[sentiental]

I fear what will happen when the market for pure misinformation is fully realized. When it can be delivered as seamlessly as the real thing, the opportunity for profit is massive. The Atlantic is an example of media engineering for profit that fails to trick us -- but it is much closer than sponsored content has been in the past and certainly more effective at getting me to consume it than a regular ad.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but one thing the future holds for us is more of this. Except it will take place in scientific literature, respected publications, maybe in our own homes and (purposefully or not) by the people we know and trust. We'll need a factcheck.org for regular news.

"Sponsor post" is probably as good as we will ever get from The Atlantic.

[pavel_lishin]

If you haven't read Stephenson's "Anathem", one of the characters makes a reference to Bogons, false pieces of information inundating the Internet.

There are low-quality bogons (the example given is a file full of gibberish) and high-quality bogons, masquerading as legitimate data but differing in only a few places, and hard to detect as such.

This is definitely a fairly high quality bogon, at first glance.

[hindsightbias]

I found this advertorial (common in newstand rags) to be incredibly informative. First, Scientology is expanding around the world. Second, I thought Scientology was banned in Germany but they opened a Church in Hamburg. Perhaps I'm just ignorant, but that was a surprise to me given their problems in the EU. They have clearly figured out how to "manage" there. Third, politicians from both parties, federal and local officials attended these events. They are becoming more and more "mainstream"

Finally, this expansion and the choice of buildings means they have a lot of money. They also have a very good taste when it comes to architecture (IMO) - they didn't build giant $100M sun temples or edifices, they've found what appear to be amazing examples of local architecture and have adapted it to their purposes.

Would that most "real" editorials were so informative.

[westicle]

For a (hopefully) fictional example of how this could already be happening without our knowledge, check out the film "The Joneses". Pretty entertaining film too.

[hipsters_unite]

I don't know. Although we are talking tail end of the 90s, there's passing reference in No Logo/The Shock Doctrine (forget which, but think the former) by Naomi Klein to lifestyle marketers that would follow a couple of people in their target demo around without their knowledge.