Reviewer Ethics

[GDRRiley]

25 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

Because in many cases it's already done. In many countries there are plenty of laws that apply strict regulations on these things to TV, the thing here is to also apply some to Youtube.

no its not done well anywhere.
even the UK which has strict rules. they get broken constantly. Have you watched the tom scott video on this? Spotty posted it back on page 2.

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

no its not done well anywhere.
even the UK which has strict rules. they get broken constantly. Have you watched the tom scott video on this? Spotty posted it back on page 2.

Then it should be properly enforced...? If rules don't exist, they should be made. If rules exist, but aren't enforced, they should be properly enforced. Regardless if it's for TV, Internet or whatever else. I didn't mention anything of how well it's done, only that it's done, as the point I was trying to make is that TV already have rules in place in many countries, I don't know if they are actually enforced as that becomes a lot more specific and hard to know than just the existence of the rules, and it isn't important for the point I was making.

 

Just to support what I think should be done, in Germany Youtubers need to have a tag in one of the corners of their videos to show sponsored videos, as example you can check Der8auer videos, and while not perfect, as some exaggerate on the disclosure making hard to know what is and what isn't sponsored, while others are too light on the disclosure or ignore it, but most of the time it's works decently well to make one aware of the nature of the content. I consider this a overall decent approach, but with some flaws that I already addressed in my post on page 1.

[GDRRiley]

34 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

Then it should be properly enforced...? If rules don't exist, they should be made. If rules exist, but aren't enforced, they should be properly enforced. Regardless if it's for TV, Internet or whatever else. I didn't mention anything of how well it's done, only that it's done, as the point I was trying to make is that TV already have rules in place in many countries

yeah cus a faint P for 5s at the start and a millisecond end credit is the solution

 

[FruitOfTheLum]

On 9/12/2021 at 2:28 AM, blue2kid3 said:

It kills me to feel like this and to jump into this but maybe it is just me. 

 

 ~Snip~

 

 

 With only love - Bluekid

 

 

I've not been watching LTT for very long, more like I've binge-watched a bunch of videos since discovering it a few weeks ago, but I think calling it unethical broadly like this is a bit unfair.

 

It's not a binary 'either/or', of course, and there's always room for improvement - there are no saints in this world - but I think LTT leans closer to the 'ethical' side than it does the 'unethical' side. 

 

Even as a new viewer with no context (to start with - I've since seen a video explaining how they use the terms) I was immediately aware of the distinction between a 'showcase' and a 'review'. They're clearly labelled, and it doesn't take a huge amount of deduction to figure out that a video talking about an Asus product, which is also sponsored by Asus, is probably a wholly-sponsored video even without those labels. And honestly, this is one of the only channels I've seen where Linus or whoever will actively criticise the product they've been paid to promote about in the sponsored video, even if they're perhaps a little softer about it than they might be in a proper review. You can clearly tell that there's a passion for improving tech overall there, even when they're being sponsored.

 

In actual, proper reviews, I don't feel like there's a huge amount of influence from past or present sponsorship deals. Like, LTT seems to have been sponsored by Intel a lot, yet I've seen a number of videos about Intel products - especially their more recent 11th-gen CPUs - where the team has basically roasted Intel. I don't get the impression that the team at LTT is particularly concerned about schmoozing tech companies for potential sponsorships. They're the biggest game in town at this point, so why would they need to?

 

From what I understand from a couple of behind the scenes videos, the writing team is unaware of which company is sponsoring which video, and more recent videos have gradually been (seemingly deliberately) trending away from 'tech hardware companies' and more towards general, non-tech stuff, gradually removing the potential for influence even further. I now know more about men's below-the-waist grooming products than I ever needed to know, for instance. 

 

So far as LTT keeping review samples goes... I don't really feel like that's a particularly big deal. It's not like they can (or need to) sell them, and at best they're useful as spare parts for future build videos. If review staff personally are keeping the samples, then that's a bit more on the 'darker' side of the ethics scale... though I wonder whether they're more thankful to their boss for letting them do so than the companies who originally provided them. When Linus is putting the sponsored products in his own house, often ripping it apart in the process, I have to assume that he wouldn't be doing so if he didn't already want/like the product!

 

Regarding bias, there's no such thing as an 'unbiased' reviewer. With or without sponsorships, reviewers are going to be biased in some way or another, whether consciously or unconsciously. This is why you should never rely on the opinions of one reviewer when making a purchasing decision, but rather a broad sample. I don't have any reason so far to suspect that LTT is especially biased compared to others, though.

 

It's, of course, all subjective at the end of the day. I feel like LTT is doing its best to be as ethical as it can be, though, even if there are aspects that can occasionally make people uncomfortable. That could just be their PR working well on me, or it could be the case. Unusually for a channel like this, however, in those instances Linus tends to make a video explaining his rationale and letting people make up their own minds, so at least there's some transparency to chew on. 

[Stahlmann]

Just take everything in a sponsored video with a mountain of salt. I'm not saying they're lying about the positives of sponsored products, but they are knowingly leaving out negatives. You can use these sponsored videos to learn about new products, but don't use them to make a buying decision. No sponsor will ever pay for a showcase that brings out negatives in any product.

 

If they review a product, the video sponsor will never be the product brand itself. And if there is a big fat "Sponsored by Asus" at the beginning and the video is about an Asus product, you immediately know this is a showcase (Ad). But i will admit that the line between sponsored showcases and proper reviews is thinner than ever when it comes to LTT.

 

If you want to make a buying decision about a product, use non-sponsored reviews that are completely independent from the product manufacturer.