In the wave of AI controversies and lawsuits, CNET has been publicly admonished since it first started posting thinly-veiled AI-generated content on its site in late 2022— a scandal that has culminated in the site being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia.
Considering that CNET has been in the business since 1994 and maintained a top-tier reputation on Wikipedia up until late 2020, this change came after lots of debate between Wikipedia’s editors and has drawn the attention of many in the media, including some CNET staff members.
CNET lost my trust when they repacked software and drivers in their archive with a homebrew installer that bundled bloatware. Initially the bing search bar, then Opera, latest I remember was some antivirus solution. Sure, you can deselect them all, but I hate those business practices with a passion.
Yeah, I mean prior to 2000 they were one of the trusted sources for software to be easily accessed and downloaded that was the up to date version. I would often learn about new features when installing what I downloaded from them because every piece of software didn’t have embedded auto update and publishers were often small and given the developing state of things, unknown.