Technically what you’re doing is ad hominem—invalidating the arguments of the post by attacking what the author does for a living. It’s not even necessary that someone who makes (possibly extra) money publishing insights is out for validation—there really are just people who are willing to pay for insights and he’s simply fulfilling a demand. Anything else beyond seeing what he does as simply business is pure speculation.
I disagree. It’s not an ad hominem because I’m not attacking what he does for money, as a side hustle or otherwise, or him as a person. I hope he is successful.
What I am doing is pointing out the hypocrisy in an argument that puts all social media usage into two buckets (with zero nuance), with one of them being about validation, in a post and in a platform where the author is seeking validation himself. The critique is squarely at the argument, not the person.
I think he was pointing to a possible conflict of interest between the author and the message, being an ad hominem attack focuses strictly on the author, here there's more in the picture being evaluated.
