Originally Posted by sbm12

There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Like most marketing/advertising, when used in context they are subtle, helpful to the consumer (reader in this case) and everyone wins. When they start to skew the content, however, it becomes a more challenging situation. When, as a reader, I have to stop to consider whether the information is being shared because it is good for me or because it is good for the author that's more of a problem.

There was a period of time when the revenue side of the points & miles blogging worlds wasn't such big business. It was easier then to trust that the information you were getting was reasonably unbiased, or at least not motivated by the financial gain of the author. That is a much riskier assumption today vis a vis CC information.

There is also the part where content is being "invented" as a means to push more CC links. It isn't compelling content without the blatant advertising layered in on top. Too much of that and the average value of the content overall goes down to a level such that it stops being worth parsing through chaff to find the wheat.