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11-25-2020, 06:04 PM - 1 Like   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by officiousbystander Quote
And look how vulnerable this tech behemoth makes us:

Amazon Web Services outage hobbles businesses - The Washington Post

Oh and they also own WAPO.
Amazon does not own the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos controls ownership through a different company than Amazon.

Jeff Bezos is currently a minority shareholder of Amazon.

The Washington Post - Wikipedia

11-26-2020, 06:06 AM   #17
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QuoteOriginally posted by bladerunner6 Quote
Amazon does not own the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos controls ownership through a different company than Amazon.

Jeff Bezos is currently a minority shareholder of Amazon.

The Washington Post - Wikipedia
However, Amazon also holds IMDb and Goodreads.
11-26-2020, 07:01 AM - 1 Like   #18
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QuoteOriginally posted by clackers Quote
The place is a sales catalogue. They will not offend their major business partners, their whole purpose is to be a warehouse conduit for Canon, Nikon and Sony, so impartial news is absolutely not to be expected.
+1

It is a commercial site built to make money off the users.
In order to do this they have to work by 100% click baiting.

That works by
a) writing opinion pieces shallowly disguised as "reviews" which the current mainstream wants to read and supports their confirmation bias
b) being not critical versus mainstream to avoid pissing them off
c) generating heated, click-intensive discussions where the heat is directed at non-mainstream groups
d) being nice to the companies providing income by adverts
e) generating income by generous amounts of blog posts about "what to buy"

Do not mistake this tabloid approach to something related to "journalism" or professional/balanced "reviews". It is not.

Go count the number of blog posts about "build your skills" or "gear is not important" or "why you do *not* need to upgrade to the ten last monthly camera minor upgrade models".

If they were even a little bit independent from Amazon then a 50% volume of "no need to buy this toy" blog posts would happen and would be no harm.

But it is 100% BUY! BUY! BUY! - at Amazon.
11-26-2020, 07:57 AM   #19
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Good to know this. I check them out occasionally but will scale down on that. How can their reviews be objective if they are owned by a retailer?

11-26-2020, 07:58 AM   #20
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I'm a daily user of DPR. I'm not going to cut my nose off to spite my face. I've learned many, many valuable things there.

Do I like it completely? Absolutely not. Are they biased against Pentax. I am convinced that they are. But they have also been biased against others: Olympus back in the 00's, and Sony right after they took over Konica/Minolta and for several years afterwards, most notably.

Their bias against Pentax isn't even as bad as the ones they had against Oly and Sony, until they became little darlings---Sony deservedly so, Oly not so much (I was in Oly and Sony before I came to Pentax, or back to Pentax, as I had Pentax back in the '80's). But it's still not good at all, and could be easily solved, which is the aggravating thing (I won't go into how, but it's a no-brainer...).
11-26-2020, 08:06 AM - 3 Likes   #21
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I don't think the Amazon ownership per se has any serious influence on the Pentax bias. There are other reasons for that - first and foremost, that DPR is a gear review site. Spec sheets rule supreme and will give the edge over any other consideration. Pentax is just the easiest target there.

Of course, one could argue that the need to generate clicks would make the reviewers be more lenient with popular models and makes in the hopes of driving traffic through affiliate links, but I'd wager that that would happen regardless of specific ownership of the webpage.
11-26-2020, 08:35 AM   #22
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I do use the site occasionally - they have a good consistent database of specs dating back quite some time, their studio test shots (at least the newer ones) are all available for comparison and fairly useful.

Even the detailed review texts often have a lot of useful information - just be prepared for having to draw your own conclusions. If you're interested purely in 'news', everybody makes sure their press releases will reach dpreview.

11-26-2020, 12:07 PM - 1 Like   #23
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QuoteOriginally posted by Serkevan Quote
I don't think the Amazon ownership per se has any serious influence on the Pentax bias. There are other reasons for that - first and foremost, that DPR is a gear review site. Spec sheets rule supreme and will give the edge over any other consideration. Pentax is just the easiest target there.

Of course, one could argue that the need to generate clicks would make the reviewers be more lenient with popular models and makes in the hopes of driving traffic through affiliate links, but I'd wager that that would happen regardless of specific ownership of the webpage.
To clarify: I don't think Amazon's ownership of DPR has anything to do with the bias against Pentax. Honestly, it mystifies me why they would be biased against a small company, or any other, for that matter. But, they are and as I said have been against others. Currently, I think they have been feeling a little guilty about Oly, since things are looking dim for them....with Sony they just have conveniently forgotten their former negative bias.
11-26-2020, 12:29 PM   #24
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Many independent sites and apps have been bought out by Google, Facebook, and in this case Amazon. Adobe CC now has 23 apps and I can't imagine they were all born at Adobe.
11-26-2020, 01:52 PM - 1 Like   #25
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QuoteOriginally posted by texandrews Quote
To clarify: I don't think Amazon's ownership of DPR has anything to do with the bias against Pentax. Honestly, it mystifies me why they would be biased against a small company, or any other, for that matter. But, they are and as I said have been against others. Currently, I think they have been feeling a little guilty about Oly, since things are looking dim for them....with Sony they just have conveniently forgotten their former negative bias.
I think it's that they kinda have to have an "other" to take jabs at... and that's inevitably the ugly duckling that doesn't get on with the times.
11-26-2020, 02:14 PM - 3 Likes   #26
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QuoteOriginally posted by Serkevan Quote
I think it's that they kinda have to have an "other" to take jabs at... and that's inevitably the ugly duckling that doesn't get on with the times.
Crowd's bullying behaviour: a classic.
11-26-2020, 04:13 PM - 2 Likes   #27
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QuoteOriginally posted by texandrews Quote
To clarify: I don't think Amazon's ownership of DPR has anything to do with the bias against Pentax. Honestly, it mystifies me why they would be biased against a small company
A small company can't fight back.

It can't threaten to not advertise with Amazon, or to suspend junkets for the editorial staff in Hawaii if it's never offered them.

A genuine hardware review site would hold no punches in order to appear credible (and it seems some people believe it does have credibility), but what you do is go easy on your big customers and throw the little companies under the bus.

There is no downside to Amazon that hurts them. A negative review of Pentax either makes a buyer choose one of the mainstream brands they have a volume deal with or has no effect on a dedicated fan.

Remember, you might notify but you don't advertise to a dedicated fan, they're always going to buy, they don't need convincing.

Last edited by clackers; 11-26-2020 at 05:55 PM.
11-26-2020, 05:59 PM   #28
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I look and go at ๔ter review it’s like PC MAG, Tom’s Hardware and others, they all play politic now and they all tie to Amazon indirectly has all their click go there, Amazon don’t need to buy them any more, they all survive on click . The worst offender are You Tuber who say nice thing to get gift or item to review, they will never say anything bad.
11-27-2020, 04:03 AM   #29
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QuoteOriginally posted by jatrax Quote
[That Amazon owns DPR] ... I suppose its old news but it was a real shock to me
Amazon are getting to own or control everything. Yesterday I Googled (yes them too) for some technical advice on connectors (I wanted to know the pin-outs) and the entire first page of results was for Amazon wanting to sell me connectors of one sort or another.
QuoteOriginally posted by jatrax Quote
All the links in most websites go to Amazon because they make it easy to sign up for affilate income.
Sadly that includes not just official advertising links, but individuals giving links. It has become a habit that people recommending anything say "I got it from Amazon" and even give a link (as if people could not find Amazon for themselves). It happens on PF too, and it depresses me.

After Lady L found Amazon was taking a Prime subscription from her CC account, for which she had not signed up for, and she had to spend an afternoon on the phone to get it back, she closed that CC account and we have never used them since. On top of that, we now get phone calls every week saying we have bought something expensive from Amazon or are having our Prime Account renewed : these are scammers of course, but it must be a nightmare if you actually do have an Amazon account. or they actually have your CC card details*.

But that was the real Amazon taking real money from Lady L's account. Since then I call them Scamazon.

* They probably do anyway - they seem to know everything else.

Last edited by Lord Lucan; 11-27-2020 at 04:05 AM. Reason: Clarity
11-27-2020, 05:20 AM   #30
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QuoteOriginally posted by Lord Lucan Quote
Amazon are getting to own or control everything. Yesterday I Googled (yes them too) for some technical advice on connectors (I wanted to know the pin-outs) and the entire first page of results was for Amazon wanting to sell me connectors of one sort or another.

Sadly that includes not just official advertising links, but individuals giving links. It has become a habit that people recommending anything say "I got it from Amazon" and even give a link (as if people could not find Amazon for themselves). It happens on PF too, and it depresses me.

After Lady L found Amazon was taking a Prime subscription from her CC account, for which she had not signed up for, and she had to spend an afternoon on the phone to get it back, she closed that CC account and we have never used them since. On top of that, we now get phone calls every week saying we have bought something expensive from Amazon or are having our Prime Account renewed : these are scammers of course, but it must be a nightmare if you actually do have an Amazon account. or they actually have your CC card details*.

But that was the real Amazon taking real money from Lady L's account. Since then I call them Scamazon.

* They probably do anyway - they seem to know everything else.
Ugh, that's a massive bother. I search for stuff on Amazon because it's admittedly easy to find many things, but then I always try to buy directly from the manufacturer or retail at a local brick and mortar... things have to be either ridiculously cheaper on Amazon, or outright unavailable anywhere else, for me to bite the bullet. And that's assuming I really need the thing, and need it now, otherwise I just postpone the purchase.

Last edited by Serkevan; 11-27-2020 at 05:25 AM.
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