Are affiliate sites still 'respected' by e.g. Google in the sense that you can still rank them, or has Google moved on to preferring to trust established authority sites?

I've read about 'success' stories with getting affiliate sites to make thousands a month, but I find it hard to believe that Google doesn't discard those 'pump and dump' sites more often, though I guess the ones that succeed now focus on quality, since I'd think that the best reviews are on e.g. Amazon product pages, but I suppose there are some established blogs whose subscribers trust the authors.