It’s not surprising that marketers love IntelliTxt while many journalists despise it. AlwaysOn columnist Rafe Needleman called IntelliTxt “pretty bad news” from an ethics standpoint “because it blurs the line between editorial content, which readers should expect to be free of commercial influence, and advertising, which we know is paid-for and biased.” —Adam L. Penenberg —This Headline Is Not for Sale (Wired)
The “IntelliTxt” ad service inserts inline links into the body of a news article. I’d agree that this oversteps a line, potentially blurring what should be a pretty clear boundary between editorial content and paid advertising.
Similar:
I can’t fix this broken world but I guess I did okay using #blender3d to model this wedge-...
I’ve been teaching with this handout for over 25 years, updating it regularly. I just remo...
Sorry, not sorry. I don't want such friends.
Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the ...
I create five color variations of each #blender3d building I #design, and each of those ha...
Will Journalism Be a Crime in a Second Trump Administration?
Chuck, I don’t think Intelltxt is something that’s downloaded on your computer so it affects every page you view, but I can imagine sneakware that does something like that.
Actually, I just read the article more carefully, and my situation was something different because I wasn’t creating the links. But this is certainly inappropraitely blurring a boundary between advertising and editorial content.
I *think* my office computer was hit by something like IntelliTxt. I’d go to my blog and certain keywords (a movie title, the word “travel”) were highlighted with links to a movie website or a travel agent website. Very annoying and frightening.