I don't think this is any secret, and it's why I support outright banning these types of sites from HN submissions. They never have anything remotely unique or insightful, it's just dog piling on the controversy du jour, or expounding some extremely simplistic, cliche take on a complex topic . It's no coincidence that these are the worst offenders when it comes to paywalling and punishing adblock users either. Their entire business model is predicated on clickbait, so the actual content is secondary.
How do you know which sites sell product placement? Are you %100 sure that NYTimes does not? What about theoutline.com? Do you KNOW that they don't?
I happen to be familiar with the book publishing industry in my country, and I know that many journalists will publish an article on a book written by a publishing houses PR manager, just to save themselves the effort of writing an article themselves. And these are the biggest newspapers in the country.
