[hn_throwaway_99]

Yeah, I read this blog post and thought throughout the whole thing, "Is this person just completely unaware of how the media and branding industries work?" He tries to make it out to be some great "scandal" when literally tons and tons of media brands outsource sections of their website.

Now, to be clear, I'm not exactly excusing CNN for this, but literally for years now I've rolled my eyes at the extremely spammy/low quality/clickbait ads that have appeared on CNN articles online. The fact that they've outsourced part of their "Underscored" site, which isn't exactly journalism to begin with, is not something I care about. And in case you missed it, journalism has had a blood bath over the past 25 years. While I think what CNN is doing in terms of affiliate ads is scammy, can I really blame them? Hardly anyone wants to pay for journalism these days, but journalists still want to eat. At least with these clickbait ads I find them so low quality that they don't confuse me into being "real" articles.