We were talking, yesterday, about whether garbage-content pushers need ad revenue. That discussion was pegged to the possibility that major players such as Google and Facebook are moving to cut them off.
Well, surprise, surprise — that’s not the end of it. We’ve all seen those clickbaity sponsored-content widgets from Outbrain, Taboola, and so on.
‘The underbelly of the internet’: How content ad networks fund fake news
Shockingly, it seems they can be easy marks for purveyors of sketchy content. (Give the pushers marks for ingenuity, at least. The article mentions a site in Tbilisi called USATodaycom.com.) One really wants to believe them when they say they’re selective about the content they serve up, but …
And as we all know, this is pretty tame.
OK, so maybe things like this are part of the reason it’s harder to filter worthwhile content from garbage, but that’s all the more reason to keep the critical-thinking skills sharp.