omg

there are three questions that anyone must address in any discussion of the ethics of compensation for review. [...] [3] How well does your audience understand the implications of this misalignment?

That’s the real toughie because here disclosure is a mandatory first step but it’s often not enough because by and large there are massive gaps in the media literacy of many people. That’s why hoaxes, fake news and urban legends propagate – because criticality of media and information is not baked into the bones of the majority of the population. If it was we wouldn’t be having debates about the reality of climate change, the authenticity of the moon landings, or the safety of vaccinations. If you have strong views on any of these subjects and would like to discuss them may I suggest you drop me a mail at [email protected].

[against my better judgment I kept reading.]

As a populace we are not sufficiently critical of ‘facts’ by themselves, much less the complex set of interrelationships and compromising factors that go into their production. Some of these are overt influences, such as ‘we will pay you to produce favourable coverage’. Some of them are more subtle, such as ‘let’s pay someone we don’t need to coerce to provide favourable coverage’. Most people directly impacted by these forces aren’t fully conscious of them so it’s a lot to assume that those at several levels removed would be more aware. Don’t get me wrong – a lot of people are very aware of these issues. I would assume as a reader of an article like this you’re among them – after all, you need to have a certain interest in the ethics of disclosure to have even read this far. However, many people aren’t.

Annnd that's where I stopped.

What's the goal here? Are we the ignorant masses needing a lesson in ethics comprehension? Obviously not. The article concedes that its audience is not the "majority of the population." It completely moots this third point of How well does your audience understand the implications of this misalignment? since the implied audience is boardgamers, which the article anticipated.

So I agree with a lot of users here - this is verbose. But there are deeper issues at hand - its rhetorical foundations don't hold up to scrutiny. It's hard to justify actually reading this article when one of its fundamental points is literally we need to discuss if the audience "gets it" immediately followed by oh, yeah, you're the audience. You play boardgames and don't buy into faked moon landings. You get it."