Pick a product, any man made product, then Google it. If it's made in any kind of quantity, you will find complaints about it. The more complex the product, the more complaints. Does that indicate everyone is making bad stuff? No, it's more likely a direct result of the internet, where people who get a flawed product flock to tell the world.
There are companies out there who make more flawed products and deserve to be raked over the coals, but we need to be careful in deciding which companies deserve this treatment and which do not. I would submit the thread that was started in the 1980 to Present area of the Revolver section of the forum:
Is that old S&W revolver as reliable as you think??
As proof that the product S&W makes today is on par and in some respects even better than that produced in the 'good old days'.
I don't believe that S&W is producing guns with more problems, at least on a number of defects per 100 guns made, but more likely that they are producing more guns now than ever before in their history. Put it in these terms: if a company makes one gun with errors out of a hundred, and produces 100 guns a week, that's 52 guns a year (ignoring holidays) with errors. If the same company at the same defect rate makes 3000 guns a week, that now translates into 1,560 guns. Which means now instead of 52 people complaining on the internet, you have 1.560. OK, honestly, you won't have 1,560 complaining, but you can see how it will be more likely you'll hear more complaints. What about the other 154,440 owners who received a perfect product? Chances are you never hear a peep from them, so at least on the surface, it appears the company is putting out a lot of problem guns when in fact, on a per ratio, compared to the 'old days', nothing has changed.
The only true way to tell if S&W is making more defective products would be to examine their records to see the number of returned items over the past few decades and compare it to the number of products made. We all know though that S&W is highly unlikely to reveal those numbers no matter how they may portray the company. So I guess we'll just have to continue to speculate on the quality of S&W products today vs. those produced in years gone by.