Right, but even in your totally separated case, the consumers of your work are ALSO thoroughly advertised to from all the AI companies. Just because the journalists aren't reading the copy doesn't mean we aren't hearing it and advertisers certainly believe listeners are influenced by it.
Can they be personally held responsible that the general populace seems either totally apathetic to or utterly incapable of understanding the difference between advertising and editorial?
I do think they should consider the entire product they make as a thing they share some responsibility for. I go to the verge for the journalists, but I also get the ads for AI products interleaved with AI journalism.
The thing is we don’t make that part of the product and aggressively have no responsibility for it, and the sales team has literally no visibility into our newsroom. Creators literally make the ads!
Yep, I get that. But when it's presented to your readers and listeners it's all jammed together. I agree it's better for the ads to not influence the creation of the journalism. But it is a bummer to hear multiple stories about how AI isn't so great bookended by ads telling me how great AI is.
Should a newspaper not put a car ad opposite a story about a massive car recall that has caused deaths? At a certain point it's up to the consumer to know that marketers don't try to present a fair & balanced account of the product. That the journalists do USED to be table stakes, but no longer
Again, I encourage you to hold influencers and creators to anything close to our standards. They literally have these companies take final edits on their work
I feel like this is a valid lamentation in the wrong thread. I hate when good shows take advertising money from shit businesses, but raising it here feels too much like you're putting it on the same level as the activities Nilay is speaking about.