Has ArsTechnica and TechCrunch lost its way

We've reached a saturation of totally cromulent phones and phone services, TVs, consumer computing hardware and even cars that make it difficult to look at any reviews as furthering any sort of story of technical development as opposed to some sort of lifestyle trend versus a technological sea change. The only substantive news is in the political realm.

Honestly, the most important new practical technological development of the past 5 years has been my damn pellet grill.

I like Ars still.

Hard to avoid “politics” not bumping into technology these days.

I would argue that at times if you see a lot of politics in tech articles, there may be good reason for it.

A better question might be why tech has become so political. Tech has never been neutral, to be sure. The industrial revolution brought about deep, fundamental, and undemocratic changes, imposed by the wealthy. Something similar is happening today, and the price is being paid primarily by the people who least benefit from them. It's only natural this results in a politically charged atmosphere. It doesn't help that the only recent development of note, ML/LLMs, is as highly polarizing as the mechanized looms back then, and probably far less beneficial.

Believing that tech has nothing to do with politics is magical thinking.

Most publications accept money from companies that wish to sway public opinions. Just as purely political sites sway back and forth so do all the tech publications. Same reason many movies have gone down the drain yet the same crap is being churned out even when movie producers are losing money for allowing external manipulation that offers no artistic value.

I think it would be a fun experiment to have a uBlock Origin section for sites that accept money for paid slants. One click could silence much if not most of the internet.

Over the past two years YOShInOn and I have gotten more complaints about posting ArsTechnica and TechCrunch articles to various places more than anything else, mainly for reasons that don't have anything to do with politics but when they do have to do with politics it is frequently the opposite of the kind of politics you have in mind (e.g. whatever your politics are)

Maybe there is "tech" and "tech business" news and sometimes the two do not really overlap that well (some times they overlap a lot). The overlap sort of depends on your point of view. How the tech works and how it is deployed are separate things.

I've noticed the same thing about Ars -- haven't really been reading TC for years. It seems like it's about pushing a political agenda now, not unbiased tech reporting :(