Wirecutter CEO Sells Top Reviews for Kickbacks a Pay to Play Strategy Exposed

I'm not exactly sure what to make of this article.

First of all, it's not current -- it's about an exchange of e-mails nearly a decade ago, in 2014. With the founder of Wirecutter (Brian Lam) -- but then the NYT bought Wirecutter in 2016 and installed a new leader in 2017 (David Perpich).

And second, the term "kickbacks" sounds bad, but they're using it as a synonym for "affiliate links" here, and Wirecutter has always been 100% open that they make their money through affiliate links. This is not news.

Third, I can't find any actual evidence in the e-mail chain that the lack of affiliate links changed their recommendation. Seems like they had a pretty good reason for changing their recommendation -- that their new recommendation was $1,000 cheaper.

I don't know why this is being posted now?

This post by the company (target?) of Wireguard's scheme has some valuable details, but I think it focuses excessively on "kickbacks" (which, in this context, are ordinary affiliate agreements).

The more egregious behavior here is that Wireguard seemingly intentionally avoided reviewing newer versions of a product as part of an attempt to apply pressure on the product's company to enter an affiliate agreement. When it became clear that the company wouldn't do so, they essentially allowed their review to become "stale" in order to make it's (affiliate agreement covered) replacement appear more organic.

That, at least to me, is more scandalous than the "kickback" part. Especially given that Wireguard has always been somewhat transparent about relying on affiliate agreements.

Edit: Wireguard appears to have written a response disputing that behavior: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/

I have no skin in this game, but it's important to note this is from 2015 and The New York Times didn't buy Wirecutter until 2016, and that CEO is long gone.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. The corruption shows in the quality of their reviews, which has decreased significantly. The Atlantic has a story on it: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/wirec...

(2014)

Some older threads,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408 (2018 / 43 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719 (2020 / 27 comments)

(2017) or some other year seemingly? The emails start in 2013 and end in 2017. I used to use wire cutter a ton and found the content reliable, but this year my own research would sometimes disagree with theirs. I also found the brand of towels and found and I loved through wire cutter kept their brand but completely changed into a cheap product for the same price.

I’d expect NYT to disallow kickbacks/etc, though the acquisition was 7 years ago so who knows.

NY Times response: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/

Very naive of the desk manufacturer. Affiliate programs can drive sales to you, without much impact on your margins. I assume the GP is fairly large for these high-ticket items.

Consumer Reports doesn't have this issue I believe. The write-ups aren't as good but they've been around for a while.

First, as others have noted, this article is a decade old.

Second, That doesn’t matter because the wider context is affiliate advertising. Brian Lam, then editor of Wirecutter, emailed xdesk asking them to work out an affiliate advertising relationship - something that Amazon had been using to great success by 2012. It’s a bit disingenuous of xdesk to claim they didn’t understand the request.

This isn’t news in 2023, and it was barely news in 2012 - xdesk clearly was spinning the narrative in their favor. Affiliate advertising works, Wirecutter has _always_ made it clear that is their business model - I’ve been following them since Brian Lam moved from Gizmodo - and this has always felt like sour grapes to me. Essentially, Wirecutter found a cheaper desk 95% as good as the xdesk product, and recommended that. That is how Wirecutter works today and how it worked back then.

I find it a little strange that xdesk is so staunchly opposed to affiliate programs. I can see now they would see this as a "kickback" scheme though I don't know I personally agree with that view, at least if the program is provided universally (like Amazon's).

Brian was understandably not in an enviable position, it's hard to operate a business with no income.

I guess the biggest thing for me is it undermines what Wirecutter is all together. It's one thing to ask for an affiliate program. It's another thing to stop accepting review models and lead your readers astray with not actually attempting to provide the best information.

I feel like in the last few years Wirecutter has gotten worse. Less empirical, less thorough in their product line surveys. What can you expect if you try to review the best of everything, I guess?

Very strange article.

> This was the first time our company had ever been asked to pay someone for reviewing our product. We thought it was odd, and had to research what “affiliate program” actually meant.

This seems to show the fundamental misunderstanding, and this is followed by a series of emails asking if they offer an affiliate program, followed by "we refused to pay."

Looks like nextdesk got free advertising and traffic and didn’t appreciate it enough. It’s astounding that after enjoying it for many years and refusing to share any profits from that traffic they still have something to complain about.

The article writer is confusing Amazon affiliate schemes with those of specific companies. Their assertion that they didn't have a direct affiliate relationship with the competitor is true.

The gig was up when some of their recs were decidedly subpar. Thinking of their BT workout headphone recs that sounded absolutely awful even considering their form factor and size.

This goes beyond “meh” sound is in the realm of so bad I need to return them no matter the price.