There are still a few authors worth reading on Ars. Beth Mole has a loyal following for a reason-- her stories are interesting, engaging, and never fail to make me squirm with horror. Jonathan Gitlin has a tendency to drop into the forum to snipe at comments he does not like, and I have no interest in supercars, but by and large his automobile reporting is interesting. And if you like anything rocket related, Eric Berger is clearly passionate about the industry. There are a few other folks who are hit-or-miss like most journalists. I've found that Benj is mostly misses, and although I am always interested in what John Timmer writes about, I cannot seem to interpret his writing style. In general I skip the syndicated articles from Wired, etc, because they are either "nothings" or bad.

Some companies have enough of a track record that they should be nuked from orbit, and "Company bad" is all that is worth saying. Meta is one of those companies. Palantir is another. Not holding them accountable and acting as if we should continue engaging with their products is part of the reason we are rapidly sliding towards dystopia

The Verge is definitely on the upswing right now. I started a paid subscription to them earlier this year.

They also have a strange obsession with stories about vaccines, rare scary ailments, and child porn. I suppose these topics get them good engagement, but not something I want to read about (constantly) on a tech blog.

the Ars comment section is truly a cesspit, I'm surprised the site seems okay with leaving it like that.

Verge comments aren't much better either. Perhaps this is just the nature of comment sections, it brings out the most extreme people