I wonder if this was part of the reason that the Honeywell unit was recommended.
1: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
2: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/
- it is not very thorough or strict (rather leniant)
- it has a really poor selection of product categories
- besides a table of comparing the products features it has very little editorial buying guides that go more into detail.
In the case of the German magazine, when you read through some of the guides they can be quite entertaining, they slap the wrists of even the most powerful (german) companies if something breaks or if they falsely advertise features, or if there are critical design flaws in the product. I really wish CR would be as critical.
Although they do come up with the testing protocol, I'm pretty sure they don't do the testing themselves, and contract it out to specialist labs/testing companies (not a bad thing).
In general though, I agree it's easier to trust them, being an independent foundation, and getting no commission. Wirecutter got acquired in 2016, too.
I've also found it hard to get that German experience in other places. At the core, it's just down to how much/how many people care about something like quality. I think the (German) federal regulations and Stiftung Warentest are a result of this culture, but also make it easier to care about quality. It's a nice feedback cycle. The internet can substitute, but it's much more effort.
But for some products they had/have really weird metrics. E.g. an early smartphone would be punished because the battery was not replaceable, so a shitty feature phone took the crone (a little exaggerated). But still, they are focused on customers.
And a lot of the non-test editorial focuses on updating the consumer about warnings of faulty products, new regulations, test candidate updates, etc.
Obviously I can't vouch for the reliability of these organisations, but it may provide a starting point.
> In it, the company claims that The Wirecutter initially picked NextDesk as an editorial recommendation but later downgraded the recommendation after NextDesk declined to set up an affiliate-revenue agreement.
>We want to be clear: NextDesk’s claim is false, and its representation of our editorial decision-making process is factually inaccurate.
That claim as described is in fact TRUE. NextDesk was picked, then declined an affiliate-revenue agreement, then the recommendation was downgraded. That was the order of events. The rest I don't know, but it's pretty ridiculous to have that kind of error when these kinds of things often result in lawsuits.
I believe you're taking "after" in this sentence way too literally. The order of events isn't in dispute, what's at issue is whether Nextdesk's declination to enter a revenue sharing agreement caused Wirecutter to downgrade their ranking.
This comment by geofft convinced me Nextdesk (RIP) was in the wrong in this dispute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144078
Please be clear that I have no opinion on the truthfulness of the Wirecutter's response. Perhaps they're truly corrupt as all hell. I have no inside knowledge of how they operate.
However, it is absolutely clear you're reading something into the "after" that was not intended.
Instead, Wirecutter has made a factually incorrect statement. That Thing 1 happened, then Thing 2 happened, then Thing 3 happened is not in dispute. Also not in dispute: Thing 3 happened after Thing 2, which happened after Thing 1.
> In it, the company claims that The Wirecutter initially picked NextDesk as an editorial recommendation but later downgraded the recommendation after NextDesk declined to set up an affiliate-revenue agreement.
These are NextDesk's "claims". Wirecutter does not acknowledge them. According to Wirecutter this is what happened:
> Without the editorial team’s knowledge, NextDesk and our business team exchanged communications about setting up an affiliate agreement, and ultimately NextDesk declined to do so. That fact was never communicated to our editorial team until NextDesk itself made it known to them by email in November 2015, long after the new pick had been made.
Update: I'm not saying that I'm buying it; just clarifying their response.
That’s a overly specific denial, their saying the editorial team wasn’t informed. However, it doesn’t actually mean the events where unrelated, as long as the editorial team assumes no agreement was reached at which point nothing needs to be communicated.
If they had actually chosen a new pick before the deal was canceled they would have said that. Instead they refer to internal emails rather than the actual timing of the events. Which where #1 Pick, #2 request for a kickback, #3 no agreement reached, #4 new pick. They don’t even deny the actual content of the emails posted.
Looking at the email exchanges I can't honestly think this is a coincidence. I've been shaken down before (unrelated to this topic) and that's exactly how it looked. My own experience going through Wirecutter's reviews kind of supports the idea that it's "pay to win".
The phrasing implies a causal relationship, which is what Wirecutter disputes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408
I still use The Wirecutter, but in combination with other sources. I try to ask myself the question: do there appear to be competing products that wouldn't provide the affiliate revenue and therefore potentially be left out of the recommendations?
If I'm just deciding between a bunch of stuff on Amazon, then I assume there's no thumb on the scale.
I had the exact same issue with this humidifier. I got their upgraded version instead and that was better.
that's the most important. if you're looking for humidifier recommendations online and you find a community of people dedicated to humidifiers and there's one they recommend, then you're probably good. but there's no reason to trust any sort of general review site.
I blog and I take tips and Patreon and I sometimes hit the front page of HN. I make a pittance. This means that I have no real choice but to do other kinds of paid writing.
So I've thought long and hard about this and I've read the stuff on HN for years where people here don't want ads on the sites they visit, don't want paywalls, don't like content marketing and "pay for play" affiliate sites, etc etc etc.
And then also do not want to leave tips, support a person's Patreon, etc.
If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.
People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.
Make it possible for creatives to establish a middle class income. Stop telling people like me "Writing doesn't pay. You know that. Go get a real job." and find a way to make it pay such that doing the kind of writing you want to see is what gets rewarded and not sketchy garbage.
Writing does pay. It just pays for doing bad things and occasionally someone like J.K. Rowling gets stinking rich. It doesn't have to be that way. The world can decide it values good writing and that writers deserve a decent income and make choices to move the world in that direction.
[1] These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
It has decided. The sad truth is just that “good writing” just isn’t that valuable (as can be seen in how much people pay) if you don’t have some killer content to back it up. Good writing is requisite but not sufficient.
Just because something is a sustaining profession for a few people doesn’t mean it should be for everyone who does that. Do you realize how many photographers and other artists are in the same category?
> aka slave labor.
Something that is voluntary is - by definition - not slave labor. Nobody is forcing you to write.
There are people who effectively tweet full time. Is that “slave labor”? There are people to play games full time. Is that “slave labor”?
> And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
I hope you can see why.
Finally, people don’t get mad at writers because they want to make money. They get mad when the writers’ hide the fact that the money has tainted and shaped everything they are saying. A review site that is shilling products because of kickbacks corrupts the entire thing.
Can you imagine your friend recommending you a doctor and then you find out that the friend actually thinks the doctor is terrible but got $1k for the referral?
I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do.
That's a lousy argument. I use myself as an example for various reasons, but the reality is this a widespread problem and the state of journalism is a real problem, as I noted above.
I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. I've listened for years to the reasons people on HN do not like ads, do not like content marketing, etc. I removed ads from my sites and I don't typically use affiliate links.
I use myself as an example in hopes of elucidating the problem space and making it clear that I've studied this for years and I'm not blowing smoke. It's not just me. Writing generally has terrible pay even when it's good quality, etc.
Find some way to help writers pay their bills. The fact that writers exist and that's what they know and there aren't other middle class jobs with good benefits they can readily apply for is an actual issue which negatively impacts the world.
Gig work is up. Benefits are down. Lots of people are underpaid, underemployed, etc. It isn't just writers.
As for medicine, our medical system is probably even more messed up than what we do to writers. We actively incentivize a system of keeping you drugged up and limping along and yadda.
But I'm sure people are even less interested in hearing that than in hearing "If you don't want the shitty internet we've chosen to create, then make other choices that support some other outcome."
I don't intend to spend a whole lot of time arguing it. I've been here a lot of years. I know people don't like hearing this, quickly turn to dismissive personal attacks and ugly justifications. This is hardly some original rebuttal to my points.
I chose to say it anyway because I know most folks here are business people or IT people and haven't thought it through as much as I have. Each individual case of criticism of how people here don't want to support writers seems logical and not a problem in isolation. Most folks here are not on the receiving end going "Wait a minute. This is part of why I remain poor. There's no good means to get paid for what I do, though there is certainly demand for good writing."
This is me telling folks I write, the world makes it really hard for writers to make ends meet, that's part of why you get certain kinds of garbage on the internet.
People can do with that info what they choose, including nothing at all. I've occasionally said such things for years and it seems to make no difference.
But I will likely continue to say something from time to time anyway, even though people think it's appropriate to attack me instead of taking my points seriously. And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward."
They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery.
Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)
> Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated as property.
I implore you to read that article to grasp how horrific and life smothering actual slave labor is. You comparing writing voluntarily for free to that is offensive and smacks of first world entitlement. Perhaps you’re just trolling and I fell for it, but there are people surviving today in slave labor conditions that can only dream of quitting and spending their days arguing on the Internet (after they learn to read and write of course!). Until then they’ll just keep working 12 hour days of hard labor 7 days a week.
Wanting something for free is not the same thing as wanting slavery.
I use hacker news and read the comments here under the expectations that I will not pay for them and nobody will be writing them under coercion. The same applies to reading random blogs, etc. I don’t want to pay for that because it changes the entire nature of the relationship and I frankly just don’t care about any one particular piece of information.
I will pay for deep expertise (e.g. books or even substack). But as I said before, the ability to write is necessary, but the subject is what I’m paying for.
I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability. The same applies to most of her fans, as born to out by the tepid performance of the pseudonym book.
You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slavery and things far less horrifying, but it’s clear to me the OP was using it in that informal sense, and is probably quite aware slavery was a terrible thing.
GP is competing with people who write as a hobby rather than a profession. Responses above are about the crass hyperbole in GP, not misunderstanding the colloquialism.
Risible. What made that world if not the writing? The Harry Potter Wikipedia contains all the substantial plots, characters, worlds they inhabit. Same world. Pay for that, would you? Read that for pleasure, would you?
The story supposedly came to her in a flash "fully formed," I think on a train trip. And then she worked -- for a long time -- at trying to figure out how to tell that story well in written form.
Before the Harry Potter books, writing for children's books hardly paid anything. The series was so good that it changed the industry.
One of the things about good writing is that it's something even a poor person can do.
JK Rowling was on welfare while writing the first Harry Potter book, living in some kind of government housing for poor people I think. She would take her small child for a walk in a stroller and when the kid fell asleep she would go to coffee shop or eatery owned by friends and sit and write and joke that "When I'm famous, your place will get famous as the place I wrote the book."
Telling stories via film tends to take money for equipment if nothing else. Not paying independent writers adequately is not only a means to undermine democracy, it's also a form of class warfare.
Someone getting mad doesn't mean they disagree with you in that specific worst-case way.
> These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
If you give no money and demand they keep doing it, that's slave labor.
If you give no money and suggest that if they're unhappy they should stop doing it, it's not slave labor.
You're talking about the former, but I'm pretty sure people are actually saying the latter.
> If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.
> People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.
The problem with this reasoning is that you could replace "writer" with almost anything and make the same analogy. Even something like "hitman"! Having ethics doesn't mean you starve. It doesn't even significantly reduce the number of jobs you could take. Someone asking for ethics isn't asking for free labor.
This is some extraordinary specious reasoning, comparing "writer" with "hitman". How is "hitman" a creative force for good for society?
There is value in good writing. We haven't figured out how to judge and pay for it directly. It's not hard to see that if you continue to not pay for something, it doesn't get done. And one day a billionaire will pay for it, as some special project. Bezos owns the WaPo, I'm not making any statement about editorial influence, but is it a reach to surmise the WaPo is more hesitant in publishing negative articles about things in Bezos' influence? He can probably give the paper away for free, or subsidize it. Then you will say, is everything bought and paid for by the billionaires? Do I declare for the fiefdom of Elon or the barony of Zuckerberg? It's miserable. This was literally a comment on HN last week.
There's value in writing, music-making, art, cooking, photography. That the world doesn't pay well for these things, or the pay curve is depressed except for the very few, is not a convincing argument that they are inherently not valuable. The HN crowd is in the Maslow hierarchy to be able to afford to pay for it.
Pay for the things you want more of. If you don't pay for independent writing, someone else will pay for it, and it's not to support your interests.
The argument I quoted doesn't care if they are a creative force for good.
There are other reasons to want to pay writers, but those reasons don't conclude that it's slave labor to not want to pay. That's why I criticized the specific argument, not the value of writers in general.
I often get messages from readers saying that they depended on the content I write and read it like the bible. They used it to start a business or get a residence permit.
There's a donation button under every post, out of 100k visitors, around 3-6 will donate. I get more emails with extra questions than I get donations. When I patiently answer those, maybe half will donate 5-15€, and only since I added a line about it in my signature.
By comparison, affiliate income pays roughly 100x better if you stay neutral. If you can't get paid to sell your content, you get paid to sell your audience. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
I want to be uncompromisingly helpful, but the incentives are often at odds with this. It's also not surprising that many websites get greedy and fall apart.
If the maintainers of critical open source projects have to beg for enough money to keep the lights on, I don't think the problem is the lack of value, but the expectation that digital content is free.