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by dmazin 136 days ago
While NYT etc mostly stand back as the U.S. crosses the rubicon, what started as a freaking gadget review site seems to employ nearly all the journalists with actual gusto left in America.
5 comments

The gusto to post an Amazon affiliate listicle?
this article has 19 paragraphs of text in just the main article body, making three recommendations.

it’s pretty rich to both decry media literacy issues in sibling comments while completely elastically using the word “listicle”

There is no actionable advice other than "get something durable". Nothing about filtration grades and classes, about particle sizes to worry about, about how filter choice affects longevity, breathability, stamina, etc.

Were I to recommend anybody join anti-LE riots (which I categorically do not, in this case), and if I even remotely cared about the wellbeing of my readers (which the author categorically does not, in this case), I would touch on those types of details instead of stringing quasi-random affiliate links together using sob stories, self-congratulations and agitprop.

these are exciting new goalposts you’ve decided on! i, too, think that any article that is different from how i would’ve written it is a listicle.

if you’ll indulge me, i’m excited to hear how you have “categorically” decided the author’s intentions

one nit: surely you, of all hacker news commenters, have the extraordinary media literacy to know that the journos themselves do not add the affiliate links or pocket the affiliate link search arbitrage

I can recognize behaviors, just like everybody else. Columnists don't add affiliate parameters but they're incentivized or required to place the base links there by the publication they work for. Would you prefer that I clap like a seal at every punkwashed mainstream opinion piece? I'd rather not.
> mainstream opinion piece

my job here is done, but i’m here if you need any more help

VIVA LA REVOLUTION LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!
I don't know...the subject matter stirs the pot nicely in my opinion
I read it as an insightful analysis of the concept of tear-gassing crowds disguised as an affiliate listicle.

Bonus points if someone actually puts some money towards a human journalist by just treating it as an affiliate listicle.

I mean if you'd only care about the affiliate revenue, there probably are better niches to serve than citizens looking to protect themselves from tear gas.
They have many other articles directly addressing the rising fascism. That you also only see this as an "affiliate link" without grokking the larger theme of "Gas Masks for tear gas" and how that relates to what ICE is doing to the US is part of the larger problem with contemporary media illiteracy.
Are you sure it is just media illiteracy? Unfortunately, there are people out there that just don't care enough or actually think the US "president" is right and the protestors are dead wrong.
The Brown-Red Scare is the largest contemporary failure in media literacy.
Wired is doing pretty well on that front, too
Are you thinking of Wirecutter? They are a sub brand of NYT, whereas The Verge is part of Vox Media
According to Wikipedia's article on The Verge [1] "up to nine of Engadget's writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site."

So apparently they were once a 'gadget site'

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Verge

Also Wired and weirdly People Magazine (and before they were all fired J17)
It's disappointing that people increasingly expect news to be propaganda for their own side. The news is meant to be a source of information. You don't have to agree with everything an article has to say to get useful information from it. There is no shortage of quasi-revolutionary content on the internet if that's what you seek.
News has always been propaganda for one side, its just sometimes more or less obvious.

Personally I prefer the ones that make it clear where they stand as opposed to subtly influencing you while masquerading as "neutral".

It's 2026. Everyone knows that NYT is written by liberal elites for liberal elites (or aspirational liberal elites) who spend their money to read such articles. Even if you think it's propaganda, legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else. It's the same reason why traders read Zero Hedge even if they aren't ultra-libertarians.

It may comfort you to imagine the NYT's editorial stance as the last thing holding back a revolution, but I guarantee that is not the case. That may change some wannabe liberal elites to wannabe revolutionaries, but the elites who you actually want to change will get their news someplace else.

I think you misunderstood my comment?

I mostly agree with you, I also read zero hedge, al jazeera and other media whose stance I don't broadly agree with.

To me NYT is actually pretty conservative, but YMMV

When information is politicized (eg do vaccines work) then being a source of information can been seen as propaganda for your side.
It's disappointing that people don't know the difference between having a stance and propaganda.
If it's just a stance, then why care so much about it? Presumably it's so that this stance influences their readers.