Wednesday August 21, 2024; 2:34 PM EDT
- Because of the Google #TeamPixel kerfuffle this past week, I had great interest in reading the reviews of the Pixel 9 series posted by 9to5Google, The Verge, and Wired. The gist of the kerfuffle is, can one trust reviews when associated with a "#GiftFromGoogle" tag in light of leaked text of the latest agreement with influencers that sets an expectation that non-Google devices are not "preferred" over Google devices? Google's later clarification is, they don't consider #TeamPixel as a reviewers program, and I think implied in that statement is an expectation that participating influencers are influencing on behalf of the brand. I personally wonder why anyone thinks this is news, it should be obvious that brands, Google or any other, see influencers as extension of their marketing. What is an influencer anyway?#
- Back to the original question about trust, I think a related question is about value. When I read official reviews I can't help but feel the writers feel obligated to write something, anything, negative about the product being reviewed, which makes some sense because what product is perfect. Except, is what one writer think a negative really a negative? I think what you see in "tech reviews" invariably amount to biases. What happens is that products are reviewed against a writers preferences and not against some form of industry, or even publication, standard. #
- So, I think one needs to take tech reviews with a grain of salt. Tech reviewers of "recognized" publications are not necessarily any better or ethical than influencers. Many reviewers put high value in access to products and people of these companies. Like nearly every other piece of journalism, reviews are a mashup of facts and opinions otherwise the reviews would be nothing more than a print out of product specifications. At one time, publications like PC Magazine had labs to do performance testing and published the results against an established baseline and their reviews tended to provide explanation of what the deviations from the baseline mean. Of course opinions crept in to the explanations, they weren't nearly 100% opinions. Most tech reviews you read today are not a report of a product measured against a baseline, but rather a report of a person's experience about using the device and whether that experience met their expectations. (More like Chaos Manor and less like Byte Labs) The value of these reviews then depend on the degree to which the reader and the writer's expectations align.#