And surely they could just make a call to not run ads against a community/non-profit story?
Is it not unlike Microsoft donating product as sponsorship? (e.g., $100k non-profit sponsorship turns out to be in-kind provision of MS Office licenses.) That's often viewed critically by many on HN.
Affiliate link, not a sponsor. It's a common ruse by YouTubers, to refer to them as sponsors to suggest that there's a commercial relationship when there isn't.
Aren't the FCC in the US pretty strict about requiring you to specifically tag paid material?
This could just as easily be paid advertising as a joke (zoom is getting most of the news cycle for 'meetings' atm, so it's the topical product to joke on). And in some countries I'd more easily believe it's paid but I see a lot of work even creators/youtubers have to go into to explicitly declare sponsorship's I'd just be surprised.
I hope that wink is a realization that sponsored content (in the form of "Show HN" and the linkbait submitted by heavily interested parties) has already arrived.
I once remarked to an editor (reporter) for a tech news site
(appearing occasionally on HN) that a specific channel there listed itself as specifically sponsored.
Their response: I'm glad to hear we're <doing it for money> and not <giving it away for free>.
(Using words beginning with 'W' and 'S' respectively for each concept.)
I guess it's a personal choice, but I prefer tracked ads that are properly labeled and not deceptive to integrated sponsorships and product placement any day. The real fear is that an extension like this will encourage even more deceptive and hard to skip sponsors (embeded product placement).
I wonder who could tell if the sponsored content was seen or not seen by any viewers... As far as I can tell the content creator gets their share once they reference the sponsor segment.
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