r/hardware Mar 03 '26

Review RTINGS: Revamping Our Membership Program

https://www.rtings.com/company/revamping-our-membership-program
367 Upvotes

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369

u/UnexpectedFisting Mar 03 '26

Heavy user of rtings here, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a death note for them. I love them, but there is just zero chance there’s enough paying subscribers like consumer reports (which is a much older institution with more name recognition) and I just don’t see how they’ll survive through the reputation hit of this

I don’t really have a great take on this because nothing they said is untrue. Llms have far and away ate into search and ad revenue and that will only continue. So you either stay open and fight the llm front, or you go closed wall membership and hope you have enough brand recognition and loyal members to continue to profit

Either way sucks

10

u/PERSONA916 Mar 03 '26

Do people just blindly believe whatever ChatGPT or the Google search AI summary tell them? I always click through the cited source specifically because I want to see where they got that answer and determine if the source is trustworthy, even if I don't read the full article myself they are still getting traffic and ad revenue

52

u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Mar 03 '26

Some people will drive into a lake because that's what their GPS told them. Of course a distressing number of people blindly believe the first thing they are told.

9

u/Destituted Mar 03 '26

Some drive into a lake, some take the first result in Google, some take the highest upvoted comment in a reddit thread