My original, editorialized title: Ars Technica Sells Out
Linking to this because I know people here read Ars Technica, and I totally didn’t become a subscriber three days before this was announced. Nope. No sir.
Condé Nast didn’t just sell access to their subsidiaries’ content, but also to the user generated content on those subsidiaries’ sites. That’s at issue here.
It also has a possibility to cause a conflict of interest for Ars Technica to write about OpenAI. That’s the second issue here.
And, as per the editor in chief, the money doesn’t go to Ars Technica, but to Condé Nast.
Yes they sold access to the user content we’ve generated after we explicitly agreed to the fact that they may do so. If you’ve chosen to not read the fine print when you created an account and created content for them, that’s sort of up to you tbh.
All media companies have owners and potential conflicts of interest. Arstechnica (Conde Nast) is no different. They’ve explicitly called out any potential for conflict of interest when it has arisen in the past.
Of course the money goes to Conde Nast, they own the brand Ars Technica and employ the people who write for it; that doesn’t mean it doesn’t figure on Ars Technica’s budget when Conde Nast decides whether to continue paying the salary of the staff.
