What Am I Being Lured Into?
I get a weird, uncomfortable feeling when I follow sponsored content. This is the case for all sponsored content, whether it be on seemingly legitimate news sites or on Facebook ads.
Sure, the content looks funny / interesting / inviting, but what is the desired outcome of the content creator? Am I being sent down a chute? Is it a tracker to capture some affiliate fee? I tried to track down one website with a listicle that seemed funny and found looking at a cardboard cutout of a website, run by one company, run by another, acquired by a third.
It seems that with all this obfuscation, there is still a lot of room for bad actors and foreign agents to play a part. It might make more sense, given how poorly platforms have managed bad actors in the past, to have advertisers declare the goal of the sponsored content. “I advertise pencils to get you to buy pencils”, “I advertise content to gain new subscriptions to my channel”, “I drive traffic to my website to get you to click on more ads”.
There is opportunity to help companies make sites more transparent.
