I am provided no context whatsoever, but I’m going to guess this is AI-related.
It’s been happening long before that. A PC hardware outlet I used to write for on the side died out long before Llama 1 or ChatGPT 3.5.
It’s social media, the proliferation influencers, the enshittification and spamification of Google search, attention sucked away to places like Discord or shorts or native apps, a shift to video, you name it.
AI is just accelerating what was already happening. It’s a miracle any “major” text-focused web news is even alive in 2026; they’re all hanging by a thread, even playing the spam/ragebait game.
I know a few of these.
Eventually the articles became less interesting and I unsubscribed to the sites.If Tom’s Guide is related to Tom’s Hardware, I tend to visit that pretty often even now.
For others, it’s mostly just when I get links to them from Lemmy posts.
Toms is awful. It has been ever since Tom left ages ago. I wrote for HardOCP, and we made fun of them all the time, or got legitimately mad when they’d publish straight up misinformation or repost our reporting without credit. Or they’d shill for Nvidia, shamelessly.
Jokes on HardOCP, I guess. Tom’s Hardware still alive because they write clickbait or repost others’ news, mostly
Depending on what you’re interested in specifically, instead of Tom’s, I’d read Gamer’s Nexus (specifically their text articles), Eurogamer and their Digital Foundry division, and Notebookcheck. Maybe Videocardz and Techpower up for more “rumor” type articles.
There are other niches, like semi magazines or IEEE Spectrum, NewAtlas, IgorsLab for cooling and fan testing, stuff like that. I’m not particularly up-to-date, but basically anything but Tom’s.
I’d rather see Jan vs Jan to eliminate the variable.
Something had to CLICK… since people were sick of taking the BAIT. Ai, ai, ai journalism has taken a dive.
