Sneaky text link ads

I have just noticed a new form of advertising online that I don’t like at all: Sites putting ads on words in forums as regular underline links.

I know advertising pays for the web but this kind of advertising devalues the humble link. Normally links are very useful for scanning a page and for finding further information that the article writer thought would be useful. But now are we to filter out the useful link for fear it may be an ad, just like we don’t look at graphics on screens assuming its an ad. It’s a shame.

The offending site.


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