The Verge
The Verge is an American technology news website headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts.[3][5]
For other uses, see Verge.
Type of site
The website was launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media's proprietary multimedia publishing platform Chorus.[6][7] In 2014, Nilay Patel was named editor-in-chief and Dieter Bohn executive editor; Helen Havlak was named editorial director in 2017.[8][9] The Verge won five Webby Awards for the year 2012 including awards for Best Writing (Editorial), Best Podcast for The Vergecast, Best Visual Design, Best Consumer Electronics Site, and Best Mobile News App.[10][11]
Content[edit]
Podcasts[edit]
The Verge broadcasts a live weekly podcast, The Vergecast. The inaugural episode was November 4, 2011. It included a video stream of the hosts.[43] A second weekly podcast was introduced on November 8, 2011. Unlike The Vergecast, The Verge Mobile Show was primarily focused on mobile phones.[44][45] The Verge also launched the weekly podcast Ctrl-Walt-Delete, hosted by Walt Mossberg, in September 2015.[46] The Verge's What's Tech podcast was named among iTunes's best of 2015.[47] The podcast Why'd You Push That Button?, launched in 2017 and co-hosted by Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany,[48] received a Podcast Award in the "This Week in Tech Technology Category" in 2018.[49][50]
Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel hosts a weekly interview podcast called Decoder.[51] On February 8th, 2024, Patel announced Decoder would now do two episodes per week.[52]
Controversy[edit]
2018 PC build guide[edit]
In September 2018, The Verge published the article "How to Build a Custom PC for Editing, Gaming or Coding" with a companion YouTube video entitled "How we Built a $2000 Custom Gaming PC". The video was criticized for containing errors on almost every step presented by its host, Stefan Etienne,[65] such as applying a liberal amount of thermal paste onto the processor as opposed to a small amount.[66] An online harassment campaign against Etienne ensued.[66]
In February 2019, lawyers from The Verge's parent company Vox Media filed a DMCA takedown notice, requesting that YouTube remove videos critical of The Verge's video, alleging copyright infringement. YouTube took down two of the videos, uploaded by YouTube channels BitWit and ReviewTechUSA, while applying a copyright "strike" to these two channels.[65][67] YouTube later reinstated the two videos and retracted the copyright "strikes" after a request from Verge editor Nilay Patel, although Patel acknowledged that he agreed with the legal argument that led to their removal.[68][69] Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica described this controversy as an example of the Streisand effect, saying that while law regarding fair use is unclear regarding this type of situation, "the one legal precedent ... suggests ... that this kind of video is solidly within the bounds of copyright's fair use doctrine."[65]
Nearly three years after the erroneous build, PC builder and YouTuber Linus Sebastian collaborated with Etienne in a video entitled "Fixing the Verge PC build", to rectify the mistakes thereof. In it, Etienne admitted not being an experienced builder at the time (having built only four computers at that point, with The Verge build being his first on camera), and revealed that before the video went live, The Verge was unwilling to hear from him to address what he saw were editing issues, insisting that the video be uploaded regardless.[66]
