It has been more than 24 hours since the bill banning Dahua and Hikvision was signed into law. Despite that, no US industry publication, except IPVM, have published on it.
That's unbelievable. It is clearly news, is unprecedented and impacts 2 of the biggest companies in the industry. Any publication knows the reader interest is going to be extremely high. Industry dysfunction aside, IPVM should not complain - we had 15,000+ reads on our post in the first 24 hours alone.
Advertisers Count More Than Readers
For industry publications, the lesson is obvious - protecting advertisers is far more important than attracting readers. You would think that a rational publication, taking advertisements, would love news like this since it generates great reads which can be sold to advertisers.
The problem is that publications are so beholden to advertisers and so (unfortunately correctly) afraid of advertisers pulling their payments that they self-censor themselves on even obvious critical news.
And when they do publish on negative news impacting their top advertisers, it is framed to minimize damage or paint them as victims. For example, when SSI covered the initial House passage, they titled it "Hikvision, Dahua Swept Up in Potential Sales Ban to U.S. Government" as if Hikvision and Dahua were incident children caught in some tragedy. And when SIW covered the Senate passage, they titled it "Hikvision, Dahua respond to Senate vote", obscuring what the vote was about or even that it passed.
While it is good for IPVM (we have long since established ourselves as the industry's premier news source and reinforce it with events like this), it is bad for the industry at large for companies like Dahua and Hikvision, even after a US government ban, to be so powerful over industry publications.
