Forbes isn't crafted by UX designers for reading pleasure, it's mangled by SEO experts to optimize user-hostile metrics for better placement in the Google.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I talk about aspect ratios with average consumers. Most people really do believe--probably through HDTV marketing--that wider screens are better. The lion's share of most people's time on the Internet is spent reading and scolling vertically, yet our devices are optimized for watching little sixty second movie clips at a time. Why wouldn't you want to make the 95% case more pleasurable at the expense of a few black bars on the top and bottom of your movie? Besides, most Internet videos need to be upscaled to fill the screen anyways, the detail is mostly interpolated anyhow.
IIRC This was Google's rationale in disallowing FB from importing contacts programmaticaly - FB wants to hoover contacts from everywhere but refuses to give data back.
This is SOP for tech journalism - throw out some inaccuracies to goad people into offering corrections, leaving some gaping holes, maybe a bit of ad hominem here and there to incite some rage, then corral people into your comment section for even more precioussss page views.
And the whining in this thread is deplorable.