Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by tptacek on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @01:50AM (#25925094)

That stories from "Newsweek" are routinely submitted here and often voted onto the front page, despite "Newsweek" being essentially an SEO scam.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by mellosouls on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @08:14AM (#25927823)

That we only seem to be reading this terrible story in Newsweek (despite the facts being there to see) suggests then that "SEO scams" are doing a better job than mainstream journalists in some cases.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by sellyme on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @07:19PM (#25936236)

I suppose that depends on whether you think the job of journalists is to report news, or to generate clicks.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by mellosouls on Thursday January 28, 2021 @11:50AM (#25944697)

How is somebody being fired for this reason not news?

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by forgingahead on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @01:52AM (#25925102)

Are the facts in the story false?

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by marton78 on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:27AM (#25925313)

The claim is probably "they're likely false, please exercise caution"

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by tptacek on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:41AM (#25925399)

I have no idea if they're false. It's a phoned-in article about a series of tweets. I wrote a comment about "Newsweek", not about the particulars of the post. "Newsweek" is essentially an SEO scam, is the point I'm making, the same way we'd point it out if a scraped blog post was blogspam.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by snoshy on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @03:42AM (#25925735)

Public service at its finest in the modern world, little thanks for the perseverance it can take to drive it through. Kudos.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by Guthur on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @04:09AM (#25925909)

Purchasing a brand is hardly a scam. You might not like who bought it but it's quite common to buy brands.

To be honest I have no idea who Newsweek were or are and if they stopped being the original group 7-8 years ago it hardly seems like you could maintain any brand loyalty if you were eroding it with wrong doing over that whole time.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by pornel on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @06:45AM (#25927061)

If you buy a brand and quietly change what it stands for, I'd say it is scammy. Consumers to think they're getting one thing, but you give them another.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by pvg on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @06:27AM (#25926925)

To be honest I have no idea who Newsweek were or are

These things seem germane to the discussion, though.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by Guthur on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @06:41AM (#25927034)

Not at all. The OP was maintaining because the brand changed hands that it was somehow a scam, that feels quite disingenuous.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by kasey_junk on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @07:58AM (#25927644)

Newsweek was a bastion of print media for decades in the US. It would be similar to someone turning the BBC into a Christian news organization.

The organization that took over Newsweek did it with the intention to improve their own credibility by banking on the name, while removing all the people and processes that built that credibility in the first place. If it’s not an outright scam it’s certainly approaching it.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by pvg on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @12:08PM (#25930698)

that feels

How would you assess the accuracy of that feeling without knowing or finding out about the facts being discussed? You're saying 'I know nothing about this at all but that isn't germane because the OP is giving me a disingenuous vibe'. It's a curiously strident, stridently incurious position.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by tclancy on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @10:05AM (#25929022)

Consider the anti-tracking browser extensions that gain enough popularity they get bought by ad tracking companies. Is that also legitimate?

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by Guthur on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @04:22PM (#25934122)

Sure it is if it's a legal transaction, I'm really not sure why it's so difficult to understand.

The problem here is that many of you are projecting your own brand of morals on these deals, and many people may not share that perspective.

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Re:Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab by specialist on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @11:12AM (#25930002)

FWIW, I recently learned that Wikipedia has list of perennial sources. The entry for Newsweek 2013-present says "not reliable".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

Maybe aggregators like HN can leverage this list, like a pre-filter for the moderators.

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