If you’re not familiar with Electrek, go here and read all about Frederic Lambert, the “Editor-in-Chief and Main Writer” at Electrek (according to his unintentionally hilarious LinkedIn page) and his ethically-challenged mindset and probably-illegal behavior.
Since Freddy’s behavior has helped him make more than Donald Trump, he’s starting to act like the POTUS on Twitter by blocking anybody who says anything negative about him or the site. Actually, cancel that—you don’t even have to be negative. He’s just blocking errybody out here.
The Wall Street Journal’s Charley Grant was blocked simply for quoting them:
Quoting something on the Electrek website gets you blocked. https://t.co/d8DUFvcV5B
— Charley Grant (@CGrantWSJ) January 4, 2018
All I did was ask them a basic question:
Question for @ElectrekCo : Are you journalists, or are you a fan site?
— Bark M. (@BarkMFoRS) January 4, 2018
That resulted in this:
Well, this was predictable. pic.twitter.com/L6IeTAgxex
— Bark M. (@BarkMFoRS) January 4, 2018
Our friend, Alex Roy, has been blocked, of course, along with anybody asking why Electrek didn’t cover his recent Model 3 Cannonball Run:
Apparently people asking EV site @ElectrekCo’s Editor-In-Chief @fredericlambert why they haven’t covered the new #Tesla #Model3 #CannonballRun record are getting blocked.#WouldYouLikeToKnowMorehttps://t.co/0aRmHYDg55
— Alex Roy (@AlexRoy144) January 4, 2018
He’s blocked me on all platforms. He also blocked pretty much every journo who asks questions about that, or @ElectrekCo in general.
— Alex Roy (@AlexRoy144) January 4, 2018
Ol’ Freddy himself blocked me on his personal account a long time ago, but I didn’t think he’d actually have the courage to block me on the official account just for asking if they were journalists or fans. He’s creating a bit of a Streisand Effect by doing so—he could just simply answer the queries and move on, and nobody would care.
What have you got to hide, Fred? By refusing to engage with anybody who dares question him or his behavior, Lambert has confirmed what we already suspected—he’s a shill who is shamelessly leveraging his position as a “journalist” for personal gain.
If you’ve been blocked by Fred or by Electrek, let us know. If you haven’t, well, you probably just aren’t trying very hard.
I’m surprised, and a little disappointed, that there seems to be such a market for paid shillery. Amazon “reviews” might be the worst example. Poor English, infomercial-esque enthusiasm for the product, comments using verbatim numbers from the spec list…is it really that hard to tell when something is written by a low-cost keyboard drone in India? There’s probably a correlation to the general decline in the quality of interpersonal relationships, brought on by the dominance of texting and 140-character limits and such, in there somewhere. But I digress…
Amazon reviews are terrible. But their only goal is not to be rejected. Even if terrible individually they are just pulling the average rating up which results in better placement. Very much like a ton of low quality car reviews actually…
Does Elektrek even have much site traffic? I’ve read far more stories about that site than stories published on it. A quick scan suggests it’s not highly informational, nor well-written, so I’m skeptical that it has many readers.