Well, what about a blind user, visiting the site with a text-to-speech browser? How is that person going to know that the links at the bottom of the page are non-editorial without the spatial clues that you and I have? How does a search engine bot know? And if a webmaster can get away with putting paid links there, why can't the webmaster put them in the middle of the text so you can't visually discern that they are not editorial? And if some small blogger can do it, what will stop a major media provider that is trusted by a large segment of the population from doing the same thing? Under the principle of universal application of the law, you can't change the standard based on how reputable the source is.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.