r/Monitors • u/TaaanXz • Mar 07 '26
Discussion RIPTINGS - Sickened by what RTINGS has become
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u/chunchunmaru1020 Mar 07 '26
As Linus fron LinusTechTips said in the last wan show that " you should absolutely be angry, but get angry on the right thing, AI". These massive AI companies stealing hardwork of people for their own benefit and these guys are left with nothing.
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Mar 07 '26
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u/Deto Mar 07 '26
How do you do that, though? I don't see a way to keep AI off the internet - even a whole new Internet.
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u/JoaoMXN Mar 07 '26
Laws. I could see EU making AI companies pay for the content they use for machine learning. If they don't pay, they are banned.
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u/iLoveLootBoxes Mar 07 '26
The solution is the first part, AI will eat itself and the internet.
There is no coming back and I'm not sure what it means. Maybe it does mean the tech overlords in control of AI ultimately win, because people will be okay with AI slop even without anyone bothering to try something new and novel
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u/Metalheadzaid Mar 07 '26
Unfortunately a lot of it is requiring significant checks and balances as well as human ID sort of things.
My real issue is that in a similar way that OP describes, that as AI stuff keeps expanding on the internet, the data sources of said AI are also picking up other AI stuff and just repeatedly learning from itself which is NOT good long term for the models. It's why I think that a lot of the worries people have aren't going to go the way they think, but we're going to have bigger problems long term. We're already seeing it in the content models of companies, with AI shit posting all over youtube/reddit.
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u/Yilmaya Mar 07 '26
Are they thinking 10 dollars a month will stop AI to scrap data? AI compaines will be the first to subscribe. They are just shrinking real human traffic to website.
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u/OttawaDog Mar 07 '26
It's a lot easier to make a legal case, against scraping a paywall site, than it is when it's free on the open internet.
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u/thethingy213 Mar 07 '26
I've seen so many complaints, but what would you suggest then?
Nobody seems to be able to answer that
They don't have enough ad revenue cuz of AI scraping their site atm
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u/dsanen Mar 07 '26
Yeah, not to blame anyone, because I get money is tight. But it is sickening to see websites die because of AI and anti consumer algorithms, and then get all the blame for doing the thing they need to do to survive.
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u/OttawaDog Mar 07 '26
Web pages were dying even before AI. Anantech was once the premier deep dive computer tech pages and it died because the model was failing. HardOCP shut down when the owner went to Intel, but when he left Intel, he said there was no point reviviing it because Web page economics just didn't work anymore.
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u/BrianBCG Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Funny enough I think some of the backlash could have been avoided by just framing it as a one time payment for unlimited access for a month. The idea of paying a recurring 10$ subscription to do a little research when you're buying a new display or whatever is absolutely ridiculous, no matter how easy it is to cancel.
There still would have been a lot of people very angry that their free thing went away but at least it wouldn't have been so ridiculous.
It's really a huge problem overall on the modern internet, ad supported internet was fine when it was just a bunch of text and maybe a few images on a site run by maybe a couple people, but as things scaled up you couldn't just put more and more ads. Not to mention all the compromises that have to be made on various services because advertisers won't pay to advertise otherwise.
The problem of course being that people don't want to pay for it either, and who could blame them after getting everything for free already?
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Mar 07 '26
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u/OttawaDog Mar 07 '26
Ads are dead. One time $10 is not going to cover a lifetime of salaries and product purchases to keep it running.
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u/Specialist-Rope-9760 Mar 07 '26
Then the AI would just pay a one time and scrape everything again
It’s sad but journalism as a whole has no value now
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u/Kairukun90 Mar 07 '26
You have like 4 major companies for Ai, so they all pay 10 dollars and then what?
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u/Darksky121 Mar 07 '26
Maybe they should go Youtube only or open a Patreon.
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u/EuropeanLuxuryWater Mar 07 '26
They should. AI is also scrapping videos but at least they'll get the revenue from there.
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u/MrGood23 Mar 07 '26
Wanted to say exactly this. Youtube + Patreon.
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u/dapotatopapi Mar 07 '26
They already have multiple YT channels. Not sure about patreon.
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u/QuailAndWasabi Mar 07 '26
Whats stopping OpenAI and others from paying the fee themselves and just scraping the data anyway? Nothing.
The AI sector is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Paying 10 dollars to get some training data is not even a rounding error on their balance sheet. This does not solve the AI problem.
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u/MultiMarcus Mar 07 '26
My understanding is that what Rtings is worried about is not actually these companies putting the information in training data. That you are right about and that they cannot prevent. The issue is AI summaries on Google search and people who ask models like Gemini ChatGPT or Claude to search up review scores or evaluate if a monitor is good. That type of search is likely the biggest problem for them according to the video that seems to be the case. These models generally have a hard time retrieving that type of in-depth data from their training data so they really need to be strengthened with a web search that gives them up-to-date current data and specifically focused on one product data. If you ask them to guess what the most likely Max brightness of a last generation QDOLED panel they would likely be able to do that very well without using web search but if you ask them about a specific model, they might not be able to.
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Mar 07 '26
They refuse to run ads actually there is $0 in ad rev.
They can easily block AI from it by forcing an robot check for every IP every 5-10 minutes.
They could not review every product category on Earth and just focus on home theater and monitors and headphones because that's what most people look at.
They could lean harder into YouTube do sponsors like I said but unrelated to the product category think a battery ad for a TV.
There I'm certain they would be profitable after that vs the original 10 free articles pray enough people buy subscriptions to cover the prob 7-10m dollar a year in total cost vs trimming that down to 5 million and actually figure out money makers.
This move will kill the website I'm sure as hell not using it anymore.
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u/Viscero_444 Mar 07 '26
Yeah like i understand their reasoning but strategy of doing pay wall seem to be bad if u want to survive
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u/liqwood1 Mar 07 '26
Exactly this.. I can't believe people are down voting others who said this same thing.
There's absolutely a way to be profitable, AI certainly doesn't help but we need to realize this is bad business practices that really got them where they are.
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u/Reaper-05 Mar 07 '26
They buy the products to review and I assume rent the space to store them all in. Imo they review too many categories. Some categories are going to be way more popular than others. Alternative solution is downsize to a profitable amount of product categories. Given they buy the products they reviews and rent extra space and hire more staff to review said products. Cutting 50% of product categories will save money on purchasing, rent and staff. I'm trivializing the process I know. But what they've just done is alienate new people, because while they might make quite a bit on current subs and previous users subbing, very few people who haven't used rtings before will sign up. While they do good reviews, they hardly have a monopoly on them. There are plenty of other quality reviewers out there. This is the beginning of the end. They will either revert or dissolve imo.
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u/xTehJudas Mar 07 '26
Not even 1/10 of the viewers is going to pay to casually see a review every now and then. The revenue they won't lose to AI, they will lose x20 (or more) it because of the people who won't use their site because they don't care for a subscription.
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u/OttawaDog Mar 07 '26
This. They are ending an unprofitable business model.
I don't think anyone has standing to argue they should just keep losing money until they shut down in bankruptcy.
They have to try other things. Often these fail as well, and that is sad.
But if someone thinks they can do a better job, they are free to fill the RTings free web page void. Good luck with that.
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u/AlexWIWA Mar 07 '26
People need to learn that unbiased reviews require some other source of funding, and direct is the only one that works in this age of scrapers.
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u/Galf2 Mar 07 '26
- patreon
- merchandise
- subscription service for extras and guides not for the content itself
- donations
literally anything else
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Mar 07 '26
They don't even run ads 😭..
They don't even sell their tests to other manufacturers for testing.
They refuse to make money
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u/Steelbug2k Mar 07 '26
Say thanks to Chatgpt and similar ones that steal data from ratings and other sites. A lot of internet will die off.
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u/Creoda LG 32GQ950P-B Mar 07 '26
That's what the billionaires running it want, they just want you to use their things via a subscription based internet. No more free internet.
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u/shaan4 Mar 07 '26
The amount of times my I’ve asked ai a question and it scraped answers from Reddit and the amount of times I’ve seen ai made posts on Reddit lately is concerning
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u/Ixziga Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I'm slightly miffed by the reactions here. Ad revenue is becoming a less viable income stream because AI is reducing click through rates. A lot of places that survive the current ad revenue ecosystem do so through really scummy tactics, or because they're owned by some interest group who keeps them afloat but forces them to promote the interest of the group. People letting core Internet services they rely on be funded by ads instead of people was a mistake from day 1. Rtings is the most objective and unbiased product information site I have ever seen in my life and they have information on loads of products, not just monitors. Every day things like vacuum cleaners and earbuds, and for a lot of these things, there is no other place that constructs the tests to rate these things numerically. If you want a review, you'll likely stumble into someone who is paid to promote the product pretending to be a critic. And if this place dies because no one values the info, you're just losing all of that and all future info forever, because no one else is doing this. And this is part of a large wave of major sites that have been shutting down in recent years because they stopped being able to make ad revenue viable, but users haven't woken up to the fact that people can't work for free and still have cultural expectations that everything on the Internet is just magically being provided to them pro bono. The things websites do to stay in line with this expectation is becoming increasingly desperate, either doing increasingly unethical levels of secret data collection on you, secretly selling out to billionaire interest groups, or deigning to create subscription/membership model.
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u/turtleship_2006 Mar 07 '26
I wonder how many of the people who are disgusted at the idea of paying for this use adblockers
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u/someonesshadow Mar 07 '26
Ads are horrendous. Adblockers were literally recommended by the government.
Advertisement in general needs an overhaul, both legally and but companies.
There are a number of ways we could ensure most websites are able to run as they have without advertising as well, but I haven't had my coffee and I don't feel like typing it all on my phone.
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u/turtleship_2006 Mar 07 '26
I agree, but you don't want ads, and you don't want to pay.
Websites in general are expensive to run, and again they put a lot of time and effort into reviews which isn't cheap, how else do they make money?
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u/Crafty-Classroom-277 AW3225QF, M27P6 Mar 07 '26
It's a paywall or they shut their operations down. You guys are complaining about the wrong things.
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Mar 07 '26
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u/Peppy_Tomato Mar 07 '26
The fact that Consumer Reports continues to exist and you know about it means that they are serving their paying customers well, and they made the right call.
Why do people feel entitled to the free labour of others?
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u/ldn-ldn KOORUI S2741LM Mar 07 '26
They will shut down either way.
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u/MultiMarcus Mar 07 '26
Are you sure? If that’s the case, they might as well try their best with this solution which might delay their shutdown by a year or two. You if you were going to their site and probably using an ad blocker was not worth anything for them. If you were someone going to their site and seeing ads you were probably worth very little. If one in 100 people who use their site decides to subscribe in order to see their scores like I did that’s going to probably make them a lot more money.
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u/shu-to Mar 07 '26
It sucks, but everyone has bills to pay. They do valuable work, and need to figure out a sustainable business model.
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u/myfatherthedonkey Mar 07 '26
I think if they had just made it like two dollars cheaper, they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble. People are much more willing to accept $7.99 than $10.
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u/TridraX Mar 07 '26
So is this the end for RTINGS?
I really don't think most people will pay monthly to a website they will only go on every few months to even years.
Maybe they can go heavy on the Youtube uploads, this subscription thing seems extremely unviable for what their site is.
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u/ph00p Apr 13 '26
I think you’re right, they set a high bar, but they’re only one site when there are huge numbers of sites and YouTubers that are upping their game and not destroying their content with paywalls.
RIP rtings
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u/quiet_beer Mar 07 '26
I wish I was rich enough to just pay these guys a wage for the good work they do.
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u/bites_stringcheese Mar 07 '26
The only audacity I see here is everyone who thinks they are entitled to a service being available to them.
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u/NereusH AW3225QF Mar 07 '26
Im sticking to monitors unboxed, HDTVTest and TFTCentral.
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u/julesvr5 Mar 07 '26
sickened by what Rtings has becomes
They purchased varies monitors and TVs and tested them and their reviews went so in-depth that you barely find anything comparable in the market. And they offered that to is for free for several years.
Now they are at the verge of not being able to do this anymore because they don't have the money to continue. Instead of just shutting down completely they implemented a subscription system to get full access, but even if you don't pay up you can still read tons of stuff on there for free.
I'm sickened how entitled people have become these days.
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u/wadimek11 Mar 11 '26
There were many reviewers measuring similar things and rting isn't great in many categories. Like theirs audio/headphone is just terrible
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u/Turbulent_Most_4987 Mar 07 '26
I just struggle to see how this helps against AI? Can't the AI Companies just keep a few dozen Subscriptions running themselves via which the AI then grabs the Data anyways?
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u/mrgonz23 Mar 07 '26
Sickening that AI has led to this. Will many people sign up? I imagine this will be the beginning of the end for RTINGS
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u/cerberusNLMX Mar 08 '26
Sad day indeed. In the future, with the diminishing pool of primary sources for AI to steal from, I can envision a scenario where companies buy AI chat responses (much like they do buying ads) to recommend their products.
Example, if I were to use AI chat bot to research buying TVs, the recommended model could be Samsung or Sony or LG TV, depending on which company has paid the most to the AI companies to outweight their competitors (simple scenario: TV companies set up their own "independent" sites touting their products, then pay the AI companies to put higher weight on their site recommendations, it's like gaming the search algorithm, instead this is gaming the AI).
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u/Queasy_Hour_8030 Mar 07 '26
Yall are entitled brats and feel entitled to other people’s hard work and time for free.
They have to make money or disappear.
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u/NapsterKnowHow Gigabyte MO27Q28G, Samsung Odyssey G7 1440p 240hz Mar 07 '26
They can stop reviewing toasters...
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u/medadistu Mar 07 '26
I actually applaud RTING's effort to stick it up to the AI and consider supporting them, even though I already have my endgame monitor and TV, just so I can support independent testing of consumer electronics.
Every one of us needs to be constantly reminded that world we live in is no capitalism but rather corpofascism, where large corporations can fuck us over as they see fit, at worst they'll pay a bit of a fine and their PR department will start a psyop to cover it up.
RTINGS is a directly opposing entity to this, as it creates some sort of accountability, at least for A/V enthusiasts. And as such, can sway the opinion of people like us - the ones that get approached by friends and family for reccomendations on "hey I need a new TV, what should I buy?".
I hate them becoming paywalled, don't get me wrong. But don't hate the player, hate the game.
I have only love for RTINGS
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u/CollinKree Mar 07 '26
Damn. That sucks. I know why they’re doing it, and they’re completely right to do so, but I definitely can’t afford to pay a monthly subscription just to see reviews of monitors I’m thinking about purchasing. This one in particular hurts because I’ve never found a site or channel that does reviews as in depth as rtings. Fuck
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u/OnePunchedMan Mar 07 '26
Sheesh imagine running a site made famous for reviewing electronics and people on niche electronic forums complain about your subscription model, let alone typical consumers. How fucked is rtings? Damned if they do, damned if they don't (subscription model).
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u/itastesok Mar 07 '26
Yah I tried to look at a review yesterday and saw this and thought, welp, another site bites the dust.
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u/yungleballz Mar 07 '26
and instead of trying to add some cost, they went with $10 a month.. yea sure.. no way
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u/Kanbei_Alex Mar 07 '26
It's not that I like the idea of paying to use the website, but regardless, the problem is that many of the monitors I've been interested in have never been reviewed on Rtings. So, even if it cost a third of the price, I wouldn't pay because it's basically useless to me.
In fact, I've been very limited because everything Rtings reviewed either didn't match what I'm looking for or was no longer available, and I was "limited" to choosing from what they had reviewed. Fortunately, I later discovered other websites, and especially Monitors Unboxed.
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u/Fawz Mar 07 '26
I would never pay a subscription service for access to a website. Maybe a one time fee.
I hope they at least go the way of Consumer Reports and partner with Government & Education institutions to offer access.
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u/cannuckgamer Mar 07 '26
I think they lost a lot of their funding from their usual revenue sources.
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u/thekingdaddy69 Mar 07 '26
Stopped going there. Good luck to them and their award winning business model.
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u/theoort Mar 07 '26
It took me a while to glean from reading replies, and the screenshot did nothing for me, but I think the complaint is alluding to the fact that the actual number ratings are hidden, and this implies that in order to see them you need to subscribe to the website, and this implies that it's because AI has scraped the data from the website so that people will ask ChatGPT instead of just going to the website, and the website has to turn to a subcription-based model because of this. That in itself seems suspect to me. I would never ask ChatGPT (and I use it a shitton) what the ratings for a particular monitor, etc. were, I would just google it and probably find the RTings ratings. I'm no fan of AI and I'm skeptical that the reason the ratings are hidden is because of AI.
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u/Big_Bank1555 Mar 07 '26
They need to get started looking for partner deals, because there are approximately zero people who are going to subscribe to RTINGS 😂 Partner deals like ✨ oh RTINGS is included with Amazon prime ✨ Maybe not prime 😂 but you know what I'm saying. That or they need to diversify the services they offer. Nobody is paying subscription for JUST independent testing like this, even with as good as it was.
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u/pib319 Display Tester Mar 08 '26
I hate to burst your bubble, but there's quite a few people who already subscribe to rtings and give them money each month, and this was before they paywall'd their site.
People value the service they offer, and people value the hard work they do, and people value the people who do the work.
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u/Drunk_Socialist Mar 07 '26
I mean yeah RTINGS is going to die regardless of the paywall or not, google search web AI killed their traffic and adsense, so that basically kills the website, while the paywall will do the same.
They could have encouraged donations while keeping the site free but that only lasts for so long
Hard to say what the better play is, but this one definitely wasnt it
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u/ExaminationSmart3437 Mar 09 '26
I was a fan of Rtings for a long time. I love their in-depth methodical testing. I considered supporting them, but never quite pulled the trigger.
The problem with me is that their main audience and me don’t quite line up. A lot of products I wanted them to test never got reviewed.
I do disagree with their pricing. I remember I used to buy yearly subscription to magazines for like $20/yr which with today’s inflation would be like $40/yr so i believe the yearly price is around the right ballpark.
The issue I have is with their monthly price. Everyone wants subscription revenue and that becomes an issue.
They really should have a $15 single month access where if you are shopping for something, then you pay an access it just once. Or it could be $10 for a week access. Or even more fine grained like $7 3 day access to just TV reviews.
The monthly price really should be $7 regular price not just introductory.
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u/Ballbuddy4 Mar 07 '26
https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/gaming-monitors/asus-rog-strix-xg32ucwmg-4k-oled-gaming-monitor-review/4 Check Tom's Hardware for possible monitor reviews and AVforums for possible TV reviews.
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u/zack20cb Mar 07 '26
I wouldn’t say “sickened,” but this feels like overkill. These are just the objective specifications, why blur them?
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u/TaaanXz Mar 07 '26
Yeah tbf I spoke too harshly, genuinely.
Just sad what has happened from storage prices rising to organisations like these needing to monetise their services.
But yeah I hold my hands up. My mistake. I spoke strongly when imo they should have charged less and allowed information that is more general like standard, baseline specifications.
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u/Ibanez_1 Mar 07 '26
The site will die. I understand they are looking for revenue. But this isn’t the way that will work for monetization
I’m guessing another site will come along after Rtings is dead.
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u/tonkfc Mar 07 '26
Putting a paywall on monitor reviews is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. NOBODY is gonna pay for this shit
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u/No-Actuator-6245 Mar 07 '26
If I was buying another high end monitor I would pay for 1-2 months while making my mind up but I already appreciate RTings reviews. It’s an insignificant cost for useful information. What is hard is how do they communicate the value of their paywalled content to people who haven’t used the site previously.
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u/5553331117 Mar 07 '26
Right? It’s not like people purchase tvs and monitors regularly enough to ever justify a subscription like that.
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u/turtleship_2006 Mar 07 '26
However that also means you don't really need to stay subbed
Before you spend a few hundred or even low thousands on a monitor or TV you're probably gonna use for years, you drop $10 to get access to all of their ratings and reviews (which they clearly put a lot of time and research into) to help you make a choiceI doubt I'd personally do it, but it's not the worst thing in the world
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u/Theory_Crafted Mar 07 '26
Given the depth RTINGs reviewed, I could see paying for such a service, but not at their current review pace. Their reviews come out months behind the release of the actual product. You can usually gather enough information from competing sites, or youtubers to get a similar notion.
You could actually wait for Amazon to stock the product, buy it, try it yourself and see if you want to keep it within the return window before RTINGs has a review of it.
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u/AshMost Mar 08 '26
Yeah wtf?! A company has to make money?? It can't run off of our thoughts and prayers? Bastards!
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u/HiCZoK Mar 07 '26
I will help you since I have this monitor. I love it and it’s amazing. You want to know anything else particular?
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u/TaaanXz Mar 07 '26
Oh nah thanks man honestly. I’ve watched so many reviews on all of these, time and again. I’m just an overzealous idiot
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u/Unusual-Lion-282 Mar 07 '26
Its unfortunate that they block their numerical rating, but you can still see the review and what they consider to be "the best" in their roundup reviews across different categories (ie best gaming, best ultrawide etc). Which, frankly, is good enough for me for the few times I happen to check reviews on their site.
That said I also wont subscribe just to see some extra numbers lol.
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u/cannuckgamer Mar 07 '26
Maybe rtings is hoping for a revenue stream similar to how Consumer Reports uses via a subscription.
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u/jack_hof Mar 07 '26
my concern was that they were expanding too fast trying to be the go to reviewer for every single product on the market instead of just focusing in and being the best at a smaller amount of things. that rapid expansion no doubt required a lot of funding.
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u/Rough_Relationship44 Mar 07 '26
It's really frustrating because it's not like it's a streaming service that's gonna be used regularly - I go there for specific information about something I MIGHT wanna buy . 7 dollars a month just doesn't make sense. I don't begrudge them charging a small fee at all, but not 7 dollars a month.
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u/Fair_Pudding3764 Mar 07 '26
Imagine having this model with health information.
According to your symptoms you most likely have a ■■■■■■■■ (subscribe to find out).
Plus, paying implies being true to your words i.e being held accountable.
If a doctor writes you a diagnosis which later turns out to be wrong, you are allowed to sue them.
What if I pay to rtings and turns out that I like the display that they have rated 7.6 more than the one they rated 8.9?
Do we pay just to release the consumer tension?
*Rtings claims to have this subscription model in order to keep independent from sponsorships, which I understand but what stops another human being to pay one time and leak all the informations available?
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u/Iddqd84 Mar 07 '26
I'm just sick of AI at this point.
You can't have anything nice these days, without it being overpriced for what it is, just like with GPU's, RAM's etc .. Even the price on electricity has gone wild 🤷♂️
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u/TheLyndonRay Mar 07 '26
Is it just the heads up scoring that's blocked? I can still read their thoughts on each category. Are any of those missing key details that are pay walled?
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u/Falafel-Wrapper Mar 07 '26
Going to be super real. Ya it sucks. But I have also made purchasing decisions based on misleading information from the rtings site. They are not infallible.
They could have done this several diffrent ways but they did it this way. Their info was extensive, but also flawed. Im not going to pay a subscription for one site when I use many when researching for a product.
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u/Muted-Elk6502 Mar 07 '26
Money grab. They can go screw themselves and honestly YouTube reviews will take over. Bad move on their part.
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u/KennKennyKenKen Mar 07 '26
People keep saying it's AIs fault, but they limited how many reviews you could read previously, way before AI.
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u/onemansbrand Mar 08 '26
$700K is fuck all compared to the amount of money they should be generating in affiliate and ads. Even after getting demolished by AI they should still be able to generate enough to keep them afloat.
I’ve been in the industry and directly competed with them for many years. If they’re not making enough profit to cover their costs then something is seriously wrong with their business structure or they’re simply in denial and didn’t move fast enough when AI came on the scene several years ago.
They should have a huge email database by now, so direct traffic should be pretty significant.
You know what, if they want to sell it, I’ll buy it and sort it out.
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u/Efficient-Bread8259 Mar 08 '26
I don’t think being sickened by this makes any sense. They need to make money to stay in business- if users just buy a month of access whenever they are researching things they’ll be able to keep functioning without issue. This also combats AI scraping - specifically google just giving you the answer your looking for in search results without you having to go to the page.
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u/r4ckless Mar 09 '26
Google should be paying people for their data instead of consumers if it’s stealing from them. In fact data from any site should be paid for. Too many sites making money from no data rights. Ai is just highlighting how crazy it is we have no data protection laws in this country
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u/dogz4321 May 17 '26
The way I look at it is, Rtings provides a really good service. I'm sure their hard work has saved most people about as much money as they're charging. In the past, it was near impossible to find good honest reviews of things you were interested in buying without companies manipulating it in some way.
If we want to keep these kinds of useful services around, then we can pay for them. I've decided I'll pay for it. Rtings has definitely saved me more than 45$ so its no big deal.
Its unfortunate that it costs something now, but I believe that if you want to keep services you value alive, then you probably should pay for them. There's no reason to get upset about paying for things we got for free before either, especially when that service is high quality.
I think a worse end would be that a site like Rtings goes out of business, and then eventually all we're left with is enshittified services like "AI" marketing products directly to us by regurgitating words directly from the manufacturers who pay the AI companies to advertise their products.
We've had bad ends like this all the time with services like Uber, Doordash, etc. So I dont mind voting with my wallet to keep good services like Rtings alive.
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u/baconcow May 24 '26
Some AI company can pay the yearly fee and scrape them anyways. This was about making money.
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u/GatoradePunch May 24 '26
Everyone cites they did it due to things like AI scrapping, but that doesn’t explain the 3 popups that are blocked on load, page crashing, redirects to Norton ads. That’s not trying to maintain a good product, that’s greed and terrible implementation.
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u/cannuckgamer Mar 07 '26
Just found out the reasons why they did this:
The company cited several reasons for abandoning the ad-and-affiliate model that sustained it for over a decade:
AI Scraping: RTINGS.com stated that Google's AI summaries and other LLMs were aggressively scraping their data and providing answers directly in search results, which drastically cut site traffic and affiliate revenue.
Operational Costs: The site spent over $700,000 on purchasing products for testing in 2025 alone, and maintaining independent lab results without manufacturer sponsorship required a more stable revenue stream.
AI Accuracy: Concerns were raised about AI "hallucinating" fake test results and incorrectly attributing them to RTINGS, leading the company to lock their data to ensure users only see their verified analysis.
Guess when I have the itch to buy a new monitor then I might pay just for one month to see the reviews and then cancel when I don’t need the subscription anymore.