Bonum Certa Men Certa

Linux Magazine is Run by Advertisers, Not GNU/Linux (and It's Hardly the Exception)

Big corporations are buying and silencing (muzzling) voices in the GNU/Linux community

Advertising



Summary: Advertising is big money -- so big in fact that publications no longer care what's true but instead focus on what text brings them more income (from advertisers, of course)

A LONG time ago when I was a Ph.D. student an editor approached me to write articles for his site, Datamation. At first I was paid 50 or 100 dollars per article; later on it was 200. Not a bad way to help pay tuition fees as a relatively poor student. But later on Datamation removed things that I wrote about Microsoft. It wasn't hard to see that Microsoft had become an advertiser (competitive ads, targeting articles about GNU/Linux in order to promote Windows). After a while I stopped writing there and put all my articles here in Techrights (including all those I had published in Datamation, as I was permitted to do after a number of months). That was more than a decade ago. I stopped writing there in 2007 or 2008. Since then Techrights has published well over 20,000 articles, mostly articles about patents. My lesson from that experience at Datamation, however, was valuable; I became well aware of the role of advertisers, e.g. in censorship or at least self-censorship, imposed in a top-down fashion (like publisher/editor removing paragraphs/articles). Looking at Datamation earlier this month, it seemed like many of the articles there are now composed by a longtime (over a decade) Microsoft booster, who used to promote Microsoft products and bash GNU/Linux, mostly at IDG (now Chinese-owned and barely active anymore).



"The only time they wrote about me it was an attack on me and on Techrights."Techrights never had any sponsors. It doesn't want any. Sponsors can be toxic to objectivity, including self-assessment or introspection (for example, a GNU/Linux site criticising GNU/Linux itself).

"You could discuss how Linux Magazine has been nothing but advertiser-led since 2001," one reader urged us the other day, "maybe even earlier!"

It was about an article rejection at Linux Magazine back in 2001. "If I recall [correctly] it was 2001," said the reader, "I was at Linux Biz Expo when Linus was still with Transmeta and other players - maddog, miguel Dirk, etc were speaking. Emmett Plant was the Editor in chief. I had pictures, I had interviews, I had a great article. But the ADVERTISERS... were not interested, at least that is what Emmett was told. The article -- Globalization of Linux -- never published. Maybe Larry (vaforge) was running Linux.com at that time."

"Content," explained this reader, was "not published because of advertisers."

So surely this phenomenon is rather common. Now consider the impact of "LF Event" sponsorships on the Linux Foundation and Linux.com. The only time they wrote about me it was an attack on me and on Techrights. The theme was a familiar one: try to paint those whom you don't agree with using the "conspiracy theories" or "paranoia" brush. The person who wrote that article now works for Linux Magazine.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries