MacRumors Reviews 36

I would give it less stars, but this one star goes to highlight the achievement of a community destroying member of the mod team - Weaselboy.
Detracting people away from a dying resources sounds like a great business strategy.

Avoid at all costs. Mod team is toxic and private agenda is a thing. Sad. Good thing there is alternatives out there.

Pretty scammy site, just political nonsense, bots allowed on forums

I like this website, they are trustworthy and and unbiased in their reviews. I highly value the work the team is doing there.

Too many ads too biased I am blocking all MacRumors from all my family phones and computers and Family Agrees

I've hit my limit with that website. The censorship is extremely heavy handed. They set it up so that trolls and other terminally online psychotic types can rage bait all day, but everyone else has to pretend they're in good faith and can't point it out. It's crazy making.

They also perform all their censorship in the dark - deleted posts show no trace. They sneakily delete certain opinions and most users would have no idea the discussion is being shaped in a sinister way, until they start getting silently censored too.

You can also really tell when you've pissed off a moderator because they suddenly go through your post history and start removing a bunch of your old posts.

The site itself posts garbage engagement bait articles and just deletes all criticism. The place has turned into a cesspool of trolling and censorship and outrage farming

I've seen this situation occur with other long running forums from the sort of golden age of forums of the early 2000s. Over the years, these mods get on more and more of a power trip and become more out of touch and they start driving out heaps of users. I guess if you were still moderating a website for free into your 30s and 40s and 50s you probably would become more petty wouldn't you? Bunch of losers - yeah I mean you, Weaselboy and NoBoMac.

Don’t bother with the forums!!

Whole site is lazy rubbish news and forum moderators are sad little people drunk on power

They simply recycle the same news over and over again. Their comments forum has been ruined by an over zealous tyrant moderator called Weaselboy.

Flooded with commercials. Annoying af

...where moderators as feeble-minded and easily-triggered as many of its users/vested pro-Apple participants are given carte blanche to ban/suspend some users for expressing inconvenient truths and perfectly legitimate views whilst turning a blind eye to blatant provocation by many clueless Apple sycophants on there keen for everyone to be as afflicted by all the corporate disingenuousness and gaslighting as they themselves are.

What can possibly go right?

The forums are toxic with unskilled and abusive forum moderators, they are clueless and bans users for meaningless reasons, or just because they disagree with someone.

The forums over past year have degraded to the point of meaningless spam, trolling and attacking by moderators and their friends to the point that any difference (politely stated even) is often killed and many of my friends have been banned for such silly authoritarian and arbitrary moderating. I only go there for some of the news articles but also follow other sites

I see a lot of posts over a certain moderator called Weaselboy and I can only chime in. The forum is kept toxic by this so-called moderation. Any fair conversation is being removed regardless of context he does not seem fit. I have absolutely no problem with proper context and situation aware moderation. But macrumor is just turning into a cesspool of absolute garbage. Good luck getting in contact with anyone on the company side to have a conversation.

awful website. The forum mod Wesley bans for any disagreements. When another user went off topic and I replied to the user, I am the one that gets banned. The appeal process did not do anything. On that macrumors site, you dont have the right to free speech. Any topics can get you banned. Another issue, then the mod accused me of being racist, it funny because I am a black American. This shows the website cater to trolls and bots. Not real people, real comments. This website needs to be shutdown and cancelled.

They have a moderator called weaselboy who is a complete ……… , banning everyone he can . Guy should seek help .

Rest of forum is very boring and the rumours are all conjecture with no basis in reality also probably written by ai . Best avoided

MacRumors is a site I registered for so long ago (20 years?) that I don't remember my earlier experience with the site. I came back this year after belatedly coming to appreciate the problems for 32-bit app support under Catalina. (I had been on a much older Mac blissfully unaware that even the Intel chip is discontinued.)

It was odd that my forum comments were held for moderation but since they did ultimately post, I did not read too much into it. Within about 72 hours of my last post, apparently a warning was sent to my user dashboard but I didn't check in there because I'm not used to/don't expect website admin to personally communicate with users. So after a ONE STRIKE offense, I landed in MacRumors purgatory!

I have attempted to wrap my mind around their POV but I still don't get it. Was it linking the same article or reviving older discussions on this topic? (l'm Old School. I cite original sources and give credit where it's due. WHY allow hyperlinks if this is frowned upon?)

I was in a panic upon the belated and rude awakening that others experienced in 2019 when Apple dropped 32-bit software support with Catalina. (Searching the web for workarounds for 32-bit support led me to MacRumors in the first place!) I had limited interaction with forum members and was about to conclude that my only option was to install Parallels or VMware Fusion to create virtual environment for my 32-bit software, when I was abruptly drop-kicked to the curb.

I reached out via a MacRumors web form to indicate that I reviewed the TOS and do not get how a SP ban relates. (Wasn't selling anything and not associated with the Medium article/author/website. Regardless, WHY allow comments with hyperlinks to get past Mods in the first place if those comments are "self promotion"?)

On better-run websites, there are time limits to how long older discussions remain open to ANY comment, whether users without sufficient privileges are allowed to post links, etc. MacRumors gives users the appearance that they are flexible when, if one replies to an older topic or post the same link, it is an apparent TOS violation. (Not that the user can be expected to see any of this coming after their forum contributions are permitted to go live by these same Mods!)

I wasted at least ~3 hours of my time responding to suspicions about my long absence from the MR website. (If infrequent participation is also bad, why were my login credentials still good years later? Isn't it a web security best practice to close long-inactive users' accounts?)

I get the sense that something else in my user history fell under "review" — but I was unable to answer their follow-up questions about my original registration because frankly I don't recall MacRumors interactions 15+ years ago!

I was banned under conditions that do not even meet the TOS infraction. (Seemingly, this was retaliation for my long-time registration status. Their administrators are apparently paranoid that their ridiculously large "banned' user base will create new IDs/logins. Not applicable in this specific case but the "Mod gods" won't take my word for it!)

Upon login with an older 32-bit software compatible iMac I bought to replace my newly-purchased 2020 iMac, MacRumors captured my updated identifiable information, pitting their TOS against my consumer rights.

MacRumors violates web visitors' rights under consumer privacy laws to control how this personally-identifiable information is used. As a California resident, I should be seeing a "Do Not Sell My Information" and "Exercise Privacy Choices", but no such option exists.

Bottom Line

MacRumors apparently keeps banned accounts "live" solely for the purpose of tagging the account "Banned", and all former posts the same way. As a result of punitive site management practices, users like myself have no ability to disassociate personal details with MacRumors servers because "privileges" are so limited that we are unable to self-direct the closure of an account or exercise basic privacy rights.

MacRumors effort to enforce bans by definition means collecting "forever records", otherwise banned members may delete old accounts and open new accounts. Data collection includes tracking users' IP and/or the use of persistent browser cookies and similar. This fact is self-apparent insofar as there is no way to be "unidentified" even while logged out on that same browser and as evidenced by public forum content that is persistently hidden.

MacRumors is in violation of my CA rights and those subject to similar consumer protections in other States. It is a LEGAL VIOLATION for MacRumors management to hold user data hostage, unable to close an account or to exercise Privacy Choices!

Ultimately, MacRumors must be held accountable under applicable State laws.

Could be a great site, but the moderation is often poor and unaccountable. The majority of the moderators apparently identify as ring wing politically, and that has unfortunate consequences for their decision making. Posters are allowed to behave terribly, but if anyone calls them out for the bad behaviour they receive warnings for the mildest of "insults".

The "reviews" of some products the staff post are also suspect. Are they paid to say nice things? The reviews are often reviewing the specs only, not subjecting the technology to any actual testing.

Please improve, folks.

A site run by man-children who ban people arbitrarily once they've developed a personal vendetta against them. They actively target users with certain political views and will allow political posts in non-political sections of the site as long as they agree with their views. They play favorites with users and allow certain users to regularly violate the rules and will delete threads and ban users arbitrarily in other cases. I have been a member of many forums for many years and no site is more poorly run than this one. It is a travesty.

I got this message after i just replied normal simple replay on their forum

Oops! We ran into some problems.
You have been banned for the following reason: Spam. Please contact us if this was done in error..

username [ safnah ]

Advertiser's favored infomercial for-profit website, MacRumors. It is owned by former physician nephrologist Arnold Kim who apparently has seen more money in this website versus 1-2 million dollars a year (average salary for nephrologist with 20 years experience per US Department of Labor, The Bureau of Labor Statistics) as practicing nephrologist (although it's much harder job than running a website). Maintaining community appearance for money’s sake, total fake, as it is an independent privately owned publication with 10 permanent employees. Moderation and enforcement is done by untrained volunteers with different knowledge levels. Reviewing Arnold Kim, Editorial Director & Founder at MacRumors articles about Apple services and products for past 5 years did not see any single critical review. That is saying a lot.
Besides the own frequently deceptive and inaccurate articles, a track is being kept on the forum for any "Apple-Dislike" posts from members. Eventually, if you are seemed to MacRumors as too critical of Apple as a company, for example poor policies, you will be marked as a spammer and banned. That's what happened to me.
Definitely unexpected, considering my expertise and knowledge, in some way it will be a loss of profit for this establishment.
Recommend to look at everything posted on this site from a very critical standpoint.