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The Forbes 30 Under 30 list came out this week and it featured a prominent security researcher. Other researchers were pleased to see one of their own getting positive attention, and visited the site in droves to view the list.
On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware "exploit kits," lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom. The exploit used was a version of hackenfreude.
Forbes has recently taken some flack from Soylent News readers for its heavy-handed approach to ad blockers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Sunday January 10 2016, @10:35PM
Yes they did, and I was a regular reader (though not subscriber, because as a student I had better things to spend my money on like food). But I eventually reached the same conclusion you did. Same thing with the Economist, which started to go downhill when they hired an American as Editor-in-Chief.
Now that I'm an adult and have money, I have subscribed to Stratfor, which is a much, much better source of actionable information. But there have been a growing number of citizen journalists/bloggers who have broken important stories, too. That trend may yet grow and displace the old media entirely.
It's funny, because in the old days there's no way an independent citizen journalist could have competed with the venerable outlets, even if they had both had access to the same distribution networks, because the latter had reputation. Now they've entirely lost that, and they have themselves entirely to blame. I wouldn't wipe my ass with a copy of the New York Times anymore, not after Judith Miller's selling the Iraq War with the full support of the publisher, and the Jayson Blair scandal. I see their people everywhere in NYC begging people to subscribe, and nobody wants to have anything to do with them. I never see print copies of their paper anywhere, and I live in a progressive neighborhood in Brooklyn stuffed to the gills with people who work in Publishing, Advertising, NonProfit, Philanthropy, etc (that is, nerdy people who like to read a lot).
So, now the reputation of the indy blogger = the reputation of the Grey Lady, so why pay for the latter, being pretty damn sure it's paid media, when I have a reasonable belief that corporate bigwigs wouldn't bother to buy off an indy blogger?
Washington DC delenda est.