So, I'm sorry, I used to have a very high opinion of the NYT, now I just don't. The consequence of their model wasn't better journalism, it was polarization-as-a-service (I didn't invent that term for them). Preaching to the choir means people in the choir very excited to sponsor you, thinking that you are reaching someone who is undecided (they're not).
I agree there's a big problem, but NYT does not seem to be a good example of a solution. If ethical ads resulted in more NYT-like behavior, given our current state of nearly-violent-polarization, I can't say I'm sure it sounds like an improvement. More polarized (and polarizing) news is definitely not what we need.
I have some sincere questions. Can you elaborate on what you mean by polarization as a service? Is this unique to NYT or can the same be said of other media? Does that include social media (where people like to say polarizing echo chambers form)? Are you referring to the article's argument that ad tech promotes click bait which is polarizing? Where do you get your news?
"...unique to NYT"? Not unique to them but they seem to be one of the worst cases, in part because of how far they've fallen but also they seem to be an extreme case.
"include social media"? FB and Twitter definitely also have echo chambers, but they don't really pretend to be otherwise, whereas news sources should be.
"Where do you get your news?" The email newsletter 1440 seems to do a decent job of curating; even if the sources they use are polarized, they are picking out the more informative ones for me so I don't have to dredge through a bunch of ideological preaching.
Every single one of their links is behind a redirection service. It's possibly their own service. But that's not a whole lot of difference. It's kind of ironic that you suggested this in a thread about invasive targeting.
This also precludes me from evaluating the quality of their sources - at least not without clicking through a buttload of redirects. F that. I'll assume they've got something to hide.
I agree there's a big problem, but NYT does not seem to be a good example of a solution. If ethical ads resulted in more NYT-like behavior, given our current state of nearly-violent-polarization, I can't say I'm sure it sounds like an improvement. More polarized (and polarizing) news is definitely not what we need.