered the Underscored sites to be a part of the main site anyway. I just think of them as “Outbrain”-type subsites. This just confirms it. I feel the title of the blog entry is maybe a bit “extreme,” but it does show some well-done sleuthing. Media companies have had to drastically change their business models, lately, and this is just another part of it.

alsance 2y ago

So, what's the big deal? We've seen this same sort of thing happen with literally thousands of news media sites over the last 10 years. Seems the real intention here is say that since there are affiliate ads and advertorials on the site, the entire site is somehow "fake news". That's quite a stretch. A fake news site would say something like Covid is "just the flu". Or maybe, let's say, endorse lies about an election being rigged. Or focus on new conspiracy theories. Every. Single. Week. Neither site does anything like that — No reputable news organization would ever do something that irresponsible, right? That would be fake news.

photochemsyn 2y ago

The only reason to pay any attention to CNN, USA Today or Forbes is to understand what's on the minds of the corporate oligarchy in the United States. They're just propaganda feeds, the modern version of the tin-horn propaganda blared out by speakers installed in Red Square in Moscow in the 1970s. This doesn't mean the stories published are false, or even inaccurate - but there's a big negative space in their media coverage. E.g. if culture war issues are amplified, but there are no stories on industrial policy, infrastructure problems, manufacturing job and supply chain analysis - that's deliberate. No, it's not 'what the public wants', it's what the owners of these media outlets want their readers to be thinking about.

hereme888 2y ago

That's why my main source of meaningful news is X. Just follow a few high quality independent journalists and also let the open-source algorithm rank content to show you.

mylons 2y ago

what if i told you Forbes 30u30 was paid advertising?

arbuge 2y ago

It's good research but whatever you think about the value of the content on those sites, I think the word "fake" in the headline is misleading clickbait. These sites are officially linked to from the parents (CNN and USA Today in this case), with whom they no doubt have a revenue-sharing agreement. They're very real in all senses of the word. The third party in question (Forbes marketplace) is not trying to fraudulently set up some parallel CNN and USA Today websites without their authorization.

doodda 2y ago

There are SEO agencies that do this as a model. I know because I have been pitched by them. 1. You run a content website with a strong domain rating. 2. They approach you with an offer of creating a subsite (your brand + advisor, marketplace, etc) on your domain 3. They write all the content and completely manage the subsite - you have 0 risk (aside from brand risk) 4. You split the affiliate revenues from the subsite 5. The internet is now full of shitty content shilling diet pills and google can't figure it out

ec109685 2y ago

I am seeing questions about why this is a big deal? The issue is that CNN is using their domain authority to boost this drivel affiliate Money content, and hiding the fact that they are doing it by using layer 7 routing to cloak the site. If CNN used a subdomain, e.g. money.cnn.com, Google could learn that this content should be judged independently from the rest of the site. This money content isn’t competing fairly. Google is being tricked to think these Money articles should have the same inherent authority as other CNN articles. Where this impacts the consumer is that the first articles for popular search terms aren’t the best, but instead written by content marketers chasing the highest affiliate. This crowds out legitimate sites (e.g. in depth reviews of the best mortgage lenders) because they can’t hope to rank higher than CNN for the same term. At the very least, this “path based” cloaking of content authorship should be detectable by Google, but it’s a game of whack a mole, unfortunately. I think if you had a human curate the best content written for these popular SEO’d search terms, they’d be able to find the diamonds from the rough. That gives some hope that algorithms can improve to rank the most useful content for readers. It’s also why Reddit is so popular as a source of content in Google.

rootusrootus 2y ago

In related news, almost everything you can find through a Google search is unmitigated crap. Finding it on Google is an indictment of the quality. Back in the day, something like Wikipedia was what people dreamed the Internet would be. How naive of us. I half expect to start seeing new incarnations of things like Prodigy or Compuserve spin up, aiming to provide an Internet-within-Internet type of experience. Without advertising, purely pay-to-play. Sure, a lot of regular people will never pay for such a thing, but I bet there are enough of us that will pay for good quality content (and shielding from crap) that it could be viable. Maybe the 'net gets balkanized and the 'free' part left as a wasteland. (or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man and I should go get a cup of coffee and quit my bitching)

tomjakubowski 2y ago
> Finding it on Google is an indictment of the quality. Back in the day, something like Wikipedia was what people dreamed the Internet would be. Well there is good news: Wikipedia is still around and it's as good as ever. I share your sentiments about Google results. I've thought before about setting myself up a little terminal which denies access to everything on the web besides Wikipedia and .edu. That's where most of the good stuff online is. (ok, maybe Atlas Obscura and Sheldon Brown's bicycle page are allowed too)

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

Dotnaught 2y ago

I'd be interested to see whether the Federal Trade Commission sees a problem with privacy policies and disclosures varying on the same website. I think there's a case to be made that the differences in data gathering fall short of informed consent and that the unified branding for different entities constitutes deceptive advertising.

silexia 2y ago

CNN became unreliable and started turning out propaganda years ago. Monetizing it is just the next step.

tills13 2y ago

ok and?

stevebmark 2y ago

I'm guessing that Forbes Marketplace offers revenue sharing with each website they make this deal with, so it's profitable for all parties. Is there actually an issue here - legal or ethical or deceptive? This seems like business as usual. Is the main complaint that the integrity of these news websites is weakened by having affiliate marketing? Asking seriously because while no one likes ads, I'm trying to understand what the moral/ethical implication of this is, if any.

tootie 2y ago

A large media organization on two tech stacks for the web presence is not really evidence of anything. Any large organization struggles to maintain cohesive infrastructure. Especially if they've acquired sub brands. Or just because different editorial teams have different requirements. That's not to say CNN money isn't shady but this isn't proof of anything.

smrtinsert 2y ago

Buy placements on another content website is as old as the web itself. Not sure what the shock here is.

bze12 2y ago

A good article about a somewhat similar scheme by Taboola https://www.readmargins.com/p/taboola-outbrain-and-the-chum-supply https://www.readmargins.com/p/taboola-outbrain-and-the-chum-...

nashashmi 2y ago

Way back when I remember cnnmoney.com was a separate company to cnn owned by the same people who owned forbes

IAmGraydon 2y ago

And what happens when an organism (Google) becomes overrun with parasites? It dies because it can no longer sustain the functionality that is essential to life. That is, unless it suddenly grows an immune system.

mike50 2y ago

Gannet and CNN are already bottom of the barrel for journalism. Both are just rewritten wire articles at best. Both companies were obsolete 10 years ago at best.

bankcust08385 2y ago

CNN is first a chumbox marketplace.

pyuser583 2y ago

A few years ago I went online and looked at the articles my local paper was putting out in the 1800s. There weren’t any. Instead they had little blurbs, online they’d be called “tweets” or “posts” mostly submitted by readers. That was journalism in a midwestern city in the 1800s.

qnleigh 2y ago
That sounds interesting. Can you share?

Chinwe888 2y ago

[dead]

lotharcable 2y ago

There are liability issues for any sort of "money" or finance paper that don't exist for regular news reporting. Under regular news reporting journalists have no legal obligation to their readers or the truth. They can say anything they want, essentially. It can be accurate, or not. It can be the truth, or not. It really doesn't matter. You can be lying for personal profit or political effect or any reason you want and it really isn't something you can get sued over. Just have to avoid tripping over defamation laws. Where as if you are dealing with financial reporting there is legal liability. It is possible to get busted for committing fraud, it is possible to get sued for misleading information. So keeping these sides of the business completely separated is probably a good way to limit liability.