6 ms·

I think this is article is Ars Technica scraping the bottom of the barrel for eyeballs. The past few years they have a really nasty habit of publishing low-effo

by tomc1985 6y ago

I think this is article is Ars Technica scraping the bottom of the barrel for eyeballs. The past few years they have a really nasty habit of publishing low-effort fluff pieces that cater to whatever is the current zeitgeist PornHub purging all the content they did is remarkable, and certain kinds of content on the site are all but gone. They've likely lost a lot of viewership that way.

hellotomyrars 6y ago
Ars is still generally good and I think they write mostly informed pieces that you don't see elsewhere every few months there is something just truly terrible/inane on there. They're also reposting Wired articles which are often not the best. This stands out as the single worst thing I've ever seen on their site: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/this-is-why-ill-never-shop-at-officemax-again-even-if-everything-is-free/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/this-is-why-ill-... Summary: Author whines about customer support experiences and makes an ass of themselves, then realizes that all their griping wasn't even necessary because if they had performed some basic troubleshooting they would have realized the problem was elsewhere all along. As for Pornhubs viewership, I don't think it will go down much. I imagine a large part of their audience just goes to the site and clicks on what looks good to them, maybe filtering by category or searching, but still, they see what's there and they click. Also in a roundabout way, since now everything on the site is either from their parent company, a partner company, or someone in their model program they are in control of all revenue and are more probably more likely to see people pay for content from their model program members, which they get a cut of.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Depends on one's tastes. There's a lot of fetish material from anonymous uploads that is simply gone. Which sucks for them, cause now I just go to xvideos As for Ars, they used to have a journo that would publish 10+ page reviews of the latest Mac OS release, and the dude had an extensive knowledge of Apple and Apple products. In a past life I was a journo for one of their competitors for a few years and my EIC was always pointing to Ars as our rival and competitor to take inspiration from. When our publication went downhill I turned to Ars to get the reporting that I wanted, and it feels like that well dried up a few years ago. In-depth technical articles replaced with inspiration porn and geek fan service. They went from being a slightly-less-nerdy Anandtech to a slightly geekier BuzzFeed or TechDirt Fuck Conde Nast!
  - numbnuts 6y ago
    > As for Ars, they used to have a journo that would publish 10+ page reviews of the latest Mac OS release, and the dude had an extensive knowledge of Apple and Apple products. John Siracusa. He left Ars ~5 years ago, I think. Even after I switched away from OS X, I would still read his reviews.
claudiawerner 6y ago
>PornHub purging all the content they did is remarkable, and certain kinds of content on the site are all but gone. The absurdity of it is that there was a small minority of animated and computer generated (non-voice acted) nude "dance" videos featuring 3D models. Those were also removed, but likely unintentionally. You can't 'verify' stock 3D models, created from beginning to end by a single person.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Their purge was a broad-brush panic reaction to a smear piece that ran in an issue of the New York Times earlier this month. I'm sure a lot of perfectly fine content got deleted

hellotomyrars 6y ago

Ars is still generally good and I think they write mostly informed pieces that you don't see elsewhere every few months there is something just truly terrible/inane on there. They're also reposting Wired articles which are often not the best. This stands out as the single worst thing I've ever seen on their site: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/this-is-why-ill-never-shop-at-officemax-again-even-if-everything-is-free/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/this-is-why-ill-... Summary: Author whines about customer support experiences and makes an ass of themselves, then realizes that all their griping wasn't even necessary because if they had performed some basic troubleshooting they would have realized the problem was elsewhere all along. As for Pornhubs viewership, I don't think it will go down much. I imagine a large part of their audience just goes to the site and clicks on what looks good to them, maybe filtering by category or searching, but still, they see what's there and they click. Also in a roundabout way, since now everything on the site is either from their parent company, a partner company, or someone in their model program they are in control of all revenue and are more probably more likely to see people pay for content from their model program members, which they get a cut of.

tomc1985 6y ago
Depends on one's tastes. There's a lot of fetish material from anonymous uploads that is simply gone. Which sucks for them, cause now I just go to xvideos As for Ars, they used to have a journo that would publish 10+ page reviews of the latest Mac OS release, and the dude had an extensive knowledge of Apple and Apple products. In a past life I was a journo for one of their competitors for a few years and my EIC was always pointing to Ars as our rival and competitor to take inspiration from. When our publication went downhill I turned to Ars to get the reporting that I wanted, and it feels like that well dried up a few years ago. In-depth technical articles replaced with inspiration porn and geek fan service. They went from being a slightly-less-nerdy Anandtech to a slightly geekier BuzzFeed or TechDirt Fuck Conde Nast!
- numbnuts 6y ago
  > As for Ars, they used to have a journo that would publish 10+ page reviews of the latest Mac OS release, and the dude had an extensive knowledge of Apple and Apple products. John Siracusa. He left Ars ~5 years ago, I think. Even after I switched away from OS X, I would still read his reviews.

claudiawerner 6y ago

>PornHub purging all the content they did is remarkable, and certain kinds of content on the site are all but gone. The absurdity of it is that there was a small minority of animated and computer generated (non-voice acted) nude "dance" videos featuring 3D models. Those were also removed, but likely unintentionally. You can't 'verify' stock 3D models, created from beginning to end by a single person.

tomc1985 6y ago
Their purge was a broad-brush panic reaction to a smear piece that ran in an issue of the New York Times earlier this month. I'm sure a lot of perfectly fine content got deleted