Tech Unbloated is an independent technology publication. This page describes the standards every article is held to before publication. It is a reader-facing summary of the internal editorial standard our writers and editors work from.
Ownership and funding
Tech Unbloated is independently owned and operated by Ali Arslan, who is its founder and chief editor and holds final approval on everything published. The publication is not owned by, funded by, or editorially answerable to any technology vendor, agency, or investor.
Revenue comes from affiliate links and a sponsored third-party resource library. None of these parties receive advance review of, or influence over, editorial content. The full commercial arrangement is described in our Affiliate Disclosure.
What outranks what
When two goals conflict, the order is fixed and not negotiable:
Accuracy, evidence, honest experience labels, independence, reader safety, and corrections come first. Voice, confidence, search performance, feed formatting, affiliate conversion, and publishing speed come second. A style preference never creates a fact, and a deadline never lowers the evidence bar.
How we label experience
These words have distinct, non-interchangeable meanings on this site:
- Tested — we ran it ourselves and are reporting what happened.
- Used — we have lived with it, though not under a formal test.
- Researched — we compared real, linkable sources without hands-on use.
- Reported claim — someone else asserts this; we are attributing it, not confirming it.
- Opinion — a judgement, clearly ours.
- Estimate — a number we derived, with its basis stated.
- Hypothetical or composite — an illustration, not a real event.
Research-based reporting is legitimate when it is labelled. It is never rewritten to imply hands-on use.
On AI
We use AI tools to help locate and compare real sources, check claims against primary documents, and tighten drafts. We do not let AI manufacture experience. No purchase, test, result, saving, conversation, memory, quotation, or professional history appears on this site unless the named author actually had it.
Generated or staged imagery is labelled wherever it could otherwise be mistaken for documentary evidence of testing.
Evidence and sourcing
Time-sensitive claims — prices, product behaviour, laws, platform policies, algorithm changes — are checked against current primary sources immediately before publication, and we record when we checked and what we checked. Where a claim carries real uncertainty about causation, sample size, version, region, or jurisdiction, we say so, even when it makes the sentence less punchy.
Recommendations and independence
For any article that recommends something, the candidate set, the criteria, and the ranking are settled before we look at whether a product has an affiliate programme. We include credible options that pay us nothing. We do not monetise products the article rejects, and commission rates never move a product up or down a list.
We do not accept paid reviews or sponsored content presented as independent journalism. Relationships beyond ordinary affiliate compensation — supplied hardware, sponsorships, travel, client or employment ties — are disclosed separately and specifically, in the article itself.
Review before publication
Every article passes a documented pre-publication review covering its claim ledger and sources, an audit of every first-person statement, a disclosure and independence check, an adversarial read that attacks the weakest sentence in the piece, and an image-provenance check. Headlines must describe the article truthfully for both readers and search engines; a headline that overpromises is rewritten.
Authors
Every article carries a named byline linking to that author's profile and published work. Authors write within defined beats and are accountable for their own claims. Ali Arslan reviews and approves all published work.
Mistakes
We correct errors openly rather than quietly editing them away. Our process, and how to report something you believe is wrong, is on the corrections page.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about a specific article, can go to our contact page.