[papermachelike]

First, as others have noted, this article is a decade old.

Second, That doesn’t matter because the wider context is affiliate advertising. Brian Lam, then editor of Wirecutter, emailed xdesk asking them to work out an affiliate advertising relationship - something that Amazon had been using to great success by 2012. It’s a bit disingenuous of xdesk to claim they didn’t understand the request.

This isn’t news in 2023, and it was barely news in 2012 - xdesk clearly was spinning the narrative in their favor. Affiliate advertising works, Wirecutter has _always_ made it clear that is their business model - I’ve been following them since Brian Lam moved from Gizmodo - and this has always felt like sour grapes to me. Essentially, Wirecutter found a cheaper desk 95% as good as the xdesk product, and recommended that. That is how Wirecutter works today and how it worked back then.