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twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

Amazon Prime Day hasn't been interesting or novel since 2005 or so, but that's not going to stop anybody from pretending otherwise so they can get their blogspam affiliate kickbacks

8/10/25, 1:45 pm34 reposts647 likes

in recent years there's been this new attempt to portray being a soulless blogspam affiliate hack as something that requires serious effort and research in order to "find the best deals" (a ton of these are usually AI)

I could maybe tolerate this slightly better if I'd seen the people in charge of U.S. media make literally ANY serious effort in the last two decades to creatively fund meaningful journalism or hadn't watched countless editor and journalist friends get shitcanned by trust fund brunchlord failsons

AI and the complete destruction of whatever was left of U.S. regulatory corporate oversight is going to take all of this to the next level these trust fund failsons envision the internet as a giant ouroboros that just shits ad engagement cash and kickbacks, quality or usefulness be damned

every so often I get some drive by defensive hack who insists that turning journalistic brands into badly automated blogspam cack is WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS as if there was no other choice but to sell out the entirety of your brand credibility for modest affiliate kickbacks

anonymouse.myatproto.social

@anonymouse.myatproto.social

I like sharing this old post from someone I don’t know:

jacek.zlydach.plAdvertising is a cancer on society — Jacek ZłydachA detailed explanation of why I keep saying that advertising is a cancer on modern society.

@rjgon.bsky.social

The stupid affiliate links!!! It’s the cornerstone of the enshitification of the web.

Coltrane, the dog

@coltranethedog.bsky.social

Has anyone written about targeted advertising being bullshit? It feels much like AI in that businesses don't understand it but fall for the sales job and everyone's doing it so it must work, etc. But I have no expertise in this topic.

@franceslarina.bsky.social

Since 2000, 600+ newspapers were bought by one private equity, Alden Global Capital. Other PE's exist in this area. They sell the real estate, presses & data, fire the staff, load it with debt extracted for their own investors & stay afloat on long time ads & subscribers. Then they sell the husk.

@eclecticcyborg.bsky.social

“trust fund brunchlord failsons” is now going in my vocabulary.

yapierberg.bsky.social

@yapierberg.bsky.social

“trust fund brunchlord failsons” is my new favorite description. Thank you

Michael R Lambert

@mrl53.bsky.social

Hold on to your dough.

bskwitter.bsky.social

@bskwitter.bsky.social

At least on the OG Black Friday I got the satisfaction of scouring the mailers and then going to stand in line somewhere at 6 a.m. Those bargains were EARNED

@turbineseaplane.eurosky.social

Ahh yes .. the Amazon junk drawer garage sale.

@hansenhousecomm.bsky.social

All these supposed journalists serving their audiences with targeted content. And then they claim that audience can trust their reviewers and experts. American shoppers are not very smart.

@h0n0urable.bsky.social

I usually ignore this shit but this year I've been plugging the "deals" into CamelCamelCamel and it's clear that most of the products had their prices jacked up in the last 2-3 months and the "deal" is selling at the pre-tariff price.

very often the deals are the same deals they've had on repeat all year

Mary Branscombe

@marypcbuk.bsky.social

Edge has a little widget built in that tells you whether a price reduction is real or fake with a little chart of price over time, people are going to figure this out some time

Not en mass, when it takes this level of attention. I’m not slamming average people for being mindless consumers. I’m saying most people don’t have the bandwidth for this in their lives; our toxic culture (of which this is part) makes / keeps it that way / makes it worse.

@bennyswitch.bsky.social

And the deals stink.

@maxbeta.bsky.social

As a regular checker of Slickdeals, all these prime day things are the same price or cheaper at any random time. Really the same with non-discounts of Black Friday the past few years & "Cyber Monday" aka leftover and worse BF deals

Jellyfish Jones

@hoff2714.bsky.social

This exactly. And the affiliates revenue is so small, too. At least the NYT has a separate site for it, but it runs 24/7/365 and is only about 2% of their revenue. These other outlets are selling their souls for peanuts.

and even that wouldn't be as bad if these outlets had shown the SLIGHTEST creativity in trying to develop new, alternative journalism funding models instead it's mostly more ads and more paywalls

@gwenda.bsky.social

I'd be curious how many are using Amazon affiliate links to bring in passive income as well.

@jgriffee.bsky.social

That's what I was about to say. They're probably ALL getting kickbacks.

@lollardfish.bsky.social

All of them

@gwenda.bsky.social

Yeah, figures.