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Tech Review Sites and Payola
cheesecake23 writes "How often have you read a hardware review and thought: 'No way was that an honest opinion, the reviewer was bought'—? The Daily Tech has gone undercover to find out whether or not payola is accepted among the 35 largest online English-language hardware review sites. Questions asked and answered — Q: How many sites would take money (or sell ads) in exchange for a product review? A: 20 percent. Q: How many sites would additionally consider selling an Editor's Choice award? A: None. Q: Were any regions of the world more corrupt than others? A: No, it was 20-25% almost everywhere. Q: Does it depend on the size or age of the site? A: RTFA. Although no bad actors were explicitly unmasked, the article contains enough information to make a whitelist of quite a few good guys."
Slashdot takes it, just admit it.
How else can the editors explain Roland Piquepaille, among others?
In today's corporate-controlled world does anyone take reviews without a hefty dose of skepticism?
I'm not trying to say that there aren't neutral reviewers but, with marketing budgets as they are, is anyone surprised that some "neutral" reviewers are actually paid enough to be biased?
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Pardon my naivety, but exactly what is so "immoral" about it? I've never really understood that. "I've got a radio station. You've got a song. Let's talk." Seems perfectly natural to me.
A radio station could play a song a hundred times, or a million. If everybody hates the song, they're still going to hate it no matter how many times it gets aired. Meanwhile, the record company is out a pile of cash. It almost sounds like a win-win for the consumer.
Obviously, bribing magazines for good reviews seems like a different matter...but the radio thing -- and especially the choice of the word "immoral" -- is kind of lost on me.
Breakfast served all day!
I've always been a bit annoyed that hardware review sites almost always get cherry picked engineering samples to test. Normally this isn't a big deal, but they always test the overclockability of hardware these days (I swear Ars, HotHardware, HardOCP, and the like would overclock hard drives if they could) which is fairly pointless with a sample size of 1. Worse, they have no way of testing if that overclocking is going to cause the hardware to fizzed out after 2 months. They also rarely include factors like "will the manufacturer maintain driver support 3 months down the road and fix the bugs in the current driver?" which is far more important than clocking it up to 105% and running Supreme Commander.
I know I'm being a little unfair here, but it's one of the main reasons that I rarely bother with hardware review sites anymore unless I'm actively looking to buy a particular piece of hardware. Well, that and their tendency to spread articles out over hundreds of pages with as little content as possible on each page.
A good example of this is the 120 page article on Core2Duo heatsinks posted to Slashdot a few days ago. At no point did the hardware review guys examine the fans to see if they were bottom of the barrel "will die in 6 months" models, or if they were high quality fans worth the $50 price tag on the cooling solution.
I read the internet for the articles.
The only English-speaking country that did not report any Payola was Australia
I call BS from personal experience ( and hence why I post ANON )
Every publication I dealt with in Australia always asked for you the product maker to supply "editorial" as extra incentive to advertise. I have worked with reviewers directly as few of them have good experience with the hardware/software and they simply regurgitate what you give them. This is reporting these days and is simply an extension of current affairs programs (which tend to be user supplied footage) which have more in common with infomercials than investigative journalism
I once overclocked my ethernet card.
at the time, getting 11Mbps was pretty good!
and you're right - I had to have special LANCE controllers to achieve that speed. its true. most could only go to 10.5.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yeah, i also remember when Tom's Hardware didn't use to stretch articles in 17 ad crammed pages. Or when MTV played, you know, actual music, for that matter...
DailyTech: Here's the tape recording.
Judge: Case dismissed. Depending on your local jurisdiction (but ask your local sheriff's department and your lawyer before you rely on anything I say here), it is not illegal for you to tape a conversation without telling the other party - if you are one of the parties in the conversation. There's no reason they couldn't have backed their article up with some solid evidence.
I also remember when Mtv played music. I miss that. I used to flip over to Mtv in the early morning while I was getting ready for school in high school and jr high.
I also miss Mtv Oddities and wish they'd release The Maxx on dvd since Aeon Flux is out on dvd now.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
If you're lucky he might send you a copy of the contract he has with Slashdot.
I expect alot of bribes are along similar lines these days.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Posting AC as I still like my job
Or ones who pay more My company once went to offer one of our products worth $10k to a for a needy organisation who were shown on TV, we called the station while the show was on Live, A few days later after no response Our competitior was shown handing over there product claiming it was worth $25k, A quick check on there web site showed there price was still only $12k.
As for reported Sales figures in a previous job the owner could never understand why our competitors always supposedly sold more PC's (according to magazines) when our suppliers leaked that we actually bought more components by a factor of 3 (Good to sell the accounting system to your supplier) the next time the owner multiplied his fiqures and not one person questioned the huge monthly increase at the magazine
As for MPAA type figures while working in a video store the weekend rental $ amounts often came out before stock was in any store
Duh moment most of what you read is Lies, Damn Lies, and very little selective statistics
Fuck, have you looked at the firehose? It's no wonder he gets stories posted. He knows grammar and spelling and doesn't get his news from slashdot. Which is better I can say than most submissions.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
In the same way that payola for music is illegal (in the US, although actual prosecutions are almost non-existent), it would benefit the tech industry if payola "reviews" were outlawed. The problem there is that there were attempts to make non-payola reviews of tech articles illegal, by banning reviews that were not authorized by the manufacturer. Dunno if that ever passed, but it wouldn't surprise me. Nonetheless, without independent monitoring, the industry is nothing more than trickery and fakery. Why? Because those are so much easier and cheaper than actually doing any real work. If you make the money anyway, why not take the easier road?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have a sincere question about Consumer Reports: For many of their car and computer hardware stats don't they depend upon readers sending in surveys? Doesn't that mean their reports may suffer from heavy selection bias? My wife will veto any big ticket item purchase if it doesn't have a favorable review. Thankfully Apple and Honda do very well so I got what I wanted when it has mattered so far, but part of me is worried that even though Consumer Reports is independent their methodology may be crap. My guess is no, but since there isn't a single better data source consulting CR is an important component of an informed decision. Are the statistics published in Consumer Reports for cars and computers mathematically sound?
Eugene Debs: "Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization"
The rot is far deeper. This article vastly understates the problem: there are so many levers manufacturers can pull in order to influence or bias reviews, payola is only the start of it. Development of corrupt benchmark software used by the review sites can be bought, biased compilers (Intel compiler) generate some of the code being benched, advertisement money can be withheld or expanded, early or free samples can be provided or denied.
The review sites, in turn, can do a lot to make review seem fair while applying a subtle bias. They can limit themselves to certain benchmarks, (de)emphasize or arbitrarily weigh some results, frame the the article, or spin the conclusion.
It is not hard to see this in action. Take the pervasive and saturating Core 2 hype on all sites, last year, for example. Many sites were running the same biased selection of benchmarks. Nearly all sites avoided 64-bit benchmarks.
I would like to see a bootable Linux benchmark CD that runs stock GCC compiled code in 32 and 64-bit mode and provides various workload, scalability, and throughput tests. Something that is open and runs precisely the same code on all machines. Something anyone can pop in his own PC or laptop. But then, even if that were to exist, would the sites start to report that benchmark in their reviews?
The German-language 'PC-Professionell' (they belonged to Ziff-Davis back then) used to always carry a full-page advert for 'Waibel' computers on the back cover. Inside the magazine, they would review various hardware and Waibel *always* got the editor's choice award. The way I remember it, even if they were not reviewing any other PCs they would still review the finest offering from Waibel so they could rave about it. As far as I remember, other Ziff-Davis magazines did the same but it is PC-Pro I really noticed.
Another computer magazine called C't also reviewed Waibel hardware once or twice. In the last review they gave, they indicated the hardware was ok at best (I think they were overclocking) but that the XP Licenses were illegal - something they got Microsoft to confirm. This was in late 2002. Waibel ceased trading in January 2003.
I am sure that Waibel paying for full-page back-cover adverts, and the rave-reviews inside were just a coincidence.
Quoting the DailyTech article: Once presented with the data for this article, Schnieder paused before responding. "I think if you look back even five years, you would have seen this type of thing be much more common than it is today." He concludes, "Like most things, the marketplace will eventually weed out the businesses and websites who choose to operate in this manner."
Waibel closed. I occasionally look at a PC-Professionell nowadays but I can't see any obvious weighting in their reviews so hopefully the company works differently nowadays - almost 5 years later.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
For obvious reasons, I can see why they may want to avoid 'outing' those who are involved in payola, but it would be nice to get a few more names from the article on who we can legitimately trust.
To the show that never ends
So glad you could attend
Come inside
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I quit journalism because I got pressure to favor advertisers' products. I had the Exec Editor of a trade print publication attribute my name to a press release and it was called a "review." I told her that if she did it again, I'd sue for defamation of character. \
For related reasons about the integrity of the mag, I quit.
That was 2000. I can do more good as a poster than a writer...
=D
Well, the only site down under is Dan's Data, and he's HARDCORE!
http://www.dansdata.com/index.html
One of my favorite personal sayings, "I've been around computers so long I can remember when non-Microsoft products were PC Magazine's "office applications of the year".
Right -- or how about the simple fact that he's one of
the top two submitters? Maybe when some of the whiners
start submitting a couple hundred stories, they'll get a
few accepted as well.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
I've been writing for both print and online mags for 15+ years and have never been hassled by a supplier over a bad review or been offered anything for a good review (UK based). Most editors I've worked for have been very clear about working to a 'ad dept does not talk to editorial' policy.
I've often been told about how much US editorial is 'bought' but wasn't aware it was so endemic globally.
The closest I've ever come to any possibility of being bought is that some manufacturers let you keep the hardware/software and some insist on having it back after the review period. In recent years this has shifted to the latter in the UK due to changes in tax law that prevent review kit from being treated as tax deductible.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil