This is a rather interesting stance to take for a publication whose article quality has degraded and ad size has increased (thirty-eight trackers, including two from Facebook, detected by my adblocker when I tried to access the article) over the past five years to the point where I refuse to read them.
If you take a look at the homepage through the Wayback archive as it used to appear in 2005[1], 2011[2], and today, you'll see how content disappears and click-baity headlines rise over time.
The Atlantic is very much a part of the problem of "the race towards the bottom" the author describes, and instead of having a discussion about how to fix it and maybe trying different revenue models, it continues to un-ironically have share and tweet buttons at the top of this article.
Publishing pieces like this is one of the few ways the editorial side can put public pressure on the ad sales / revenue side to change or improve their behavior, particularly if other attempts have been ignored.
Writers may not be able to bite the hand that feeds them, but they can nibble.
Therefore, kudos to Atlantic for publishing the article, despite being immersed in that same Prisoner's Dilemma, or more specifically, Nash Equilibrium/first mover's dilemma.
If you take a look at the homepage through the Wayback archive as it used to appear in 2005[1], 2011[2], and today, you'll see how content disappears and click-baity headlines rise over time.
The Atlantic is very much a part of the problem of "the race towards the bottom" the author describes, and instead of having a discussion about how to fix it and maybe trying different revenue models, it continues to un-ironically have share and tweet buttons at the top of this article.
[1] https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20050210070148/theatlantic.... [2]https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20110731234233/http://www.t...