That story about the Stanford rapist victim’s letter? Here’s a screenshot of the story from The Guardian:
Whoops! I guess we forgot to cut out the Xfinity ad on this woman’s devastating letter. Oh, well. Kick back and watch some TV on Xfinity. Like you have a fucking choice of providers anyway.
Here’s where Vogue talks about it. Oh, and there’s an ad for Dolce and Banana. That’s fun. Keeping it light.
Here’s the Buzzfeed version, a full reprint of the victim’s letter. Mercifully ad-free, although they seem more than happy to have you share this Buzzfeed content on the social media platform of your choice, bringing your pals back to good ol’ Buzzfeed. Nearly 7 million views so far. If Buzzfeed earns 1/10th of a penny for every hit, I hope they’re sharing half the profits with this woman. Seems fair, right?
I do agree with Vox in saying that the new Starbucks cold brew vanilla thing is pretty tasty. Maybe have one and then you’ll feel better about the letter you just read. And bonus points for turning the letter into a bulleted list. TL;DR, amirite?
I don’t know who does the ads at Salon.com, but they’ve paired this video of an anchor reading the letter with an anime-based fighting game. This may be a crossover audience I’m not aware of, but I think someone has made an error of some kind here. Besides, you know, the moral error of making money from a rape victim’s letter and using it as content on your site.
Our friends at Slate knocked it up a notch. I was all ready to hear about the summary of rape culture in one brief statement, but then I was treated to an audio-enabled ad for Noble Energy. Which, if you life where I live or somewhere like it, you know what they’re all about. Or there’s MoneyGram down below that. That’s a boring, visual-only ad that you can just try and ignore, though. Amtrak, Qualcomm. All these before the article’s end.
And HuffPo weighs in with almost the exact same headline AND the same ad layout. The ads are slightly smaller. Out of respect, I suppose.
Mother Jones and snowboarding and rape. Also, second outlet sharing the news as read by an anchor from another outlet.
This is my first encounter with The Frisky, where the only thing bigger than the scoops is the advertisement real estate.
Here’s our heroes over at Vice! Surely they’ll treat this issue with respect. I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as this pop-up video ad for Vodka finishes.
This woman’s letter to the world regarding her rape is content for every news site you love. For them, it’s clicks. For them, this is revenue. They’re turning a profit every time we do this, every time we get whipped up and share things like this without accounting for the source and the way the content is being presented.
The victim gave her consent for Buzzfeed to reprint her letter. And they were halfway to right by not cramming in a bunch of ads. But it’s still not all the way right. There are still 3 stories about this on Buzzfeed’s front page right now, 2 of which are nested within ads. The story still displays the option to click for FUN QUIZZES at the top.
Of course there should be platforms to spread things like this. I’m not trying to silence anyone. But should someone be pocketing money from it? Should someone get paid, either directly by ads or indirectly by moving traffic their way, to put this on their site? Or should they do it because they think it’s right? And should they find a way to do it right?