Tech Review Sites and Payola 189
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 Payola (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot takes it, just admit it.
How else can the editors explain Roland Piquepaille, [slashdot.org] among others?
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The beef (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether they're interesting stories or not, and whether his stories are worse than having no Roland at all, it's the sort of blatant self-promotion that people on Slashdot are finely attuned toward hating. It is an affront to the sort of chaotic diversity that we've grown accustomed to having here, and folks don't like it.
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Which in an unto itself isn't that bad. The problem is that most if not all his blog entries are just links to the original information source with a rehash of the information source. There's no insightful commentary, critique, or audience participation to add value to the piece. It'd be more useful to just look at the guy's blog link... find the real information source linked within... and then link
Re:The beef (Score:5, Interesting)
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the top two submitters? Maybe when some of the whiners
start submitting a couple hundred stories, they'll get a
few accepted as well.
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When you read the summary, it sounds awesomely cool and makes you want to read the linked articles. Further inspection always turns out the shit inside. Nowadays I recognize Rolands stories just be reading the summary: "Oh cool. This is interesting. Wait... Oh, yeah, another RP shit story."
Roland should be shot, cut and buried in a forest [youtube.com]. I fucking hate when I get excited over nothing and end up giving the fucker 1c because
Not only that (Score:2)
Most of the stories on his blog, aren't even his stories in the first place. They're just copied verbatim from somewhere else and submitted as his own stories. And I don't just mean a summary and a link to the original story, or some personal comments and a link, but copy and paste.
So it's not just the shameless self-promotion and even the blatant plagiarism, it's also that he makes some ad impressions out of other people's content.
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I think you're thinking of Cowboy Neal. And that was never conclusively proved.
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Have you just stopped looking at his articles for maybe a year now, because other Slashbots once told you they're links to his blogs?
RTFRolandAs.
Re:Slashdot Payola (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot Payola (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so wrong about having sections for Intel and AMD? They are clearly MARKED (hell, they have their own sub-domains!).
This is a tech site - so what is so wrong if the top tech companies want to talk direct to the segment of the customer base that probably understands their products best?
We get to tell them what we like/feel/want/desire/whatever, they get to explain their stuff to us, and slashdot gets to make some cash to keep the whole thing going..
Everyone wins - so, where is the scam in that?I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)
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Toms (Score:5, Funny)
wait...
Re:Toms (Score:5, Interesting)
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I also miss Mtv Oddities and wish they'd release The Maxx on dvd since Aeon Flux is out on dvd now.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Toms (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/06/04/wd_bring
Does it depend on the size or age of the site? (Score:2)
Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Not a huge surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
Meta-Cynicism (Score:5, Funny)
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How do we know daily tech did not take any payola from the reviewers surveyed?
I submitted this to /., so I'm one of 3 or so people who RTFA. They mentioned something about this, let's see ...
There are approximately 150 circulated English-print technology websites; our team specifically targeted the 35 largest publications. We determined the size of these publications via Alexa's online index and publication-supplied web statistics. DailyTech was included among this list.
Yes, there it is! They tempted themselves with payola. No word on whether or not they accepted though.
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There are approximately 150 circulated English-print technology websites; our team specifically targeted the 35 largest publications. We determined the size of these publications via Alexa's online index and publication-supplied web statistics. DailyTech was included among this list.
Yes, there it is! They tempted themselves with payola. No word on whether or not they accepted though.
They actually gave a hint when you combine the article with the comments. The article states that no publication with a seperate editorial and sales department would accept bribes, and in the comments mentioned that DailyTech has a seperate editorial from sales team. So, apparently their sales team refused.
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They only take it from known conspirators (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They only take it from known conspirators (Score:5, Insightful)
The publication can't give a bad review. No more free review equipment.
If consumers _really_ wanted unbiased reviews, then publications would do it the right way. Buy the product off the retailer's shelf and test. But that's expensive and no consumer is willing to pay for it. This has led to opportunities that equipment manufacturers exploit.
Yes, the problem exists. IME the article in question is touching an ice cube on the tip of an iceberg, but no one cares enough to pay for the other, more objective, review. Want an honest review? Then pay for it. That's not going to happen though.
Re:They only take it from known conspirators (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like consumer reports?
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Re:They only take it from known conspirators (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest problem with their method (buying off the shelf rather than getting product from the manufacturer) is that by the time the testing is complete, you have a great deal of information on last year's model. Good for bargain hunters, but not for those who need to be on the bleeding edge (though I suppose those people don't really care what Consumer Reports says about the product they just have to have today).
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Aren't there?
Or they're more subtle (Score:3, Informative)
For example, in traditional printed media, advertising money was always a big set of shackles. The "if you don't give us 95% or more, we'll not advertise in your magazine" threat was around in various shapes for as long as there were reviews magazines, and some caved in big time.
I remember, for example, that back in the 80's some game magazines even let big publishers write their own shameless advertising as
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A survey of editors?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Give the names, you chickensh!t (Score:5, Insightful)
And why not, exactly? Oh, because they might sue? Come dear, this site talks about government oppression (and the need to oppose it) constantly. Resisting the evil **AAs is considered civil disobedience [slashdot.org] (automatically noble, of course). But you can't list the few sites, who — verifiably, one assumes — have agreed to accept something in exchange for better reviews?
Sorry. No Pulitzer prize for this piece of investigative journalism...
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And last I checked... DailyTech doesn't talk about Government Oppression or ??AA either...
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Because they might get sued?
Sued for what? If the article had been properly researched, that court case would last about 30 seconds:
Some review site: They lied and said that we'd accept money for better reviews! Sue! Sue!
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.
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From TFA
Ikram: "We'd be willing to pay a little more for ads if you can get us some articles on ******"
******: "Ok, I can help arrange that."
Since we all know what **** is this shouldn't be that hard...
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Hey! That's my password. Why're they doing articles on that?
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No. It's because they write for Slashdot as well.
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Oh, because they might sue? Come dear, this site talks about government oppression (and the need to oppose it) constantly.
The problem as I see it is that criticising the government is not analagous to criticising corporations. In many if not most of the societies of slashdot readers governments will not sue if you are vocally publically critical of them, but corporations will.
In spite of changes to laws that have happened over the past few years there are still few (if any) direct and immediate rammifications of criticising your government, or a foreign government. The risk in criticising governments is medium to long term
Do you lie cheat or steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask any Congressman and they'll be happy to tell you they don't take gifts from Lobbyist. Then you start asking have you ever accepted a trip, expensive bottle of wine or dinner, etc and the story changes. There are other ways of pressuring and where as I think there are legit sites like Tom's I think the percentages are much worse than presented. At the very least many sites are biased whether the bias comes from personal conviction or encouragement is the question.
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"Immorality" of radio payola? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:"Immorality" of radio payola? (Score:4, Informative)
Simply put, payola keeps small artists and those without the backing of a well-monied party at a distinct disadvantage. The major labels certainly form an oligopoly, and, cartel or not, they have maintained their oligopoly through 1) control of the distribution chain, 2) buying out the supply of new talent, and 3) through squeezing small players from the most effective publicity channels. #1 is threatened by the internet, and is their largest problem right now. #2 is the fault of bands stupidly signing disadvantageous contracts; to a mild extend newer bands are wising up, though. #3 is still an issue. Payola is the direct way of doing it, and gave the majors their initial dominance. Nowadays, it is a little more discreet; "independent promoters" get money from the majors, and then they in turn turn over "stuff" to radio stations (stuff ranging from blatant cash bribes to concert tickets to give away through on-air contests). Direct or not, payola floods playlists with songs from well-funded labels, at the expense of smaller labels or self-produced bands which do not have the resources to buy their way onto playlists.
There is an exception; a record label can straight out pay to get a song played, but the radio station has to disclaim that it is a pay-for-play, and the amount of airtime devoted to pay-for-play is limited by law (I believe it may be by considering such to be advertising; and radio stations are limited in the fraction of airtime which is advertising). This sort of payment is probably unproblematic from a legal and a moral standpoint, unless playlists are influenced by who is buying advertising (which would essentially be old-skool payola again).
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So, how is that much different than Clear Channel or the majority of stations out there today? DJs - where there still are any - don't pick the songs anymore.
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Which is why the whole payola thing has started coming up again recently.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the other issues involved the "independent promoters" going to the record companies and telling them "if you want your songs to get played on the stations that I represent, you'll pay me lots of money". If those "independent promoters" only work w
Misuse of public resources? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's wrong with the above? Money is trading hands between private individuals for mutual exchange, but something the public owns (i.e. the judicial system) is getting used not for the greater good of society, but for individuals. It's the same thing with radio. There's a limited amount of bandwidth the public gives away with knowledge that the owner will use it impartially for playing music. If payola is legal, radio stations may as well be owned by the record companies themselves. If Virgin records had a radio station, they'd use it to shamelessly promote their own artists. This isn't so hypothetical since Virgin does in fact own a satellite radio station, but that's OK, since in so doing, they are not using up the limited public bandwidth.
This is a little abstract now that most radio stations are owned by Clear Channel and have no claim to independence, but this was originally meant to allow some separation and moderation between the consumer and the record companies, while allowing new artists and record companies to have low barriers to entry. There's still college radio stations, pacifica radio, and NPR stations, but aside from that, unfortunately non-bias in exchange for public goods does seem to have gone with the times.
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Erm... they do [virginradio.co.uk].
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Natural, yes. Immoral, yes. They were (are) lying to their listeners, by saying that particular songs are popular. The various "Top-XX" are supposedly of sales, or requests from listeners. When in fact their rankings were often simply purchased by the record companies.
If you say no harm was done, consider that artists
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Obviously, you're not as weak-willed as I am. I once bought a tape from "The New Kids on the Block". This is not something I'll admit to in public circles, but nevertheless -- it did happen.
Another time, when I was in France I bought a stupid CD made from a toddler singing complete nonsense, his proud parents owned most of the radio stations in France -- so you can bet their stupid little kid got const
Re:"Immorality" of radio payola? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are limits to how bad/good something can be before manipulation is no longer an important factor, though an obscure artist can be popular among a niche group on the basis of exception material without making much money.
It's extremely easy to do the math on how much promotion matters? How much money, time, and effort is invested in it? Lots. Especially concerning the teenage and young adult demographic, the group most determined to assert their independence.
Then you can ask yourself "how much is my hypothetical unbiased choice really worth to me?" With some determination, it is possible to apply your own criteria to your purchases, but it is an enormous amount of work, often for little gain. When I've done this with my technical purchases, it never works to my advantage. Even if you get your carefully researched order accepted, it comes back the next day "actually, we can't get part X for another three weeks, how about spiffy mainstream part Y?" and you debate that, and then it comes back "part U has gone out of production, but we can part V with almost exactly the same part number that replaces it". Anyone remember the DLINK 530TX and the DLINK 530TX+? The "plus" part swaps out the Via Rhine controller for a RealTek controller. Or you get the Dell effect where what appeared to be an excellent panel turns out to have different guts than when it was reviewed. Or you go to your favorite vendor's web site and find 200 different video cards listed, all sort of the same, yet different. Small differences, such as a card promising 350MHz RAMDACs on each head, but then in the fine print limiting the second head to 60Hz refresh as resolutions greater than a megapixel. Plus the particular glitch you need to avoid is a constantly moving target. Early on in the PCI era, there was a series of disk controllers with an internal one byte overwrite problem that were guaranteed to corrupt your disk with any kind of software write-behind disk cache enabled. Of all the machines for sale, only a small fraction listed enough specs. to determine whether this chip was present or not. Reading PC Magazine cover to cover with a magnifying glass to the fine print in every full page system ad gives you a whole new perspective on not having a life.
This isn't limited to technology, either. Eliminating unwanted food inputs from your diet is far more work than it needs to be. I once naively bought a bag of Cargo Cult cinnamon without reading the list of ingredients. I get it home and discover it contains a hydrogenated oil, probably as a flow agent. Not only that, it was coarse and barky and lacking in essential oils. As fast as you figure who not to trust, the old villians are recycled again, like the furniture store that has gone out of business every two years on the same premise for as long as you can recall.
You don't discover the true power of the system until you attempt to swim against the grain. Even if there are reviews out there entirely free from payola influence, you have to work to figure out which ones those are. The system is not designed to stop you from swimming in the currents of self-determination, just to wear you out.
It would be very easy from a technical perspective in the grocery retail sector to have a GUID embedded on each item of merchandise that links to a database with ingredients and disclaimers (may contains traces of peanut) and to provide shoppers with a little handheld device they can point at the GUID, and configure with a profile of desired or undesired attributes (no bad oils, no excessive sodium, etc.) and a big red light and a nasty buzzer and a speak generation system that barks "Crap! Crap! Crap!" as you strol
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While this may not have been understood scientifically at the time it is very much possible to influence people in very subtle ways with repeated exposure to certain stimuli. I'm not
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Instead, there would be a wide range of genuine artists who spend their time and energy writing songs, playing instruments and singing.
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How so? Into thinking they like a song when "really" they don't? It's hard for most Slashdotters to accept that a great many people actually like "pop", but it's true.
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OK, I'll buy it. So what's immoral about that? Sounds like these lonesome people are getting what the
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One arm of corporate America putting money into another arm of corporate America ... and around and around it goes. When's the last time you discovered a really awesome artist because they were played on the radio? If radio sucks it's radio's own fault. I don't see anything immoral about it, though ... unless you're a rabid objectivist, I guess, and equate bad business decisions with the Catho
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It actually happens to me pretty regularly, but that's because I live in a city that has a fiercely independent radio station that's chief marketing tactic is, "Hey, we're not Clearchannel, we hate Clearchannel, too. And not only that, we support our local community in ways that Clearchannel could only dream of. By the way, check out this new artist...". If you're curious, it's CD 101 [cd101.com] in Columbus, Ohio.
Even if they don't, the reviews are semi-useless (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Even if they don't, the reviews are semi-useles (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
Re:Even if they don't, the reviews are semi-useles (Score:2)
they have plenty of (paid for) content on those pages! the more pages they provide, the more (paid ad's) they can show. They (review sites) seem to think we don't need the scrollbar on our browsers these days!
Re:Even if they don't, the reviews are semi-useles (Score:2)
Before northbridges were smart enough to lock down the PCI clock to 33mhz, overclocking of the IDE bus was the norm (since IDE controllers derived their clock from the PCI bus). All that mattered was what you could get away with. I found that IBM's were usually very tolerant of extra-chippy IDE speed, whereas maxtors usually fell flat on their face at around 111-114mhz fsb (going from 100mhz, of course). Your mileage may have varied.
Re:Even if they don't, the reviews are semi-useles (Score:2)
I Learned To Ignore Most Reviews And Go To Forums (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Learned To Ignore Most Reviews And Go To Foru (Score:2)
Not that I want to give away all my tells, but if a posting is 100% positive with absolutely no flaws, there's very little chance of the post being fair. Every product has flaws or deficiencies of some nature, and a poster who can't find
Aussie Aussie Aussie (Score:2, Insightful)
Who was expecting honesty from the land of convicts down under...
or maybe we are better at smelling a setup...
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http://www.dansdata.com/index.html [dansdata.com]
Gaming as opposed to Tech (Score:3, Informative)
IGN/Gamespy. What Gamespot calls a gumball, Gamespy calls, less charmingly, a "Gamespy Spotlight". But the content and the principle is basically the same: the Spotlights are those thumbnail screenshot links that you see on the site's front page. "What you're looking at on the front page is not what the editors decided is the best game," the media buyer informed me.
Home Security Store (Score:2)
A whitewash (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
German language example (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
In other news... (Score:2)
Slow news day ?
Bias - welcome back my friends... (Score:3, Interesting)
So glad you could attend
Come inside
Come inside
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
Payola doesn't only mean "taking money" (Score:2)
There's tech sites that need "(p)review samples". Think you'll get a preview from EA if you tossed their last piece into the gutter with your review? They will certainly NOT give you a preview of their latest if you honestly said that their last top game stunk like old limburger. And that in turn means that you can't compete with oth
Try Maximum PC (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.maximumpc.com/ [maximumpc.com]
Surprised it's that low (Score:3, Interesting)
Google is your friend (Score:5, Insightful)
What am I doing wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Ad dept does not talk to editorial policy (Score:2)
You can usually guess that such a policy is in place when you read an article about the negative impact of Chinese gold farmers in WoW and see a "Buy WoW gold here" ad on the next page.
And that's just one example. This argument has been used often to weasel out of discussions about ads that are disliked by a majority of the readership.
it's not about accepting "payola"... (Score:2)
It's that if they buy a bunch of ad space and the product gets a mediocre to bad review they cut back. The sales guy asks them why, they say "You guys kinda trashed us, and we want to focus our advertising in friendlier environments".
At that point the sales guy goes to the VP's of the magazine, who pressure the editors , and POOF next product gets better review.
It's not as simpl
Payola is a widespread problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thankful for this little bit of 'research', but the job that was done was cursory and will simply make these charlatans be a little more sneaky about how business is
Re:Payola is a widespread problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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What a great way to kill the golden goose.
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Then don't buy one of the cheap and nasty brick heavy units.
This may come as a shock, byt a lot of hardware manufacturers - Dell included - offer a range of products which generally speaking allow the customer to make a trade off between price and functionality. You can't expect them to put the same level of effort into engineering a £300 laptop as a £900 one.
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The manufacturing process will undoubtedly involve lower effort per machine, though, and that's what most of the engineering effort will go into.