THE BAD/GATEWAY* CODE

We're an independent outlet made up of a few dedicated folks.

No corporation owns us, no holding company sets our budget, and no investor gets a phone call when they don't like a story. That independence is the whole point of BAD/GATEWAY*, and the rules below exist to protect it. Everyone who writes for us follows them.

WHAT WE DON'T TAKE

The simplest way to stay honest is to owe nobody anything. So we don't accept gifts, meals, discounts, free services, or anything else of value from the companies we cover or the people who do their PR. There's no version of this rule with an asterisk.

We also don't trade coverage for access.

Nobody gets to approve our questions, vet our quotes, or read a piece before it runs, and we don't agree to say or avoid saying anything in exchange for a conversation. If those are the terms, we'll pass on the story.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

This beat makes it easy to get compromised, because the companies we write about are exactly the ones people want to invest in. So nobody on our team holds or trades stock in the companies we cover or in the wider tech sector, and that includes crypto.

Nobody takes a job, a consulting fee, or an advisory seat, paid or not, at a company they're likely to write about. And nobody covers a company they have a personal stake in, whether that's a friend who works there or a partner who founded it. When a conflict is unavoidable, we disclose it in the piece rather than pretend it isn't there.

HOW WE HANDLE WHAT YOU TELL US

If you talk to us, we'll be straight about how it'll be used. On the record is the default, and if you're speaking for a company or in any official role, we'll expect you to stay there unless you give us a reason not to, before you start talking. On background and off the record are both agreements, which means you ask and we say yes. You can't make a statement off the record by labelling it that way after you've sent it, and vague phrasing like "not for attribution" doesn't bind us to anything. If you mean off the record, say so, and wait for us to agree.

When someone takes a real risk to tell us something true, protecting them is non-negotiable.

HOW WE RATE AND REVIEW

A review is our honest read on whether something is worth your money, and nothing else. We never publish a paid review, and a loaned test unit or an early look under embargo buys a company exactly zero goodwill in the final verdict.

Companies lend us hardware so we can test it properly, and sometimes we hang onto it long enough to see how it holds up after a few updates, but the score is ours.

HOW WE ADVERTISE

We run ads to keep the lights on, and the people who buy them have no idea what we're working on and no say in it.

An ad sitting next to a story doesn't mean we like the advertiser, or that they like us. If we ever run sponsored or partner-funded material, it'll be labelled clearly enough that you'll never mistake it for our journalism. Where a story includes an affiliate link that earns us a small cut if you buy through it, we'll tell you inside that story, and it never changes what we recommend.

IF WE SLIP, TELL US

If something on the site looks off, or you think we've fallen short of any of this, we want to know. Write to editor@0x502.com.