Financial Times Tries To Explain Away Link Spam By Claim It's Prettier

from the ah,-yes,-the-aesthetic-excuse dept

We were pretty surprised last week when it came to light last week that the Financial Times had sold invisible links to a link spammer. While some smaller, struggling sites, had been outed recently doing the same thing, it seemed like someone at the Financial Times would know better. Apparently not. While the publishers eventually did pull the links, it wasn't before they had a spokesperson go out and try to defend the hidden links because they looked much nicer: "They just didn't want to clog up the real estate with an overt link." Oh, riiiiight. Because advertisers are really careful about not "clogging up" the real estate of the publications in which they advertise. And it never (not once) occurred to someone at the Financial Times to ask why an advertiser wouldn't want their link to be seen? This isn't that complex: if the purpose of a paid ad obviously has nothing to do with attracting a human, it's probably link spam.

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