Nvidia Attempting to Censor Critical Reviews?

[Carclis]

Steve of Hardware Unboxed learned on the day of CES that he had been kept out of the loop regarding Nvidia’s RTX 2060 product launch when he found that everyone else in the tech press had their reviews published already.

 

Firstly I'd suggest you watch Steve's account of things instead but this is essentially how the events transpired. A week and a half prior to this happening he had contacted Nvidia to get details on when his sample would be arriving because He had not yet received anything and he had been in talks with numerous other sources who had already received review samples and were already undergoing testing. The response he received essentially told him that comments could not be made on unannounced products and that he would be the first to know when anything changed. A few days later he received a typical blanket NDA lasting for the entirety of product launches across 2019 which he signed, only shortly before numerous others arrived from board partners with an expiry date of January 14^th. Only on the day before CES did Steve receive a tracking number for his review 2060 with an expected delivery date; January 15^th ; the day after the custom model NDA would lift.

 

So this is essentially where Steve is at now. Notably this has happened to him for the past two product launches as well which had resulted in him not receiving an RTX 2080 and again receiving his 2070 after launch. Luckily he has good relations with board partners who were able to supply him with a custom card in both cases, allowing him to complete testing in time for launch. It is also worth mentioning that this only started happening after he started being critical of the Titan cards for providing such poor value (last Titan cards he received) and also after he criticised the company for it’s GPP as well as deceptive GTX 1030 products.

Finally he contacted Nvidia once again after his discovery that he had been excluded from the product release only to be met with a response that more or less said:

 

For me it’s hard to see any reason for Nvidia to exclude Steve from receiving a review sample given that he is essentially responsible for the content of two publications, unless they simply disagreed with him as a reviewer. As well as the fact that a smaller member of the Australian tech press; TweakTown received a review sample suggesting there was supply available here, it seems incredibly strange to me that they would choose the ones with lower viewership to review their product. Personally I really hope this doesn't continue or we'll be completely missing the point of reviews ie we'll get more along the lines of Jay's RTX 2060 review.

Actually found this which mirrors a lot of my thoughts and includes and a potential hint or two as to why TweakTown might be the darling amongst Australian reviewers.

 

Sources

https://www.techspot.com/news/78184-no-soup-you-where-our-rtx-2060-review.html
 

 

[leadeater]

It took this long for a news topic thread about that, that is the real news .

[Fnige]

I had it on my clipboard, I fits here soo

 

EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK

[Carclis]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

It took this long for a news topic thread about that, that is the real news .

Yeah. I was honestly waiting for somebody else to do it but I guess it flew under the radar?

[mr moose]

If this has been him for the past two product launches and others are not effected then maybe there is a problem with him.  Maybe he did not respect the almighty Huang and had a taste of the crushing from the RT and tensor core god.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

If this has been him for the past two product launches and others are not effected then maybe there is a problem with him.  Maybe he did not respect the almighty Huang and had a taste of the crushing from the RT and tensor core god.

*cough*  *clears throat* *cough*

 

 

[Thaldor]

Sounds awfully lot like one other tech company and probably by now everybody knows what I mean.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

*cough*  *clears throat* *cough*

 

 

And I haven't even had that much to drink.

[Sakkura]

At least Nvidia isn't abusing Youtube copyright claims to take down videos critical of their products or conduct.

 

Yet.

[Bananasplit_00]

Didn't they post a review at the same time as everyone else? 

[Carclis]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

Didn't they post a review at the same time as everyone else? 

They did reviews of the aforementioned RTX launches because Steve was able to source a custom card from another company he has good relations with. That's why he doesn't have the reference model in his 2070 or 2080 ti review. He never got a 2060 at all though.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Didn't they post a review at the same time as everyone else? 

nope, he posted an "I don't have a GPU" video instead.

[BananaInSandals]

From a technical standpoint, Nvidia has the rights to not include anyone they don't like in their "early access". But from a PR standpoint, this is just a dick move. 

 

But then there could be more than what has been said. Who knows? 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, BananaInSandals said:

From a technical standpoint, Nvidia has the rights to not include anyone they don't like in their "early access". But from a PR standpoint, this is just a dick move. 

 

But then there could be more than what has been said. Who knows? 

It seemed pretty obvious to me this is about the 1030 DDR4 model.

[williamcll]

I thought NDAs are same for everyone?

[Dylanc1500]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

And I haven't even had that much to drink.

We need to change that.

 

Someone get this guy a drink!

[EnergyEclipse]

 

[Misanthrope]

Why him and not Tech Jesus who is far more obnoxiously critical?

[Thaldor]

7 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Why him and not Tech Jesus who is far more obnoxiously critical?

Because Tech Jesus is Tech Jesus. I don't think even Nvidia in their GT(X) 1030 DDR[whatever] highs would be that stupid that they would drop Tech Jesus out even if he would be salty towards Nvidia quite a few times more than others. I was first fast reading through and thought they had dropped Tech Jesus out, because he is quite salty towards Nvidia these days (like the GT 1030 screws and even the RTX 2060 review and especially teardown are quite salty in comparison to Linus or Jayz videos (from watching those videos I even thought with my tinfoilhat that Tech Jesus was bending the NDA by comparing RTX 2060 to AMD cards because from all videos it seemed like Nvidia has put some NDA on everybody to stop them comparing RTX 2060 to anything else than the GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 and Tech Jesus seemed to compare to AMD cards just so people can make their minds wether to buy used GTX 1080 around the same price or go for the RTX 2060)). I can just imagine how salty Tech Jesus would turn out to be if Nvidia was to give him the same treatment, probably everybody remembers how salty Tech Jesus was about Tom's Hardwares "Just Buy it" post

[Carclis]

39 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Why him and not Tech Jesus who is far more obnoxiously critical?

GN are more independent than HUB. About twice the subscriber count on Youtube and also $5600 monthly vs $1300 from Patreon.

[Misanthrope]

24 minutes ago, Carclis said:

GN are more independent than HUB. About twice the subscriber count on Youtube and also $5600 monthly vs $1300 from Patreon.

So...go for the smaller guy and do not censor the guy who has far more reach with the core audience you are trying to control...?

[samcool55]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Why him and not Tech Jesus who is far more obnoxiously critical?

It is publicly known GN (aka tech jesus) has some strong connections with AIB's.

He gained a lot of trust from them because aib's have given him information he shouldn't really have in the past. There are video's out there about things he shouldn't know, but he does know and he does share it with the world. At the same time he brings his information in such a way the identity of the people that gave him the information is unknown so the bigger companies (like amd, intel and nvidia) can't go after them.

 

If he wants stuff, he gets it. He had AMD stuff way before launch without an NDA from AMD. He just had it. He could have been an arse and release everything before the NDA lifts (which would be fine because he didn't sign one), but he is a nice guy and he never did.

 

While HUB has a good reputation with the community (us) i'm not sure about his reputation up the ladder (like aib's).

[Misanthrope]

46 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Because Tech Jesus is Tech Jesus. I don't think even Nvidia in their GT(X) 1030 DDR[whatever] highs would be that stupid that they would drop Tech Jesus out even if he would be salty towards Nvidia quite a few times more than others. I was first fast reading through and thought they had dropped Tech Jesus out, because he is quite salty towards Nvidia these days (like the GT 1030 screws and even the RTX 2060 review and especially teardown are quite salty in comparison to Linus or Jayz videos (from watching those videos I even thought with my tinfoilhat that Tech Jesus was bending the NDA by comparing RTX 2060 to AMD cards because from all videos it seemed like Nvidia has put some NDA on everybody to stop them comparing RTX 2060 to anything else than the GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 and Tech Jesus seemed to compare to AMD cards just so people can make their minds wether to buy used GTX 1080 around the same price or go for the RTX 2060)). I can just imagine how salty Tech Jesus would turn out to be if Nvidia was to give him the same treatment, probably everybody remembers how salty Tech Jesus was about Tom's Hardwares "Just Buy it" post

That doesn't makes too much sense either: You know he's still going to chastise Nvidia for their treatment of Hardware Unboxed anyway.

 

I honestly thing this is more stupid and less malicious: Hardware Unboxed being based in Australia is just possibly under a conflict of who actually sends them info and such, something as simple as "they'll be handled by the Asia team now" and said team forgetting them would explain.

 

Linus himself described similar stupidity and he's right above the US in Canada and that was still enough to get far different treatment cause they had a different PR rep to talk to.

[Carclis]

5 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

So...go for the smaller guy and do not censor the guy who has far more reach with the core audience you are trying to control...?

Well by that logic they should have excluded Linus, right? Can you imagine how that would have gone down for Nvidia if the guy with 8m Youtube subs and who is basically guaranteed to get millions of views on his review?

[Carclis]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

That doesn't makes too much sense either: You know he's still going to chastise Nvidia for their treatment of Hardware Unboxed anyway.

 

I honestly thing this is more stupid and less malicious: Hardware Unboxed being based in Australia is just possibly under a conflict of who actually sends them info and such, something as simple as "they'll be handled by the Asia team now" and said team forgetting them would explain.

 

Linus himself described similar stupidity and he's right above the US in Canada and that was still enough to get far different treatment cause they had a different PR rep to talk to.

Well I find it very hard to believe that it could be stupidity or an accident if it's just Hardware Unboxed and also three times in a row that this has happened now.