Uprising at Engadget

Engadget.com is a site that talks about electronics with a heavy emphasis on computers and phones but if you plug it in or it can run on batteries I wouldn’t  be surprised to see it on their site.

They talk about upcoming products and roomers, they have some hands on reviews but they are mostly known for their snarky commentary on all things technology.  Much like this blog, there is a comment section at the end of each story.

The comment section is mostly frequented by fanboys and people who like to try and ad there own snarky rants.  What could go wrong right?

The editors at Engadget are the media equivalent version of fanboys for Apple.  The breathlessly report on every Apple fact or rumor.  They will sometimes run 9 or 10 Apple stories a day.  As you can imagine this delights some nerds and grates on others.  More than 16 people* had been complaining of the Apple bias for years, then the iPad . . . .  the winning and accusations were reaching a crescendo, spurred on by the indefensible denial of any bias by Engadget staff.

The Editor and Chief put out a snide post that essentially said  – “fine, something like 16 people hate Apple so much we are giving them a link to Engadget that will show stories from all companies except Apple”.  That was it, the comments were flying.  Most went something like this “we don’t hate Apple we hate the way you treat them compared to the competition – you are not listening!” Once in a while an editor would try to post a comment that would say something like “hey we give coverage to everyone, we’re not biased . . .” and their comment would be immediately voted down.  (Engadget has a “ranking” system that allows logged in users to vote up or down any comment, theoretically this would bring the good comments to the top and bury the bad ones on the bottom)

1000+ comments later, they took their ball and went home disabling all comments.  For two days there were snarky comments on technology with very few Apple stories and no comments anywhere.  The articles appeared much more guarded to me.  Today comments were turned back on and we were informed that the trolls and trouble makers have been banned from the site and there would be no more voting on the comments of editors and of course they could delete any comments they want for whatever reason they want.  Hundreds of comments appeared, they all basically said “yeah! some people are such trouble makers – we love you Engadget”

My guess is that 90% +, of those involved in this revolution are under 30.  I also suspect that they may now better understand events like the Russian revolution in the same way Homer Simpson and John Stuart educate America on topics like health care and 401Ks