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Comment by phyzome | Hacker News Reader

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That was not a VW ad and we were not paid by VW for that or any other story". I find it interesting that they only denied the ad part, not the press release part...

As I mention in another comment, https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/01/exclusive-volvo-tells-u... is in a similar vein.

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"I'm a professional shopper, and here's what I say you should buy" because someone sent me a free version of it or just straight copy to use in my listicle.

It is sad that this is what journalism has come to. It is even sadder that it works.

Wirecutter was a good premise, but now it and everyone copying it are untrustworthy.

It feels like the human version of AI hallucination: saying what they think is convincing without regard for if it's sincere. And because it mimics trusted speech, it can slip right by your defense mechanisms.

Any good idea will be copied by those with lesser motives.

And any good execution will be sold off to those who don't care about your motives.

Wirecutter still seems pretty good for stuff you aren't really expert on or have strong opinions about. But that was true of Consumer Reports in the old days too. Not saying it's perfect but, especially for low-value purchases, you probably won't go too far wrong.

I think it's smart to be skeptical of any "review" site that depends on affiliate links for income. The incentive is no longer to provide advice, it's to sell you something. Anything. Click the link. Good. Now buy something. That's right. Add it to your basket. It doesn't matter what you buy. Yes, higher priced items are better. Checkout. We get our sweet kickback, nice.

Unfortunately, every review site uses affiliate links. Even organizations with very high ethical standards like Consumer Reports use them now. At least CR still gets most of its income from subscriptions and memberships. I guess that's something.

Wirecutter is part of NYTimes and depends on crosswords for income.

I haven't always agreed with them and sometimes the articles are clearly wrong because they're several years old, but they're usually good.

(I think I last seriously disagreed with them about a waffle maker.)

Wirecutter does an interesting thing where - I don't necessarily disagree with their review of the products they chose. But I'm baffled why they didn't choose to review the overwhelmingly most popular item in the category. Those omissions are what seems the most suspect to me.

Sometimes at the bottom of reviews they mention a lot more products than appeared in the main review. Not always though. Not disagreeing with the decline in reliability but just stating because this can be easy to miss and when it is done I do find it helpful.

Wirecutter has stated in the past, maybe it was on their podcast, that they get a lot of their income from affiliate links. They have done some fairly suspicious things like their “gift guide”s for Christmas which are little more than long lists of products with affiliate links. Same for their “sales guide” for Black Friday, and there have been other cases. That doesn’t mean their reviews are bad, I just approach them with a certain amount of skepticism.

Seems in line with their original purpose still. They seemed to always want to be a source to suggest a product that is good enough for a consumer, to help avoid decision paralysis, and avoid fake products that are both expensive and flawed. Suggesting a list of gifts that are suitable and not deeply flawed is exactly what a lot of people are probably looking for around Black Friday.

> Yes, higher priced items are better.

This is the real reason I don't trust sources that make money off affiliate links. The incentive is to recommend the more expensive items due to % kickback.

I'm willing to believe it was not an ad.

They are just lazy / understaffed. It's hard to make $ in journalism. A longstanding and popular way to cut corners is to let the industry you cover do most of the work for you. You just re-package press releases. You have plausible content for a fraction of the effort / cost.

Unfortunately, government is like that were most bills are written by lobbyists and barely if at all modified by the actual congress critter sponsoring it.

I think that's much more common in state government (in the US).

Most bill in the US Congress are not actually meant to pass, they are just (often poorly written) PR stunts.

Agreed. I don't think they're lying about it not being a paid advertisement. Like I said, they didn't deny the press release part.

Reminds me of Quanta's egregious article Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer[0], a blatant ad for CalTech/Harvard/MIT. One where even an article posted the same day by the NYT[1] quoted Scott Aaronson[2] questioning the sensationalism, yet took months for Quanta to post an editor's note... Interestingly even ArsTechnica was even able to fight the hype posting only a few days later[3].

I really think a lot of these organizations have lost touch. The entire premise of their existence relies upon the trust of the readers. That trust relies upon the idea that the writers are consolidating and summarizing expert opinions. Any egregious error like this (especially when they are slow to correction) pose a death sentence to them. It's a questionable error like they were rushing to get first to print (having early access even) yet didn't seem to consult experts other than those on the team.

I think unfortunately this type of pattern is becoming more common and I've defintiely noticed it on sites like ArsTechnica too. Maybe it's that my technological expertise has increased and so I can more easily detect bullshit, but I think the decline is real and not unique to ArsTechnica nor Quanta. It feels like the race to the bottom is only accelerating and there are larger ranging impacts than just the death of specific publishers.

[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-...

[1] https://archive.is/20231031231933/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

[2] (Blog even suggests the writers were embarrassed. I'm less forgiving to the writers due to the time to add the editor's note. Had it appeared shortly after I would be just as forgiving) https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6871

[3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/no-physicists-didnt-...

It's been this way for years. I know because years ago they defended the practice and explained that the car companies don't pay for a specific review, they just pay for to sponsor stories in the genre of case reviews. And the worst part? The infernal comment section was lauding them.

Automotive journalists are in a weird category in almost any publication. They're all dependant on manufacturers providing press units and attending press events that include comp for travel and hotels.

AFAIK the only real exception is Consumer Reports.

It’s worse than that - sometimes they are hired guns…

There was one “journalist” for the New York Times that reviewed cars, and he could never say anything positive about EVs - even to the point of warming consumers of the gloom that is EV. But after digging into his history, it was found he also published a lot of positive fluff pieces for the oil industry lol!

That car looks so unhappy :|

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