It is (well, technically - not reasonably with push notifications being abused for ad delivery), but there's a lot of push content embedded in the pull content. For instance, when I visit HN, I pull information intentionally. If I follow a HN thread to an interesting article, I again pull information. But the ads that are in that article are definitely push.
'b0rsuk already linked my longer exploration of the topic. In a lot of places in that essay, you could replace "advertising" with "propaganda" with no loss in the argument. The way I see it, the two are different only in their goals (direct economic vs. political gain) - beyond that, they're the same thing.
I'd argue that even 'pulling information intentionally' is quite possibly more influenced by 'push' approaches than you might be aware of. While I think this is less of an issue on HN than on, say, Reddit, there's plenty of evidence that shows that it's quite possible to 'push' particular things to the front page, and if that's the well you're drawing from, it means you're affected by that.
EDIT: I've had this suspicion not so much with articles, but with comments. In particular political discussions I couldn't help but feel that there was deluge of comments arguing in favor of a particular position that struck me as manufactured.
It is (well, technically - not reasonably with push notifications being abused for ad delivery), but there's a lot of push content embedded in the pull content. For instance, when I visit HN, I pull information intentionally. If I follow a HN thread to an interesting article, I again pull information. But the ads that are in that article are definitely push.
'b0rsuk already linked my longer exploration of the topic. In a lot of places in that essay, you could replace "advertising" with "propaganda" with no loss in the argument. The way I see it, the two are different only in their goals (direct economic vs. political gain) - beyond that, they're the same thing.