Re:Just Tell Me What To Buy
by Are-Em_Star on Monday June 16, 2014 @04:10AM
(#7897874)
I used to think the same thing until I read a review for LED lightbulbs on one of their sister sites, The Sweethome [http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-led-lightbulb/]. The review in question sounds like an infomercial for Cree and DesigningwithLEDs.com. It definitely made me question how impartial The Wirecutter and it's sister sites really is.
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| on HN ]
I don't understand. What about this review sounds suspicious to you? They like a specific brand of LED bulb. Isn't that the whole point of the site?
Re:Just Tell Me What To Buy
by Are-Em_Star on Monday June 16, 2014 @04:26AM
(#7897912)
It's been a couple of months since I read it, but I remember that the tone just felt off to me. I think there's a couple of comments on the site that mention it sound like an infomercial. I think the frequent references to DesigningwithLEDs.com also put me off, kind of felt like the author was really trying to drive traffic to their own site.
The author runs DesigningWithLEDs.com. Presumably, that's why they chose her to write this review. If Sweethome is happy with the cross-promotion (to another website, of course, not to a reviewed product), I'm not sure I see what the problem is for the reader.
The question is, as in security, trustworthiness. Trust and/but/then Verify you say? If I have to verify, what's the point of trusting, might as well read amazon reviews and do my own research via google, fb, twitter etc. For a completely new user, a site that even 'smells' of shenanigans is hard to trust. First impressions and all that. If a site invites guest writers, who then shill for their own site, in the main copy of their post, rather than, say, the footnote or sub-title, it starts smelling fishy pretty fast.