As mentioned, it's a remnant ad network. As for why they're doing it, well, look in a mirror. Advertising has turned, as the saying goes, print dollars into online nickels. If you wish to have free online content, something has to pay the bills.
Ads pay my salary. I agree. Someone has to pay for the free content everyone is getting. I will say that we try to created interesting and meaningful ads, not just garbage. We are one of the good guys, at least we try to be.
Honestly, ad devs are some of the savviest javascript developers out there. We have a lot of constraints and need to move fast and scrappy on a daily basis.
I won't be doing it forever however it's one of those things that holds my interest until i get in my car and go home for the day.
* I work for a very large company that own radio & publishing properties.
I don't agree it's the fault of the mirror. A tradition jam newspaper can be seen as a vertically integrated article aggregator and curation site.
So the model for reddit and HN is to charge for access, and pass on to the articles clicked through to. However in that game, I would pay NYT a long time before I paid Reddit.
But if you got the editors and writers in NYT and said do Reddit /r but your upvotes are worth 10x or 1000x then essentially I would be asking for curation by the editors, not production and curation
Production will be valuable - but the curation is the secret sauce.
