Paid for what, the article? The author has been around the ZFS community for a long time and helps tons of people (including me) for free. He’s not schilling for WD if that’s what you’re suggesting.

There is no evidence of anything like that, and you can even reproduce the results yourself.

Dodgy relationships between companies and journalists in tech are not unheard of, but they need evidence.

… how much WD paid for an article that makes them look like shit? What sort of stuff do you pay people to write about you?