Their comment section since last year has devolved into Reddit style one-liners (especially political articles). The articles are really average these days.
The one I'm really worried about is Anandtech, the articles are still excellent but they're so understaffed(A10 chip deep dive was canceled, behind on Mac reviews)
I dunno. An outlet I used to follow for about two decades has entered such a steep nosedive in article quality in the last two years I don't bother any more.
I don't really care whether that's because they're using AI/LLMs or because the last two competent tech journalists left.
There seems to be a new editorial team, and with that tone. As you point out the quality of both the articles and subsequent discussion has dropped considerably. It much more like the Verge now, which IMHO is not necessarily a good thing.
I feel like Ars have been slipping since Hannibal left, and they closed down their open source section.
Perhaps their last great deep dive was the series of articles on the Amiga computer.
The most striking is perhaps how much of a tone change there was for one editor that moved to the site primarily to write about Android. Ever since he changed employer his articles seem to be all about highlighting what is wrong about the OS.
All in all i fear the site has gotten very agenda driven in recent years.
That's a shame. Didn't use to be like that. But that site has gone downhill in general since Anand sold it to some big media outlet. (With the exception of a few authors who were around in old times.)
They still have some good articles, but they have a lot more noise to filter through than they used to. Their coverage of linux and free software, something The H excelled at, is basically nonexistent.
It hasn't been the same since around the time Andrew Orlowski left.
The politics (identity and anti-Trump reddit-style) stuff crept in too, especially from its San Fran office, but you could obviously just choose to ignore those articles. It's not something I want from a tech site though.
It's a shame, ElReg and Slashdot used be my go-to site for tech content.
Why tho? They still deliver great on topics in a tone and depth not many do (eg. popular science). I do agree their comment section became comprised of bitter 50+ people.
I used to be a very regular reader of techdirt but it's become clear to me their quality has declined and they've been going for clickbait headlines full time since changing the monetization strategy. Masnick still makes some valid points but they're few and far inbetween, and the other site writers are generally not a beneficial read.
The fact that they resorted to writing crap these days with AI is what is making them lose relevance, not that they have been in the business for a long time, and have thousands upon thousands of articles.
CNET used to, perhaps not be cool, but it certainly was a place you'd go get tech news from every once in a while. Just imagine they were huge enough to buy download.com, back then, even! For a while, they were essentially *the* place you'd go for downloads of various shareware stuff.
Now, it's a ghost town of a site with AI-written junk.
It's troubling because when I worked there as a developer their journalists seemed to be really on their game. I loved the UX of their site, and the articles seemed thorough, well written, and always relevant.
If I understand the root comment correctly, here's my 2c.
Ars used to be the premiere tech news website, focused on tech instead of things like society and politics.
After it was acquired by conde Nast (owner of wired) many think there has been a steady drop in quality of writing on that website, and a move away from tech towards political things, similar to Wired.
I'm not sure if I'd attribute the drop in quality to conde Nast or just a general trend in websites getting more popular (e.g. Reddit), but I think it's there.
Depends on one's tastes. There's a lot of fetish material from anonymous uploads that is simply gone. Which sucks for them, cause now I just go to xvideos
As for Ars, they used to have a journo that would publish 10+ page reviews of the latest Mac OS release, and the dude had an extensive knowledge of Apple and Apple products. In a past life I was a journo for one of their competitors for a few years and my EIC was always pointing to Ars as our rival and competitor to take inspiration from. When our publication went downhill I turned to Ars to get the reporting that I wanted, and it feels like that well dried up a few years ago.
In-depth technical articles replaced with inspiration porn and geek fan service. They went from being a slightly-less-nerdy Anandtech to a slightly geekier BuzzFeed or TechDirt
Yeap, I agree. I've been reading technological news from El Reg since around 2000 and their writing style has changed a lot, it's not as humorous as it used to be.
I've been a subscriber to the print magazine for a few years now, and honestly I think it's been going downhill, at least when it comes to political news.
Where they used to have pretty thoughtful commentary, I now get the feeling I'm mostly reading western propaganda with little regards to the facts.
I guess their business section is still okay, and their technology quarterlies are often interesting.
I USED to love it, but I feel more and more Dagogo injects snide remarks and personal views on things. When he first started I had no clue who ran it, only that they generally did a decent job of covering tech subjects and it felt pretty objective. These days, quality declines + personal opinions/jabs are what moved me from yey! to meh!
The one I'm really worried about is Anandtech, the articles are still excellent but they're so understaffed(A10 chip deep dive was canceled, behind on Mac reviews)
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