Gizmodo Sucks, Loses Credibility
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.
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. |
36 Responses to “Gizmodo Sucks, Loses Credibility”
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I was banned by Jesus Diaz for pointing out a strawman. I complained to Jason Chen, who said my comments were fine and unbanned me. Then, before I could even post again, Jesus banned me AGAIN just REREADING the comments.
wow. I didn’t even know about what happened at CES. But what really bothered me was the iphone4 thing. Who would actually put it up there, in full detail, and blow it for everyone? I mean, a little picture would have been intriguing, but come-on. And the means that they got it were probably illegal. I always go to engadget because they have never offended me, and seem just a step closer to professionalism.
Banned from Giz
I went to their off topic channel and commented how Jason Chen, in his own words, would rather play with his phone than talk to his wife. Banned. They are way too sensitive to allow comments if this is how they moderate.
Gizmodo makes me want to retch just opening their webpage. They cant go on for 5 minutes without praising apple for this or that. Morons got banne dfrom the latest apple event and they still lick their boots. I just hope steve “rim” jobs does not show in the gizmodo office cuz his “wii” is gonna be so sore from all the B.J.’s he’s gonna get.
Gizmodo has officially lost me as a reader today. After reading 2 anti-Sony article in as many days, I can longer stand the vendettas they seem to have against anything not Apple or Nintendo or Microsoft.
They had one editorial about what’s more useless tech…motion controls or 3D…with pictures of the PS3 only.
Then they write this completely slanted rant about how sad it is that Sony has lost E3 and the console war in general…contradicting themselves the entire way thru.
Avoid Gizmodo. I don’t know what’s gotten into them recently…the slant they have is unbearable. It might be the free XBox 360 they got from Microsoft (like all who attended the Microsoft conference at E3). They have people with titles such as “editor” and “reporter”…they’re just bloggers with a bit more access than everyone else…it doesn’t make them journalists…in fact associating them with real journalists is an insult to those who actually provide a fair and unbiased view of the industry.
Jesus Diaz is a fanboi piece of ****. I don’t think he could muster an intelligent article if half the staff helped him. His bias is disgusting, and he bans anyone who points out what a joke he is.
Anyone who takes Giz to be a serious tech site, needs their head checked.
I just got banned by ginger pubes Matt Buchanan but I guess I deserved it for telling the truth. They wrote an article looking for a NYC intern to “do research” and I quietly asked why such a position exists if they’re just going to take all their article ideas from Reddit.com
Guess the truth hurt that ginger monkey too much?
Oh but at least carrot top is better than scummy Jesus Bias
Jesus Diaz seems like the most biased fanboi at Giz. His articles are written like some narcissistic school yard bully who compares ice-cream cones against the neighborhoods welfare children. Totally unprofessional even for a fanboi, I’m guessing he was dropped repeatedly as a child.
I just got banned for commenting and was told by Adam Frucci that my single word comment of “Lame” on an article about sexting and funny names was neither “civil” or “intelligent”.
I probably have less than half a dozen comments on Giz and have never put anyone down or used swear words. Others in the article felt the same way and there where other single word comments. I guess because I don’t have a star next to my name and someone was feeling all power trippy he decided to ban me. BS…I emailed the Editorial Director but not expecting any changes.