[anthonj]

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy.

Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now?

There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flooded with "tech journalist", claiming to be "android or Apple product experts" or stuff like that, publishing articles that are 90% press material from some company and most of the times seems to have very little technical knowledge.

They also started writing product reviews that I would not be surprised to find out being sponsored, given their content.

Also what's the business with those weirdly formatted articles from wired?

Still a very good website but the quality is diving.

[tapoxi]

> I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy.

For the curious, this acquisition was 18 years ago.

[goalieca]

I read ars technica during undergrad over 20 years ago now. It complemented my learning in cpu architecture quite well. While in class we learned old stuff, they covered the modern Intel things. And also, who could forget the fantastically detailed and expert macOS reviews. I’ve never seen any reviews of any kind like that since.

I dropped ars from my rss sometime around covid when they basically dropped their journalism levels to reddit quality. Same hive mind and covering lots of non technical (political) topics. No longer representing its namesake!

[airstrike]

God, I didn't need to know that

[falsemyrmidon]

Oddly enough it's not the first time I've seen their perceived recent drop in quality blamed on this. Just weird that it's happened twice - wonder where this narrative is coming from.

[caminante]

I checked and was also expecting something different based on parent's comment.

Happened 18 years ago.

This is a hot take that has become room temp.

[phyzome]

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That was not a VW ad and we were not paid by VW for that or any other story". I find it interesting that they only denied the ad part, not the press release part...

As I mention in another comment, https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/01/exclusive-volvo-tells-u... is in a similar vein.

[dylan604]

"I'm a professional shopper, and here's what I say you should buy" because someone sent me a free version of it or just straight copy to use in my listicle.

It is sad that this is what journalism has come to. It is even sadder that it works.

[lokar]

I'm willing to believe it was not an ad.

They are just lazy / understaffed. It's hard to make $ in journalism. A longstanding and popular way to cut corners is to let the industry you cover do most of the work for you. You just re-package press releases. You have plausible content for a fraction of the effort / cost.

[godelski]

Reminds me of Quanta's egregious article Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer[0], a blatant ad for CalTech/Harvard/MIT. One where even an article posted the same day by the NYT[1] quoted Scott Aaronson[2] questioning the sensationalism, yet took months for Quanta to post an editor's note... Interestingly even ArsTechnica was even able to fight the hype posting only a few days later[3].

I really think a lot of these organizations have lost touch. The entire premise of their existence relies upon the trust of the readers. That trust relies upon the idea that the writers are consolidating and summarizing expert opinions. Any egregious error like this (especially when they are slow to correction) pose a death sentence to them. It's a questionable error like they were rushing to get first to print (having early access even) yet didn't seem to consult experts other than those on the team.

I think unfortunately this type of pattern is becoming more common and I've defintiely noticed it on sites like ArsTechnica too. Maybe it's that my technological expertise has increased and so I can more easily detect bullshit, but I think the decline is real and not unique to ArsTechnica nor Quanta. It feels like the race to the bottom is only accelerating and there are larger ranging impacts than just the death of specific publishers.

[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-...

[1] https://archive.is/20231031231933/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

[2] (Blog even suggests the writers were embarrassed. I'm less forgiving to the writers due to the time to add the editor's note. Had it appeared shortly after I would be just as forgiving) https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6871

[3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/no-physicists-didnt-...

[halJordan]

It's been this way for years. I know because years ago they defended the practice and explained that the car companies don't pay for a specific review, they just pay for to sponsor stories in the genre of case reviews. And the worst part? The infernal comment section was lauding them.

[Marsymars]

Automotive journalists are in a weird category in almost any publication. They're all dependant on manufacturers providing press units and attending press events that include comp for travel and hotels.

AFAIK the only real exception is Consumer Reports.

[ktm5j]

That car looks so unhappy :|

[somenameforme]

They are basically the embodiment of the fact that sites and organizations don't matter, but individuals do. I think the overwhelming majority of everything on Ars is garbage. But on the other hand they also run Eric Berger's space column [1] which is certainly one of the best ones out there. So don't ignore those names on tops of articles. If you find something informative, well sourced, and so on - there's a good chance most their other writing is of a similar standard.

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/

[metabagel]

Somehow, you picked the least credible Ars staffer to me.

[miltonlost]

Ah, and here my problem with Eric is he basically never criticizes Elon and only calls him "controversial". He's just a Musk mouthpiece at this point.

[mbreese]

I think the fact that they one of the last places surviving from that generation of the Internet says a lot. The Condé Nast acquisition may have been a tragedy, but they managed to survive for this long. They’ve been continuously publishing online for about 30 years. It’s honestly amazing that they’ve managed to last this long.

Yes, it’s very different than it was back in the day. You don’t see 20+ page reviews of operating systems anymore, but I still think it’s a worthwhile place to visit.

Trying to survive in this online media market has definitely taken a toll. This current mistake makes me sad.

[krull10]

Their review of MacOS 26 is 79 pages when downloaded as a pdf, so they still sometimes have in depth articles. But I agree that that level of detail isn’t as common as in the past.

[x0x0]

Everyone's dancing around the problem. People refuse to pay the cost of producing high quality news. Advertising doesn't come close to cutting it.

You can see a new generation of media that charge subscribers enough to make a modest profit, and it's things like Talking Points Memo ($70 base cost per year), Defector ($70 or $80 I think), The Information ($500), 404 ($100), etc.

[DANmode]

Operating systems are fading to the background; even technical users can lose track of what version of the OS they’re currently using.

[anonymousiam]

100% agree. I still have Ars Technica and Slashdot in my RSS feed list, but both are paused. Every now and then (maybe once a month) I'll take a peek, but it's rare that I'll find anything really worthwhile. About 10% of the content is slanted to push their desired narratives, so objectivity is gone.

[BruceEel]

A tragedy, yes. I can't be the only old fart around here with fond memories of John Siracusa's macOS ("OS X") reviews & Jon "Hannibal" Stokes' deep dives in CPU microarchitectures...

[calmbonsai]

John Siracusa's macOS reviews were so in-depth people even published reviews of his reviews.

[herodoturtle]

Certainly not the only old fart ‘round these parts.

Your comment reminded me of Dr Dobbs Journal for some reason.

[embedding-shape]

> Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now?

What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts? I know only of a few, and they get fewer every year.

[rfc2324]

https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are is one of my favorites. Global academics writing about their research when something happens in the world or when they are published in a journal.

[justinclift]

The Register? :)

https://www.theregister.com

[lapcat]

> What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts?

The personal blogs of experts.

[astrange]

Aren't they all making YouTube videos now? It's basically the best place to get paid for making expert content.

[bloggie]

techbriefs, photonics spectra, photonics focus, EAA Sport Aviation? I don't think it's going to be anything super popular, to become popular you have to appeal to a broad audience. But in niches there is certainly very high quality material. It also won't be (completely) funded by advertising.

[Levitating]

lwn.net?

[ycombinete]

The London review of Books frequently has domain experts writing their reviews.

[dave7]

TFT Central is still very good imo.

[hobs]

https://www.404media.co/ I subscribe

[GeekyBear]

> publishing articles that are 90% press material from some company and most of the times seems to have very little technical knowledge.

Unfortunately, this is my impression as well.

I really miss Anandtech's reporting, especially their deep dives and performance testing for new core designs.

[zdw]

The main problem with technology coverage is you have one of 3 types of writers in the space:

1. Prosumer/enthusiasts who are somewhat technical, but mostly excitement

2. People who have professional level skills and also enjoy writing about it

3. Companies who write things because they sell things

A lot of sites are in category 1 - mostly excitement/enthusiasm, and feels.

Anandtech, TechReport, and to some extent Arstechnica (specially John Siracusa's OS X reviews) are the rare category 2.

Category 3 are things like the Puget Systems blog where they benchmark hardware, but also sell it, and it functions more as a buyer information.

The problem is that category 2 is that they can fairly easily get jobs in industry that pay way more than writing for a website. I'd imagine that when Anand joined Apple, this was likely the case, and if so that makes total sense.

[tyjen]

It's worse than that, Condé Nast is owned by Advance Publications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Advance_subsidiaries

They own a depressing number of "local" newspapers to project excessive influence.

[foobarbecue]

I presume you meant "fantastic," not "fantastical"?

[jmbwell]

I think fantastical isn’t totally inaccurate, and I’m not being snarky (for once). The personal observations and sometimes colorful language has been something I like about Ars. Benj in particular, with his warm tributes to BBSes. Or Jim Salter’s very human networking articles. The best stuff on Ars is both technically sound and rich with human experience. “Fantastical” taken to mean something like, capturing the thrills and aspirations that emerge from our contact with technology, seems fair I think.

I’ll be interested in finding out more about just what the hell happened here. I hardly think of Benj or Kyle as AI cowboy hacks, something doesn’t add up

[globular-toast]

It's funny because I assume "fantastical" was invented so people could still express the true meaning of fantastic, ie. a piece of fantasy.

[Insanity]

Wanted to comment the same. Parent poster might not be aware that “fantastical” means “fantasy”.

But I think we do get his point regardless :)

[eduction]

I confess I find the growing prevalence of these sorts of errors on HN dispiriting. Programming requires precision in code; I’d argue software engineering requires precision in language, because it involves communicating effectively with people.

In any single instance I don’t get very exercised - we tend to be able to infer what someone means. But the sheer volume of these malapropisms tells me people are losing their grip on our primary form of communication.

Proper dictionaries should be bundled free with smartphones. Apple even has some sort of license as you can pull up definitions via context menus. But a standalone dictionary app you must obtain on your own. (I have but most people will not.)

[episode404]

> they used to write fantastical and very informative articles

> Still a very good website

These are indeed quite controversial opinions on ars.

[elgertam]

I used to read it daily. Even continued for a few years after the acquisition. But at this point, I haven't looked at it in years. Even tend to skip the articles that make it to the first page of HN. Of course, most of the original writers I still follow on social media, and some have started their own Substack publications.

[bootlooped]

I got very tired of seeing the same video thumbnails over and over.

It seemed like at some point they were pushing into video, of which there were some good ones they put out, but then they stopped. They kept the video links in the articles but since there are only a handful you'll just see the same ones over and over.

I've probably seen the first 3 or 4 seconds of the one with the Dead Space guy about a hundred times now.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yeah, I was very active on the ars forums back in the day, and after the buyout things initially were ok, but started go do down hill pretty clearly once the old guard of authors started leaving.

It's a shame because the old ars had a surprisingly good signal to noise ratio vs other big sites of that era.

[airstrike]

I got banned for calling out the shilling back right after the acquisition. Apparently that was a personal attack on the quality of the author. It's gone downhill from there. I used to visit it every day, now I mostly forget it exists

[kevin_thibedeau]

> what's the business with those weirdly formatted articles from wired?

You must have missed the 90's Wired magazine era with magenta text on a striped background and other goofiness. Weird formatting is their thing.

[pseudohadamard]

Arse Technica have always been pretty bad at following up with people they publish stories on. Years ago they ran a hit piece on a friend of mine for which they never bothered contacting him for his side of the story despite his home page with full contact info being literally the first Google result on a search for his name. Their tech stories are usually superficial but adequate, but don't assume you're getting any kind of valid reporting on controversies.

[DANmode]

> probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy.

Controversial how?

They took a lot of value away from the communities at Reddit.com, too. Lots of us remember both.

[xnx]

Ars is disproportionately popular here for a site that just copies from other news sources. Do they add any value beyond serving as a link list for a certain type of content?

[physicsguy]

They had some great video series too which seem to have stopped. Their War Stories gaming interviews were brilliant.

[zahlman]

> the acquisition from Condé Nast

By Condé Nast? Or did they get acquired again?

[Cluelessidoit]

AMEN

[anthonj]

Well I am calling out an entire class of journalist. Every time I've made a similar statement I got some angry answer (or got my post hidden or removed).