In the wave of AI controversies and lawsuits, CNET has been publicly admonished since it first started posting thinly-veiled AI-generated content on its site in late 2022— a scandal that has culminated in the site being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia.
Considering that CNET has been in the business since 1994 and maintained a top-tier reputation on Wikipedia up until late 2020, this change came after lots of debate between Wikipedia’s editors and has drawn the attention of many in the media, including some CNET staff members.
With whom did CNET maintain a top tier reputation until 2020? It’s been a shell of itself for well over a decade at this point. That they’ve gone to full throated AI content seems to me the corpse standing up and shuffling around as a zombie.
They were still doing some decent journalism here and there, but yeah, it’s been getting worse and worse very steadily.
Been going downhill since the death of James Kim in 2006.
Yeah, if it was a “reputable source” ten years ago someone dropped the ball.
Lets you know the people writing these pieces are way out of touch.
CNET lost my trust when they repacked software and drivers in their archive with a homebrew installer that bundled bloatware. Initially the bing search bar, then Opera, latest I remember was some antivirus solution. Sure, you can deselect them all, but I hate those business practices with a passion.
I like it that Wikipedia is now an authority on trustworthy citation sources.
Somebody needs to be! I like it being them
I hope people are donating to them from time to time.
It isn’t, Wikipedia is about as trustworthy as any other random source.
That’s not what they said.
My friend used to work for CNET. She was laid off along with a decent amount of her coworkers years ago, maybe as much as 10+ IIRC, but yeah - they’ve been going downhill for awhile now and it seems to only be accelerating.
It’s really a shame because they used to be such a trusted source. Enshittification marches on to a steady beat.
That’s not enshittification. It’s just getting shittier.
Cats were working at CNET?
It is possible for cats to have non-cat friends.
The politically correct term for those in the cat world is “servant” or “slave”.
CNET has been garbage for well over a decade- as bad as AI is, that’s not the reason they went to shit.
That’s a good point, AI is not the reason for their downfall.
Shame. I remember when they were one of my favorite tech sites.
Me too! The problem is that we are running out of good tech sites. They’re all getting bought and turning into SEO spam
In recent months, 404media has been popular among lemmings. I think those articles were ok. Maybe they could fill the void left by cnet.
Wow. You know you dun goofed it when the “online encyclopedia anyone can edit” makes it very clear that “but not to write about you”.
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Is it greed if the market environment means they can hardly make any money?
I mean, greed is one reason why they might keep getting shittier, but newspapers similarly aren’t getting shittier because of greed.
Tom’s hardware should be blacklisted. After it was purchased by a company that has a partnership with Intel, the bias and corporate propaganda is terrible.
Ohhhh that’s why they have such a boner for Team Blue all the time. You just solved a mystery for me.
A little while ago I read part of a review where the author goes on and on about this latest and greatest AMD processor and how shit it was because it was way too powerful and really you should just buy a Intel CPU that is way slower and just as expensive, if not more so. Because you don’t really need that much power do you? Or more money in your pocket? Give poor little indie developer Intel a try. I couldn’t continue reading.
I was flabbergasted, yet impressed by the audacity of such a claim that has zero reasonable logic. Now it all makes sense.
I have not consciously clicked on any CNET content since the early 2000s. In my mind their content are mostly puff pieces without much substance. Are they even still relevant?
Google doesn’t promote their pages until the middle or bottom of the search page which may as well be in the Mariana’s trench. That’s my anecdotal experience, anyway.
But wait, isn’t AI the future?
Always has been.
CNET has been shit since the late 90s.
Yet Wikipedia still rates the israeli propaganda think tank ADL as a reliable source. Very interesting website.
even a source which is generally reliable can have its reliability questioned in any context. and a source that is generally unreliable for some reason or another can be considered reliable in some context.
Wikipedia is awful for information on geopolitics or any subjective history. People think that they are reading “objective information” but in reality they are reading propaganda
They’ve been doing this for more than 13 years: Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups
Since the earliest days of the worldwide web, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has seen its rhetorical counterpart fought out on the talkboards and chatrooms of the internet.
Now two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in “Zionist editing” for Wikipedia, the online reference site.
Take the page on Israel, for a start: “The map of Israel is portrayed without the Golan heights or Judea and Samaria,” said Bennett, referring to the annexed Syrian territory and the West Bank area occupied by Israel in 1967.
Wikipedia is aweful for anything controversial, of which geopolitics is merely a good example.
Probably fine for basic stuff like geology or the Napoleonic Wars or whatever.
you can edit Wikipedia too. The bureaucracy can be a little bit frustrating and daunting, but you can certainly keep the record accurate.
A great example is how Wikipedia uses Zionist lies is the 6 day war started by israel. It is stated as a “premptive strike” on Egypt.
On 5 June 1967, as the UNEF was in the process of leaving the zone, Israel launched a series of preemptive airstrikes
In reality everyone including israeli PM’s acknowledges that israel started that there was no threat. Factually stating it pre-emptive is a straight up lie. It is a highly controversial statement at best.
Try removing the word “pre-emtptive” from that article and let me know how it goes.
isn’t it accurate to say it’s preemptive? you could say unprovoked, but I don’t think that’s strictly true. I think preemptive is the best way to frame it: it shows that they struck first and leaves it open as to whether anybody would have struck them at all.
Pre-emptive means that you are striking before being struck. Because there is a direct attack coming
If there is no attack coming it is not pre-emptive.
Unprovoked is an entirely different word which would fit. Try replacing it.
if the source says preemptive, that’s going to be a hard sell. Go find another source and bring it up on the talk page.
