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.
As an Oregonian, I remember that story almost 20 years later. “Tragedy” is an overused word, but not for that poor man.
From the TechTV days. RIP James.
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.
Yeah, I mean prior to 2000 they were one of the trusted sources for software to be easily accessed and downloaded that was the up to date version. I would often learn about new features when installing what I downloaded from them because every piece of software didn’t have embedded auto update and publishers were often small and given the developing state of things, unknown.
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.
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Wikipedia’s pay distribution is actually quite even. The C suite make much, much less than other companies. While I havent been able to confirm this, one article said they hold larger than usual sums of money, likely to pay salaries off interest, and look to donations for replenishment.
It’s not. Which makes this a particularly powerful indictment of a once-reputable mainstream news site.
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I would argue otherwise.
Wikipedia is incomprehensibly large. Perhaps the largest database of vetted human knowledge ever.
I know for a fact you can find inaccuracies and biased information if you look for it. But it’s rare relative to the amount of information that exists there.
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Trust but verify my dude.
What you’re saying is that you don’t trust anything because everything has a bias associated to it.
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Healthier than trusting nothing or no one
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Not a primary source. Also, every Wikipedia page posts the primary sources at the bottom. Wikipedia is just a compendium, it’s not a peer reviewed journal. Use some brain matter before it rots my dude.
It’s not considered a primary source. Nobody said it is. But it’s a good starting point for further research in most topics.
This would be seriously useful, what are the impeccable primary sources?
That’s not what they said.
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What you said isn’t what they said
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Thank you!
Can you offer any alternatives? Or are there simply no trustworthy sites?
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I always thought the advantage with Wikipedia is that you can find sources for the info right there on their site. If there’s any doubt about the info on their site, it’s easy enough to vet the sources. I wouldn’t trust nearly any site without being able to at least do that anyway. At least in this case you can see where the info is coming from, and it’s not just “trust me bro”
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.
They must have hired the clown that runs UserBemchark.
Lol I found the review through there, holy shit
Future’s portfolio of brands included TechRadar, PC Gamer, Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware, Marie Claire, GamesRadar+, All About Space, How it Works, CinemaBlend, Android Central, IT Pro and Windows Central.
-Wikipedia
Hate CinemaBlend. Just endless vapid Ai generated shit. Probably the same course for the rest.
Oh that explains a bit. Who’s decent these days?
if you speak german (or are willing to use your webbrowsers built-in translator to read articles), https://Gamestar.de is really cool. It is subscription-based though for the majority of its Content.
I deleted their bookmark when that story about the KFC gaming console was plastered on the front page for days
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”.
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.
So they went from dumbshit to dogshit.
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That’s a good point, AI is not the reason for their downfall.
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”.
But wait, isn’t AI the future?
Yes, just like the blockchain
The AI thinks so.
Always has been.
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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.
Newspapers are reducing in size and scope, not pumping out AI garbage.
“I’m retiring soon, time to milk this for what it’s worth.” is not the thought going through most newspaper editorial departments right now.
Good for Wikipedia. A lot of “AI generated” content is simply plagiarized from existing sources.
CNET has been shit since the late 90s.
CNET: this parrot says a lot of things that seem accurate! Let’s have this parrot make articles for us!
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.
further, I wouldn’t just remove the word preemptive if I thought this was really an issue. I’d go find a reliable source that would support a rewrite of the whole sentence or paragraph or section.
then I would go to the talk page and I would let everybody know what I’m doing and why. and then I wouldn’t do it for 24 hours. and then I would make the edits and if anybody reverted it I would revert it back and then direct them to the talk page.
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.
