Well, the stones are just placebo, while gold plating is… real. Problem is, people sells gold plated eletronics with the wrong purpose, because gold plating does NOT make anything better(it can actually makes it worse if the manufacturer does it wrong, especially for video output), it just PREVENTS loss through natural corrosion.

It's even worse when they do the same "it's gold plated so they sound better" routine for digital formats such as HDMI cables.