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SHRED

(28,136 posts)
Thu May 24, 2012, 11:52 PM May 2012

Huffington Post "comments" sections

HuffPo has many issues but the public comments sections, following the articles, has become more and more a cesspool of nasty right wingers.

I don't visit there too often but when I do visit it appears to get more right wing and tabloid with each visit.

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8 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Huffington Post "comments" sections (Original Post) SHRED May 2012 OP
See the comments at Mediaite? Dawson Leery May 2012 #1
Their tie in with Yahoo doesnt help DJ13 May 2012 #2
Yes, I agree with your observation about wazoo left on green only May 2012 #5
well said ............. dothemath Aug 2013 #7
You have made at least two more good observations. left on green only Aug 2013 #8
I got banned from HuffPo after I commented that people should crunch60 May 2012 #3
Here's one that looks like it's going to go the other way ---> Petrushka May 2012 #4
Yes, I totally agree with your observation left on green only May 2012 #6

left on green only

(1,484 posts)
5. Yes, I agree with your observation about wazoo
Fri May 25, 2012, 03:22 AM
May 2012

First it was their reader comments section that went right wing. Then their news reporting became grossly slanted to the right. And all the while it was happening, their endless advertising was becoming more and more prevalent, encroaching and rude, as it trashed up their main page.

It has now become so bad that their rude ads appear in blatant areas of their main page so that during the course of navigating the curser from one area of the page to another, a person cannot help but touch some small area of the ads' border. Then, as soon as that happens, the rude advertisement balloons up and fills the entire screen, with no way to collapse it again without leaving their web page. Or, I suppose a person could also just sit there and allow the ad to play.

Another unforgivable tactic they use without warning is to start some "cute" animated advertising graphic that travels across the entire page as it grows larger and larger while preventing the user from being able to continue with their browsing. Sometimes they even have the gall to ask the user to rate on a progressive scale just how thrilled they were to have had wazoo's advertising trash encroach and distract their efforts to browse.

It doesn't seem to matter how many new CEO's wazoo goes through, either. Their policy of maintaining a totally trashed out web browser remains the same. It only serves to waste people's time, as it offends them.

Wazoo is physically located in the S.F. Bay Area, which is supposed to be a mecca of progressive thinking; however all I perceive from them anymore is right wing nazi propaganda of the kind that would make Faux smile, along with blatant and encroaching advertising.

Wazoo has become the AM radio band of the Internet. I do not wish them well.

 

dothemath

(345 posts)
7. well said .............
Thu Aug 22, 2013, 04:56 AM
Aug 2013

I refuse to sit through any ad longer than 15 seconds, with no sound, and it is particularly galling when there is a 32 second ad, sometimes longer, for a 21 second video. When there are several videos that could be shown in one continuous format, they are broken up into many segments, each with their own 32 seconds of ad, the same ad in many cases.

It must be paying off or they wouldn't continue to do it. Hoi polloi has been tagged as susceptible to repetition of ads. Broadcast TV does the same thing. Watch, or try to watch any program, and you will see the same ad, over and over. An 80 minute movie takes 2 1/2 hours and it will include the same Little Ceasar's ad 30 or more times. It must work or one of two things must be going on. First, ad agencies have run out of ideas and the dumbing down of Americans is complete. Second, the ad agencies are now populated with dummies just like the dummies their crap is aimed towards.

I recently did an experiment. I went online to get information about riding mowers. Found some useful information. Beginning immediately, nearly every website I subsequently visited had ads for riding mowers. They appeared at the top, bottom and both sides of the page. I have no doubt that if I bought one of each brand/model, the ads would continue ad infinitum.

Web browsers brag about how many pop-up ads they block. How is it the ads described above are not considered pop-ups and why do I not have the option to block them (like I don't know why)?




left on green only

(1,484 posts)
8. You have made at least two more good observations.
Sun Aug 25, 2013, 03:19 AM
Aug 2013

What I have done about preventing my viewing of offensive advertising that appears in some video content, is to just not watch the video. The written story below the video is usually an intended or unintended description of what happens in the video, after the insulting and demeaning advertising has finished playing. Of course there are some sites that are so rude as to begin playing their loud, super high volume advertising as soon as a person opens up the web site (without their even having to click on the video). It's like they are professing their right to cram their advertising down our throats, whether we like it or not. When that happens to me, I just click on the video's pause button to make the ad stop, and then I begin reading the written content below.

As to whether this gross intrusion on our lives is paying off for the broadcasters, I kind of wonder because when I watch a show that has 30 repeats of the same advertisement throughout the course of the show, it says to me that the broadcaster is unable to sell advertising to any other clients; and in order to at least generate some revenue, the broadcaster has had to sell multiple runs of the same ad, *at a reduced price*. The Rachel Maddow Show on the Internet is guilty as sin of this practice.

In the case of Yahoo, I don't think their having sold out to having predominant advertising in the content of their web page has payed off for them. Yahoo shareholders have gone through more CEO's than I use rolls of toilet paper ("Hey CEO, either you make us a bunch of money or we'll fire your sorry ass&quot . In addition, Yahoo is consistently "re-designing" their web page so as to include more and more shiny advertising trinkets to distract a person's attention from the real reason why they logged-on in the first place (I guess their philosophy must be that their page will sell because a lot of today's hip kids actually want a lot of fast and flashy trinkets to distract their eyes, due to their minds having a zero concentration spans to begin with).

Have you ever watched the teaser reel for an up and coming movie (especially an action movie)? It is usually impossible to gain any idea whatsoever about what the story of the movie is about. It's just a bunch of meaningless flashes and sound bites on the screen that tell you nothing about why you might want to see the movie. In our society of today, few people want to think about whether they want to see a movie or not. For them, it's just a matter of responding to a collection of dream images on the screen that seem as though they are something that the person might like to say or do to impress their friends in real life.

Then you have Twitter, which is in the same vein. When using Twitter it is really not possible to express a meaningful idea to another person using 18 characters or less of the English language. But Twitter users like it that way because it absolves them of the burden of having to actually think about saying something that has meaning. It's all about looking cool in saying nothing at all.

But I have digressed.

Elsewhere in the Yahoo business plan, they can no longer afford to have humans answering their telephones; most probably because they can no longer afford to pay them. On their web page, they no longer advertise an email address or telephone number where a person can write or call them regarding problems with their software. Everything for them is now solved by their having posted on-line cumbersome tutorials that require a person to spend a great length of time to read through all of the verbiage in hopes of finding that somewhere in Yahoo's pile of fecal matter, their particular issue has been addressed. If Yahoo's customer is lucky enough to have finally found a written answer to their problem, then they will still have to experience whether or not the answer they have found actually works to solve the problem that they are having. And of course, the answers they provide would also make a lot more sense to us if they could afford to hire actual technical writers to write them.

In my experience, once a person has installed one of the more adequate, free, pop-up blockers, they can usually feel certain that the pop-up blocker is doing it's job. Any other advertising that gets through is usually there because the host of the web site that they are on, has tracked and sold the person's browsing information to the web site's advertisers as a means of generating more capitol for themselves. Those ads cannot be prevented. In other words, their greedy asses have sold you out.

Since I wrote my post that you responded to above, I have become totally disgusted with Yahoo. I never go there anymore. The browser that I now use is Google. But let it be known that I will be the last person to ever accuse Google of sainthood.

It warms my heart to discover that there is at least one other person on this board who is equally as offended by offensive advertising in our lives. In the past, I have contributed these same ideas of to other threads, only to receive responses from other board members who vehemently disagree with me. Because of that, I suspect that there must be quite a number of other contributors on this site who make their living in the field of advertising. I have learned that it is pretty difficult for me to contribute anything to DU without offending at least someone.

 

crunch60

(1,412 posts)
3. I got banned from HuffPo after I commented that people should
Fri May 25, 2012, 01:11 AM
May 2012

consider HuffPo, an online tabloid, similar to the National Enquirer and that the mods favored the right wing GOP. To many leftie comments, and you get scrubbed.

left on green only

(1,484 posts)
6. Yes, I totally agree with your observation
Fri May 25, 2012, 03:52 AM
May 2012

Most of the time the trashy, sensational, tabloid titles of their news stories have nothing at all to do with what the article is actually about. They are just trying to sucker you into clicking on the page so that they can "impress" their advertisers with how much exposure (number of hits) their advertising on the page nets.

In addition, they are just trying to place "knee jerk" words in the titles of their articles that will get you to click on their articles. We are all just being suckered in so that they can make more money through the sale of advertising on their site. It's all about money and greed now. Long ago, I stopped watching broadcast TeeVee for the same reason.

If ever I visit their site anymore; when I go to the articles, I just read the story without bothering to click on the video, because the advertising that precedes the video offends me so much, in addition to wasting my time.

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