[bourgeoismedia]

Affiliate links are an obvious conflict of interest for Consumer Reports. Affiliate links pay them a percentage of the sale, so their direct incentive is to recommend the higher-priced product as they make more money that way. So if you're in the market for a toaster and there's a perfectly good $30 model on Amazon they might instead recommend a $100 model because they make more money that way.

[iamthepieman]

I don't buy it. The laws of supply and demand are an effect for affiliate links just like they are for the makers of the product. Sure, they might make more money per click. But there might very well be many more clicks if they recommended a cheaper one. Not saying there is just that it's more complicated than just recommend higher price. Get more money