Wired's recent “native ad” for Volkswagen vanishes as emissions scandal worsens

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Websites take a risk any time they accept advertisements from sketchy companies with shady management and iffy accounting practices.

I look forward to seeing how BB covers the inevitable StackSocial scandal/meltdown…

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Too big to be accountable?

Shouldn’t all involved lose their pensions as well as their jobs?

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I suppose the company could - reasonably quickly - be taken over by a consortium of the customer-owners and truly become the People’s Car Company. All subsequent software and engineering to be developed as open-source non-patentable technologies, with that company-doesn’t-have-to-sate-its-shareholders doodah clause.

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VW just need to be more selective about where they show their advertising.

There is the ‘rolling coal’ carbon-is-my-culture market segment; but not being a US automaker is going to make them tricky to crack. They’d also need to adjust their US lineup from being so heavy on small cars and go all-in on pickups.

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Hmm. Is there any way for groups of shareholders to hold a corporation accountable? Y’know, like getting together to investigate the operating procedures and ensuring their investment is being used sanely and ethically? Some kind of community-power which would enable them to entreaty the company to use cash flow properly?

If they want the profits, then they are just as responsible for letting their chosen company run wild.

Kind of like how citizens of a country are all responsible for their genocidal leaders in the event of a war. You have to hold your ‘leaders’ responsible or you are just as much to blame. And I guess it would usually help to do this before there are damning revelations about your chosen group helping to destroy the planet.

I can’t help wondering what would have happened if all the work that went into creating the fake-out component had been applied to finding new ways to reduce emissions instead.

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I’m trying to think of an American brand that might want a sponsor that spits in the face of the EPA, treats environmental concerns as stumbling blocks in the way of the heavenly ascension of profits, and considers “collaborated during the holocaust” a bonus…

Why would they keep the corners on, though, when cutting them off makes your box slide sooo much easier…Sounds like you want them to work harder, not smarter

American Apparel ads used to appear here all the time and they had financial troubles, sketchy employment practices, and a long string of sexual harassment charges against the founder.

Haha precisely - considering the overpriced (mostly) garbage that BB is promoting in their StackSocial store, I find it hilarious to see this article here.

As do many companies that advertise both on BB and across the web - I generally don’t ascribe endorsement of those ads by the website, they get served ads.

Stacksocial’s arrangement with BB is significantly more of an endorsement/symbiotic relationship, where BB is putting their brand on that piece of crap product. If I start seeing BB-branded American Apparel t-shirts, I would agree.

Fair point, but if they were working smarter, they wouldn’t have considered an emissions test just an abstract regulatory detail, to be met with the “right” numbers, as opposed to what those numbers are supposed to represent.

It’s the whole “study to the test” attitude that bothers me. Although VW must take responsibility on this one, there’s something about it that smacks of outsourcing to me – that level of abstraction, the lack of insight into what the tests are for. I hope at some point there’s a nice long account of how the software made it from the boardroom to the factory floor.

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