3 ms·

I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications lik

I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to crowd out the real people who do this. Instead of googling which bike to buy and being met with a number of fairly reputable publications which specialize in this stuff, you're met with Business Insider and other trash which are all just following the incentive of trying to get their affiliate link clicked between the time you start researching and the time you innevitably buy something off Amazon. I think the MCN example above is actually really good - since no one expects to get an affiliate payment from Amazon from someone buying a motorcycle, the quality of the reviews for "Best motorbike under $5000" are about a million times better than "Best bike for under $500". The good reviews do exist, you just can't find them, because Amazon has completely screwed the click through path from "Google X product -> Purchase on Amazon"

jpalomaki 5y ago
If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.
- zo1 5y ago
  I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.
dazc 5y ago
The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?
- Traster 5y ago
  This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.

jpalomaki 5y ago

If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.

zo1 5y ago
I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.

dazc 5y ago

The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?

Traster 5y ago
This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.