Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Gizmodo Sucks, Loses Credibility

Posted in Blogging, Scandal by Elliott Back on January 12th, 2008.

I’m feeling like gadget blog Gizmodo (nofollow) has lost all its credibility in the blogging world. I am sure you’ve all hear about their scandal at CES 2008, which has hurt all bloggers’ credibility and left at least one of their staff banned from CES for life. Ironically, Gizmodo even had the stones to blog about it, calling their childish prank “the meanest thing Gizmodo did at CES (nofollow):”

CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn’t help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn’t stop.

Their title implies Gizmodo did other, but less mean, things at CES. I don’t get why they decided to sabotage a trade show? Their actions show they were there as irresponsible bloggers, and not the members of the press their badges said they were. This isn’t the only thing that’s made me give up on them, though. Here’s a running list:

1) Posting porn to Kotaku

If you check out this apology note from Kotaku, a well respected gaming blog, you’ll find that a Gizmodo editor decided “to post a very inappropriate photo on the top of Kotaku using someone else’s name.” The photo, an obscene shock / porn image known as “Tubgirl” was visible on the site for at least 20 minutes before a Kotaku editor noticed and removed it.

2) Immature staff

I can’t help but reproduce this photo from a pit stop competition (nofollow) Gizmodo did where they thought it would make a cool and professional photo of them all giving the finger. Such displays have their place, but stick them in your Facebook photos where your other drunk exploits go, please?

3) Misleading stories, headlines

When there isn’t news, according to Apple Gazette, Brian Lam–editor of Gizmodo–will just make some up, dropping a delicious teaser story a year ago about the iPhone. Unfortunately, he wasn’t writing about the Apple iPhone, he was writing about the Cisco one. Nevertheless, making it seem like it was about Apple got Gizmodo lots of hits.

4) Gizmodo’s foray into porn

We’ve heard that the “internet is for porn,” but Gizmodo keeps posting inappropriate gadget-unrelated material to their homepage, the latest of which is a tour of the AVN expo (nofollow) also occurring near CES. Sexuality and technology is an interesting topic–one that magazines like Wired cover better and more professionally–but Gizmodo is incapable of handling adult matters with delicacy, and just ruts around with them in the mud.

nogizmodo.png

If you use wordpress and would like to boycott Gizmodo, you can run a simple database query to add nofollow to all of their links:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, '<a href="http://gizmodo', '<a rel="nofollow" href="http://gizmodo') WHERE post_content LIKE '%gizmodo%' AND post_content NOT LIKE '%nofollow%'
;
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, '<a href="http://www.gizmodo', '<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gizmodo') WHERE post_content LIKE '%gizmodo%' AND post_content NOT LIKE '%nofollow%'
;

This checks to see if any of the old links have a rel attribute in them. This SQL will only touch posts with Gizmodo in them, so rest safe, but at the same time don’t trust me either!

Update: Somehow Gizmodo now thinks that their childish prank is hard hitting journalism (nofollow). How is turning off TVs at a conference about TVs journalism? Would it be excellent journalism if you also firebombed the place?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is tagged with apple iphone, brian lam, apology note, ces 2008, gizmodo, childish prank, giving the finger, nofollow, iphone, professional photo, t news, pit stop, credibility, badges, exploits, gadget, scandal, cisco, tvs, ces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 12 Comments

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    I agree with majority of your rant about Gizmodo, indeed they are very childish. Good on you for posting this. Oh and by the way, Kotaku are no where near respected, they are terribly biased and just drive complete BS headlines and stories for hits/views.
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    No kidding, l HATE gizmodo; and NEVER click on their digg articles, seems like they steal A LOT of their stories for other smaller web sites as well.
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    Agree Gizmodo Sucks.

    I think you need to check out their new article:
    http://gizmodo.com/5029524/steve-jobs-says-he-d...

    In this they claim that Steve Jobs should not have to reveal any medical problems. The article also compares Steve to FDR and JFK.

    While the article was bad and poorly written, the real fireworks began in the comments section. At last count over 2 dozen readers have been banned from Gizmodo for comments relating to the article.

    Some of the comments took offense to the comparison of Steve to JFK and FDR. Others disagreed with the article and felt that Steve should disclose his medical problems. All of the above were banned.

    It appears that the banning was the result of a childish act by Jesus Diaz a senior editor at Gizmodo. Multiple commenters pointed out that Jesus had written an editorial and should expect some disagreement. However, these were the last comments that these writers would make at Gizmodo. All those dissenting were banned.

    So as an FYI, in case you didn't notice Gizmodo is an Apple dominated site. And anyone disagreeing with the views of the staff will be summarily banned.
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    Here have a domain for a while:
    http://www.gizmodosucks.com
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    Yeah I stopped reading them a few years back. The form of English they speak on that site is literally as bad or perhaps worse than that of youtube comments. I hate the writing style Gizmodo uses so much that I decided I would rather not keep up with the gadgets posted on that site. Its like the write for the 12-16 year old digg audience. The really sad thing is there Alexa rank:

    Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide

    more today on gizmodo jobs...
    gizmodo.com - Cached
    Rank: 573
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    Like Kevin pointed out, these guys are ban-happy. A few months ago I was banned for making a light-hearted joke, implying that Lego's don't qualify as Gizmos.

    When I commented on it in my profile, they disabled my ability to report problems are ask questions regarding my profile status.
    I was disappointed when they pulled their TV stunt, but I let it go. Now I see that they are just childish.
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    yeah they really do suck. i made a comment critical of a recent entry about the developer of a jet pack. the entry consisted of FOUR separate video clips, all on the front page. the accompanying text didn't summarize what these video might say or explain the general drift of the article.

    my comment was:

    "does EVERYTHING have to be a video? could you at least summarize what this story is about?"

    and for that i was banned.
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    Unlike the rest of you, I loved Gizmodo.com (the site, not necessarily the prank you address). I have always felt they covered the tech and gizmos that interest me, and they manage to make me laugh sometimes. I have given 'em hell sometimes in my comments, if I don't like their angle, are covering something they've already covered, etc., and been a fairly active commenter in my favorite blog.

    But I got banned from commenting on Gizmodo.com yesterday. I didn't use profanity, threaten anyone, or link to spam. The only reason I can figure I got banned from Gizmodo is because I mentioned the author of the article (Mr. Diaz) had a couple glaring mistakes, and said (in jest) that must mean the author didn't get enough sleep. Next thing I know my commenting privileges are gone.

    It really sucks to get banned from your favorite blog when you didn't see it coming. How do you keep liking something that rejects you? Maybe I should join the dark side, seems to be at least 8 gizmodo haters I can team up with.

    Wait a second... Did all you guys all get kicked off too? That's really the only reason I can see to hate the blog itself, assuming you can handle R-rated content from time to time (which I do).

    Oh well, if nothing else, people can come here (GizmodoSucks.com seems to bring you here) and add stories of their banning.
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    Rob, I was banned a few months back for no reason by Mr. Diaz as well. I agree I really enjoyed Gizmodo, I was a commenter for years. I believe I was banned for pointing out that the story was not new and had actually been reported in the WSJ a few months back, but I will never really know the real reason since no one told me.

    I agree with your rationale, I dislike Gizmodo now because of how they treat their readers. There appears to be no consideration made for my years of commenting, over 400 comments I believe.

    I feel like I contributed a lot to the site and that if someone had a problem with me they should tell me.

    So I no longer read gizmodo, I doubt my 10 less page views a day will help, but it at least makes me feel better.
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    Ha, I noticed a bunch of people pointing out a mistake on Gizmodo today. Since it was an article by Jesus Diaz, I can't help but wonder if a dozen new ex-Gizmodo commenters will join us today.
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    oh my gosh guys it was a joke people cant laugh anymore
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    They are pompous assholes and accept absolutely no criticism.

    I'm a troll and will be the first to admit that. I spend most of my time mixing poop jokes into my honest opinions. They had absolutely no problem with my poop and penis comments, but when they crossed the line by making a post that was extremely derogatory towards a portion of the population I had to put my penis jokes aside and criticize the post. I was banned on the spot.

    I'm not a complete idiot, I have several engineering degrees and for the most part only blog out of boredom when nothing is going amiss at work. I have a rather large following of trolls and downtime bloggers as well as fellow gamers and for a while had a link to Gizmodo on my personal websites. I have removed that link and tempted placing a link to this in it's place, but honestly I don't want to give them the traffic

    Thanks for letting me rant, this is the last post I will make regarding the site. On a side note, the Gawker network is still a good place to go, I just won't be going to Gizmodo.
 

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