Just weeks after the news broke that tech site CNET quietly used artificial intelligence to produce items, according to several people with knowledge of the situation, the company is facing extensive layoffs, including a number of longtime employees. The layoffs total about a dozen people, one CNET staffer says, or about 10 percent of the audience masthead.
The layoffs began Thursday morning and were announced internally via email by Red Ventures, the private equity-backed marketing-turned-media company that CNET in 2020. In the email, a Red Ventures executive suggested the cuts had been made to focus CNET in areas where the site can succeed in generating traffic on Google Search – a top priority for the company.
“To prepare for a strong future, we will need to focus on how we simplify our operations and our tech stack, as well as how we invest our time and energy,” wrote Carlos Angrisano, president of financial services and the CNET Group at Red Enterprises.
CNET will focus on “authority,” a metric Google considers when ranking search results
Angrisano implicitly says what Red Ventures’ – and CNET‘s — focus will be in the future: coverage areas where the company has “a high degree of authority, relevance, differentiation” and can “make a big difference in the lives” of the public. “Authority” is one of the metrics Google highlights for websites specifically which content ranks high in search results.
Under Red Ventures, former CNET staff say the revered publication’s focus became increasingly on winning Google searches by prioritizing SEO. On these high-traffic articles, the company crams lucrative affiliate marketing ads for things like loans or credit cards, cashing in every time a reader signs up.
In the email, Angrisano said CNET would focus on consumer technology, home and wellness, energy, broadband and personal finance – the sections where Red Ventures could make the best money, says a current staffer.
“But those sections are shadows of what they once were, especially at home,” says the staffer. “If you want to get that part right, you’re not selling your Smart Home, you’re getting rid of the video team, and you’re crippling your editors.”
In January, futurism reported that CNET had published dozens of articles generated using AI tools since November last year, much to the surprise of readers – the outlet had not formally announced this. Other Red Ventures properties, Bankrate and CreditCards.com, had also published similar pieces. The company shut down the practice after public outcry and factual errors in stories and promised to check all articles using AI systems. On CNETcorrections were eventually made in more than half of the articles.
While the AI-generated storytelling was put on hiatus in January, Red Ventures is preparing to deploy the tool again soon, according to an internal meeting in late February, first reported by futurism and confirmed by The edge.
Even past the shift to affiliate marketing, former CNET staff told The edge that working conditions at Red Ventures have deteriorated since the acquisition. Former staff told of several cases where CNET employees were pressured to change their coverage of companies advertising Red Ventures – a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics that CNET‘s editorial independence in serious jeopardy.
Ivey O’Neal, senior communications manager for CNETconfirmed the layoffs in an email to The edge. “Today, the CNET Group went through a team reorganization, which unfortunately meant saying goodbye to a number of colleagues,” O’Neal writes. “While it was a difficult decision to let employees go, we believe this is critical to the longevity and future growth of the company.”
Update March 2, 3:15 PM ET: This story has been updated with commentary from Red Ventures.
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