It has been pointed out that the evil hand has been extended to CNN and USA Today due to the problem of a large number of low-quality pages borrowing the names of famous news sites for affiliate purposes.
Regarding the case of Forbes Marketplace, a separate company to which the economic magazine Forbes has granted the right to use the Forbes trademark, mass-producing low-quality content for affiliate marketing purposes by taking advantage of the Forbes name value, it has now been discovered that CNN and USA Today may also be suffering from the parasitism of Forbes Marketplace.
CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them
Forbes Marketplace is a company whose CEO is Thomas Callahan, who has launched several websites under the name of Forbes and is earning revenue through affiliate marketing. It is not completely unrelated to Forbes, as Forbes has obtained the right to use the trademark, Forbes owns 39.53% of Forbes Marketplace's stock, and Forbes has secured one seat on the board of directors of Forbes Marketplace.
However, given the mass production of low-quality content, Lars Lofgren, who investigated the case, pointed out that 'I don't think Forbes is vetting the articles on Forbes Marketplace,' and argued that publishing third-party pages without any first-party oversight could violate Google's spam policy ' misuse of site reputation .' The revenue that Forbes Marketplace earned through affiliates was so huge that there were even suspicions that Forbes Marketplace was considering acquiring the original Forbes.
There is a company that is taking advantage of Forbes' high search rankings to create affiliate articles, earning 500 billion yen a year and even considering acquiring Forbes - GIGAZINE
Lofgren pointed out that 'Forbes Marketplace may also be under its control at news sites CNN and USA Today,' and gave some evidence to support this.
CNN operates an affiliate site called 'CNN Underscored ( https://edition.cnn.com/cnn-underscored )'.
Among the several pages, including fashion (CNN Underscored Fashion) and beauty (CNN Underscored Beauty), Lofgren's eye was on finance (CNN Underscored Money). What made CNN Underscored Money different from the other pages was the design of its home page. Below is the design of CNN Underscored Money, which has more tags in the navigation bar, a different design for the 'Sign In' button, and a different font for the text about the disclaimer.
There are also subtle differences in the source code, for example, Google Tag Manager is installed on CNN Underscored Money but not on the regular CNN Underscored, and a tool called Optimizely is not installed on CNN Underscored Money. These kinds of tools are usually installed consistently across the entire site, so it seems odd to have different pages.
Next, Lofgren looked at privacy policies. If you access the privacy policy from the CNN Underscored main site or from a page with the same design as the main site, such as beauty or fashion, you will arrive at
On the other hand, if you access it from the CNN Underscored Money page, you will see a completely different privacy policy . This page states, 'This information is different from the CNN.com privacy policy,' and 'We will explain Solutions Underscored, LLC, which is related to CNN Underscored Money,' making it clear that CNN Underscored Money is operated by a separate company that is seemingly unrelated to CNN.
After examining the business registration for Solutions Underscored, LLC, Lofgren found that the company is headquartered in Georgia and lists a manager and approver named 'Thomas Callahan,' who shares the same name as the CEO of the Forbes Marketplace.
Based on the above, Lofgren said, 'It's possible that this is a different Thomas Callahan, or that it's the same person who is managing CNN Underscored Money for legitimate reasons. But my guess is that Forbes Marketplace wasn't satisfied with Forbes alone and approached CNN, and CNN agreed to the deal for reasons we don't understand. And Forbes Marketplace went to extraordinary lengths to make its site look like CNN Underscored. As a result, it has been able to operate CNN Underscored Money with almost no oversight from CNN headquarters. I don't understand why CNN would let another company operate its own site under its name. Please let me know if I'm wrong.'
The number of visits from searches for CNN Underscored Money has been steadily increasing since 2022, and since the summer of 2024, the number of visits has exceeded 600,000 per month.
It has also been pointed out that the same problem may be occurring at
Hover over the email icon on the editor's page to reveal their email address.
Here's a closer look. It was a domain managed by Forbes Marketplace.
'USA Today Blueprint editors use Forbes Marketplace email addresses because they are Forbes Marketplace employees, not USA Today employees,' Lofgren said.
The email address icon disappeared after Lofgren's post went viral, but it appears there was a mistake in the source code that meant it was still there. At the time of writing, the existence of the email address could not be confirmed.
USA Today Blueprint traffic also sees steady growth from 2022 to 2024.
Finally, Lofgren cited a line from USA Today's ethical code of conduct that reads, 'We have no outside interests, investments or business relationships that might undermine the credibility of our news reporting,' and concluded, 'What a load of horseshit.'
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