Sort:  

They aren't funding it. They are just doing sponsored content for them and passing it off as third party validation

The same third parties that were okay with the 20 false witnesses on Hive?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism this cycle of yesmanism 'content' has been around for some time. It's not strictly unethical but it's like an infomercial. The main problem with is when there is a lack of transparency and they are major offenders. I've already noticed sponsored content on YouTube and YouTube requires their channel to be transparent about ads. Lots of channels I like do sponsored content like this and it's good as long as the consumers know the information is biased.

For reference this is what disclosing sponsored content looks like