E-Commerce and the Influencer Economy

People are bombarded online each day with ads for newfangled products that promise dramatic life improvements. Modish tumblers. Sleek pans. Miraculous cleaning solutions. Overblown air purifiers. Just click this link and — voilà! Productivity. Happiness. Nirvana.

Don’t buy it.

Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation service, tests many of the wares that clog Americans’ social media feeds. And while our testers do like some, these products are often built on empty promises. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how e-commerce, a $6 trillion global industry, became choked with junk.

Paid to sell

Online shopping can expose people to a greasy influencer economy. Influencers often join affiliate-revenue networks, such as Amazon’s. When an influencer’s follower clicks a link and buys something, the influencer makes money. That’s why people on your social media feed are crowing about their 10 favorite Amazon finds or talking about how an expensive gizmo has changed their life.

Many influencers have another incentive: Brands pay them to hawk stuff. Some people with large followings make deals for tens of thousands of dollars per post. Then, when enough people like or share a post, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube algorithms push it to more people. The result is a blizzard of gadgets.

Consider these spin scrubbers, pitched online as the solution to all of your cleaning woes. “In videos, these devices churn up rings of soap suds, implying they are lifting away all the filth beneath them,” writes Ellen Airhart, Wirecutter’s cleaning expert.

In reality, they’re the worst cleaning tools we’ve ever tested. Ellen spent six hours trying to scour a soap-scum-covered shower and a toothpaste-crusted sink with two spin scrubbers popular on TikTok. They splattered water everywhere and often cost upward of $50. Instead, Ellen recommends a humble $1 sponge.

Products making the rounds on social media are often manufactured by small companies and come with unhelpful guidance or lousy warranties. This is true of the Pipersong Meditation Chair, hailed as the solution for restless sitters, thanks to its rotating footstool.

Well, I tested it. And as I was pretzeling myself into the thing, which lacks solid back support or armrests, I knew most people wouldn’t find it to be worth the $400-plus price tag.

Even viral products from reliable brands can be mediocre. Stanley tumblers are in vogue. And yet, they spill. A lot. The leaks haven’t stopped 10 million units from being sold since 2020. Hordes of people stampeded Target to nab one in a recent trending color.

As an editor at Wirecutter, I take my job of testing and recommending products seriously. I never want anyone to spend their hard-earned money on garbage. Here’s how to avoid being hoodwinked:

• Search the product’s name on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or Reddit. Are the influencers all saying the same thing? And does what they’re saying sound like marketing copy?

• Look for the hashtags #ad, #sponsored or #partner on the post to see if the recommender is being compensated by the brand. If the influencer doesn’t disclose that arrangement, the Federal Trade Commission could issue a fine.

• Check influencers’ bios or LinkedIn profiles for credentials. Do they show a background in this area? Have the creators shown their testing methods? Do they even have testing methods?

• Read one-star Amazon reviews to see if any consistent flaws jump out.

• See if a trusted person or publication also recommends this product.

Not all influencers are scurrilous peddlers. Some creators use their expertise to vet products and give reliable advice. But it’s important to spot the difference.

There are so many wonderful, truly helpful and well-made buy-it-for-life products, such as the sturdy Lodge cast-iron pan and Darn Tough hiking socks, which come with a lifetime warranty. Don’t waste your time and money on overhyped trends.

More about Wirecutter: Our journalists have no financial relationship with the companies that make or sell the products that they review. They instead use an exhaustive testing process to choose the products they recommend. After that, Wirecutter’s commerce team may negotiate fees with the affiliate-revenue networks.

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• Rahul Gandhi, the scion of an Indian political dynasty, is trying to unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party. He traveled across the country to appeal to voters.

Other Big Stories

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Does the anti-abortion movement still have a cohesive strategy?

No. When Trump said he wouldn’t support a federal ban, it was “the most pro-choice position of any Republican presidential nominee in two generations, and all the largest pro-life groups continue to bend the knee,” Times Opinion’s David French writes.

I’ll be part of a new Q. and A. franchise, The Interview, that debuts next week. In the lead-up, I’ve been sharing some of my favorite past conversations. This one, the first I ever did for the old Talk column, is with Meg Ryan, the great romantic comedy star. I spoke to her in 2019, at a time when she had been out of the public eye for a while.

Were you happy with the work available to you as you got older? Would you have felt more compelled to keep exploring acting if those opportunities were good?

I’m sure the same opportunities did not present themselves in my 40s that did in my 30s and 20s. I get offers to do things now, but they’re not things I want to do. I have so much admiration for actors who have incredible imagination for life or have life experience that they can then bring to the audience. I don’t think I was one of those people.

Was backing off from show business part of coming to terms with a fundamental ambivalence about your career that had always been there?

Nora [Ephron] used to tell me, “Just because you have fame problems doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem.” I like the famous I am now: I walk into other people’s paparazzi photos, but I can also get a restaurant reservation.

What have you learned about how power works for women in Hollywood?

I don’t think I took advantage of the power that I had. Somewhere in the middle of my time in Hollywood, I did have a production company and produced movies, but it felt exhausting. I kept thinking: What is this thing about having it all? Why do we want that? Don’t we just want to be happy in our independent pursuits?

Read more of the interview here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Click the cover image above to read this week’s issue.

BOOKS

An American pastime: A new book of photos celebrates Black rodeo culture.

Our editors’ picks: “Table for Two: Fictions,” six short stories set in New York around the new millennium, and eight other books.

Times best sellers: “Toxic Prey,” the 34th book in John Sandford’s “Prey” series, is new on the hardcover fiction list.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Try these passover recipes.

Clean your baking sheet.

Scan documents on the go.

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For

• The London Marathon is today.

• Earth Day is tomorrow.

• Passover begins tomorrow evening.

• The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday over Idaho’s abortion ban.

• The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Thursday over whether Trump has presidential immunity over his conduct surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

• The N.F.L. draft begins on Thursday.

Meal Plan

In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests easy pasta dishes that you can make on the fly with whatever is in the house. Mix spaghetti with tuna, capers and scallions; add olives and walnuts to some penne; or pair rigatoni bacon, greens and a fried egg.