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deceptive reviews and shoddy advertisement practices being cracked down on in youtube re Machinima/xbox 1

nunya bus
By nunya bus
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Big businesses use social media to advertise through Influencers and Advocates. an Advocate is pretty much a well informed fanboy, while an influencer is primarily used to expose a product and to recruit more Advocates. Influencers can be bought with money or perks, while Advocates are generally customers who will defend and promote a product or brand because they care about it, not because they are reimbursed for doing so.

 

Where the line gets really blurry is when you have an Influencer who does not disclose that they are being paid/reimbursed to promote a product, and thereby pretending to be advocates. Even if they do like the product, its still deceptive. Advocates have 1000 times more weight behind their opinion than an influencer, because an influencer is there to promote and expose, while an Advocate is motivated by the product itself and is often not limited by NDA's or other agreements. The line is extremely blurry when you have an Influencer behaving as an advocate in podcasts, declaring what they like or do not like, while being an influencer without bias in their normal videos. Its very dangerous territory.

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The thing is Linus was given Keepers of the Fury, the Fury X and now a Nano. so that is what 2,000 bucks worth of hardware. 

that needs to be disclosed. 

Lukes excuse for keeping it is. I need them to do comparisons. well if thats the case. Databases be damned. and who needs Harddrives to save the exact same results. 

Cause it`s no like new games ever get launchewd which also need to be benchmarked on cards they have previously receiverd /s.

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The only disclosures I'm interested in are the "reviewers guides" they get from companies that tell them to list off feature xyz that no one actually cares about but every single reviewer somehow repeats the same robotic talking points. If the requirements to making a video are more than just "make a video by x date" we should know. The same way we need to be told if a video is straight up sponsored(paid for) by any entity, even if the content is unrelated.

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This is old news and is not very surprising besides it has been spoken about on the show like a year ago or something.

Sent from my Nexus 7 (2013).

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heres what linus said in another thread

 

There are logical leaps being taken in this thread.. 

 
Like if Nvidia sends a reviewer a sample of a card then they will likely give a glowing review because "now they are biased toward Nvidia" 
 
But this ignores the fact that AMD also seeds graphics cards - in fact they also offered to seed us a GTX 970 mini when we said we didn't have one for direct comparison.
 
So by the above logic we are also based towards AMD.. and yet

 

Here's a reality check: A graphics card means nothing to me. I have literally bins of them just like all the other hardware reviewers. They are just tools to do our jobs. It couldn't affect my opinion of the card in any meaningful way unless it was a super amazing card that lit my world on fire in which case there is nothing "biased" about giving it a glowing write up. 

 
Do you see where I'm going with this? 
 
Many other issues as well.. Especially calling out Scott as a sellout. He is anything but.. 
we criticize them both..
 

 

 

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They may pay him, but its still his honest opinion 

they may pay him to make the reviews but yes it is still his opinion.

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they may pay him to make the reviews but yes it is still his opinion.

some companies *Cough* apple *cough* don't respect other peoples opinions. 

 

 

 

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some companies *Cough* apple *cough* don't respect other peoples opinions. 

i think apple does

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i think apple does

the only people i have seen who get countless apple products are dem fanboys

didn't linus buy the crapbook? imac apple watch ETC?

(i don't remember)

 

 

 

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the only people i have seen who get countless apple products are dem fanboys

didn't linus buy the crapbook? imac apple watch ETC?

(i don't remember)

he did buy the macbook.

i don't care if you slam apple just don't do it around me please. 

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he did buy the macbook.

i don't care if you slam apple just don't do it around me please. 

I don't slam

Everyone i know regrets buying their Macbook (6 people)

 

I do know tech of tomrrow on one point started to slip  but i think they are back on track nopw.

 

 

 

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I don't slam

Everyone i know regrets buying their Macbook (6 people)

 

I do know tech of tomrrow on one point started to slip  but i think they are back on track nopw.

well i said slam because i fancy myself with a good vocabulary. interesting.

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well i said slam because i fancy myself with a good vocabulary. interesting.

Touche.

 

 

 

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I don't slam

Everyone i know regrets buying their Macbook (6 people)

 

I do know tech of tomrrow on one point started to slip  but i think they are back on track nopw.

Now you know one that doesn't ;)

My posts are in a constant state of editing :)

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laptop

Some ASUS model. Has a GT 550M, i7-2630QM, 4GB or ram and a WD Black SSD/HDD drive. MacBook Pro 13" base model
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Now you know one that doesn't ;)

I have seen a couple you tubers do it

 

I like him, and i think he is going back to legit. All that means to me is i just watch him carefully now :)

 

 

IF you pay attention enough you can tell who is payed to say what.

 

 

 

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I have seen a couple you tubers do it

 

I like him, and i think he is going back to legit. All that means to me is i just watch him carefully now :)

 

 

IF you pay attention enough you can tell who is payed to say what.

I meant I like my Mac book :)

My posts are in a constant state of editing :)

CPU: i7-4790k @ 4.7Ghz MOBO: ASUS ROG Maximums VII Hero  GPU: Asus GTX 780ti Directcu ii SLI RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance PSU: Corsair AX860 Case: Corsair 450D Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB, WD Black 1TB Cooling: Corsair H100i with Noctua fans Monitor: ASUS ROG Swift

laptop

Some ASUS model. Has a GT 550M, i7-2630QM, 4GB or ram and a WD Black SSD/HDD drive. MacBook Pro 13" base model
Apple stuff from over the years
iPhone 5 64GB, iPad air 128GB, iPod Touch 32GB 3rd Gen and an iPod nano 4GB 3rd Gen. Both the touch and nano are working perfectly as far as I can tell :)
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I meant I like my Mac book :)

ah yes, im sure lots of people like it. xD

 

everyone has their own taste. 

 personally 

 

Chrome OS> Mac OS.

Thats just me.

 

objectively the hardware is pretty good (not that price but non the less)

3 of those 6 people i know, installed windows over it :)

 

 

 

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heres what linus said in another thread

hes not lieing here. 

the GFX cards and hardware dont mean anything to him, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR FREE 

This is how glub Linus is. 

What matters is is that he is selling reviews and getting paid. 

if he disclosed on every review/ad that he was given expensive samples. and NVidia promise to keeps all his systems updated in the future (which they do) 

how many ppl would be like. Fuck that. this review isnt worth a damn thing 

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hes not lieing here. 

the GFX cards and hardware dont mean anything to him, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR FREE 

This is how glub Linus is. 

What matters is is that he is selling reviews and getting paid. 

if he disclosed on every review/ad that he was given expensive samples. and NVidia promise to keeps all his systems updated in the future (which they do) 

how many ppl would be like. Fuck that. this review isnt worth a damn thing 

It's *his job* to review. Of course he gets paid. 

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It's *his job* to review. Of course he gets paid. 

I really hope you arent this dense. 

ITS ILLEGAL TO ACCEPT MONEY/FAVOURS FOR A REVIEW AND NOT DISCLOSE IT 

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'Ya ever seen this one? 

 

 

I know and trust that Linus gives his honest opinion 100% of the time. 

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hes not lieing here.

the GFX cards and hardware dont mean anything to him, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR FREE

This is how glub Linus is.

What matters is is that he is selling reviews and getting paid.

if he disclosed on every review/ad that he was given expensive samples. and NVidia promise to keeps all his systems updated in the future (which they do)

how many ppl would be like. Fuck that. this review isnt worth a damn thing

A lot of assumptions being made here.

We don't take money to do reviews. We never have.

We take money to do advertisements, which are never labeled as reviews.

NVIDIA provided the graphics cards (and Cooler Master sent cases and coolers, ASUS sent motherboards, Intel sent CPUs, Kingston sent SSDs and RAM, Swiftech sent water cooling gear) for our editing workstations for product placement in the whole room water cooling series of videos we produced featuring this hardware extensively.

In the grand scheme of things, $6000 of graphics cards (don't imagine that's their BOM cost on them either) is a great deal for 1-2M impressions on a series of videos about using them.. but those videos were NOT a review. They were about a clearly sponsored (we said it was more than once) outrageous project.

As for sending "keeper" vs "loaner" units of hardware, yeah for many products we just don't do loaners anymore, but more than anything else this is to do with me not feeling like it's worth my time to play email tag for shipping labels and spend an hour driving to FedEX and filling out stupid international bill of landing and commercial invoice nonsense over like a $100 item that costs more to send back than to just not bother with anyway.

That and quite frankly even a negative review (for some reason) often generates a lot of sales for the manufacturer.. so as far as I'm concerned they can eat the cost of the item and I'll do whatever I want with it when we're done reviewing it - whether that's continuing to use it personally (Pebble Steel and iPhone 6 come to mind) - or re-visiting it only when we need to re-do our comparative numbers (here's a lesson on why this is necessary and we can't just re-use old numbers)

And on the subject of the Pebble and iPhone 6 - these are both items that were NOT provided by the manufacturer. One was purchased for my own use and the other was provided by a separate sponsor who makes skins for phones (dBrand), but I didn't necessarily mention this at the time because who cares? It doesn't colour my impressions of the device.

Here's an item I wasn't allowed to keep and won one of the two editor's choice awards I've ever given out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1uj6wQTu58

Here's an item was allowed to keep that I ripped apart saying it was worse across the board than the two similar products from other manufacturers that I compared it against: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O1aCNrjV64

Here's an item I was allowed to keep that I basically ripped apart on camera and sent it back anyway because it had so little value to me I didn't even want to give it to a friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3AgcltUM9s

And I could do this all day..

You may notice that most of the items we review we are fairly positive about. There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with being paid to review it.

I don't generally bother to review stuff that I already know is stupid junk.

The bottom line is this. You can either trust me or not trust me. Ultimately that's your deal. My job is to do what I do, and the people who recognize it for what it is - my opinion being given to you - will follow, and the others can go find someone who maybe they think "hasn't sold out" but might just "happen to agree with them" to listen to. Enjoy.

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-snippy snippets-

Amazing, best response. 10/10 (Though I do disagree with you on the WP thing but that discussion is for a different time.)

 

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The recent rulings from the FCC in America and the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK are highlighting the fact that advertisers are recognising that Youtube influencers are a great way of market towards an audience which they may have had trouble reaching before.

 

Do I trust LinusTechtips to deliver impartial reviews ? My answer is generally no. I see them as providing the same service that the "experts" on QVC and Ideal World provide on those channels giving the viewer a positive overview of products. Those guys get paid Linus gets direct access to the companies, favoured treatment and a whole lot of free products. The reviews on the channel are mostly postive overviews and the negative ones are usually rare and on low end products that wont bother the big companies too much.

 

Do I dislike the channel ? no its just that you have to view the reviews in the context that they are generally going to be positive overviews and loads of tech channels on youtube are going the same way.

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