Not necessarily an oxymoron. (Thought I'd get in before some wag does). I'm (very) interested to know what members regard as ethical conduct when it comes to paid product promotions. For the sake of clarity, I'm not referring to a James Hoffman style Patreon funded review but the more typical influencer review such as you might see on YouTube e.g. 'daddy got coffee' or 'lifestyle lab' where the manufacturer sends kit to a professional (as in 'makes a living from reviews') influencer. I'm posting about this on CT specifically because I've noticed more criticism of influencers here than anywhere else so I figured if there was a consencus here, it would more likely to be accepted elsewhere. Full disclosure: I've written a handful of coffee grinder reviews and I've now had approaches from two manufacturers who want to discuss sending me their grinders for review. I have my idea of what ethical disclosure looks like but that view may not be shared by others and I want to get all my (ethical) ducks in a row. This post is to canvas a wide range of opinions because ethics is more subjective than laws or rules. FWIW my definition of ethics is 'obedience to an unenforceable value or ideal'. To get the ball rolling, my idea of ethical influencer behavior would be to declare any vested interest clearly at the start of a review. For example, if a manufacturer is paying for a review then that should be explicitly stated. Or if a manfuacturer sends a grinder and says 'it's yours to keep in exchange for a review, warts and all', then that needs to be declared. And it may go without saying but any 'strings attached' requests would be declined. e.g. 'if we like your review you can keep the machine'. Please note that I'm not intending the scope of this thread to cover incentive-induced bias but feel free to comment on that if you feel that bias can't be seperated from ethics. Bias runs a spectrum I suspect, from concsious to unconsious and based on my experience to date, we tend to have a bias towards certain brands or perhaps a certain look or even a color bias. Anyhow, the floor is yours. What would you consider ethical or unethical behaviour from an influencer? Thanks in advance.

Regardless of bias or not You will get treated like shit by small minded people who simply cannot believe your conclusion I got absolutely rinced on 4 forums and discord because of the small involvement I had with the duo To the point I got banned on one the day I mentioned testing the duo, On discord I had 2 separate people take personal jibes one via pm while I was actively trying to help them, So much so I left coffeesnobs, discord and home barista, I was banned off talk coffee. Tbh even got grief off someone who I considered a friend! So just be prepared for people to hate you. That's why I have cut down my forum use as I'm finding in general 8 out of 10 people are c unts

The things you have mentioned, in terms of disclaimers are the "must have" and as Jake has said, no matter how objective an influencer can be, small minded people will always "find" you. This is inevitable and comes with the territory. @"DavecUK"#1 has set the standard for me with a very detailed and straightforward reviews. This did not stop some people to accuse him in pursuing personal commercial interests. The bottom line is you might have to be prepared for some nasty people shouting at you but the truth is you will never be able to please all, no matter what. From a personal point of view, you have already influenced me to buy a hand grinder and a mobile espresso maker so it works 😀

I like to just watch influencer videos as a ‘how it works/what it does’ video and take any comments about how good/bad something is with a large pinch of salt and disregard points about quality. For example, I enjoy watching James Hoffman / Lance Hedrick content as it’s nicely produced and usually shows machines/grinders in action. As above, I’d make my own mind up whether it’s something I want to buy and try out for myself. Which ultimately is the only way to know for certain if something is good/bad. Of course that’s also sometimes subjective to the end user. I do think influencers catch a bit too much stick sometimes (not always…). It’s **very** time consuming to shoot the level of content you see on some of the more popular videos. Plan shots, setup multiple cameras, lighting, many takes. Then the editing, processing and rendering all takes huge amounts of time and often lots of expensive equipment. And then as @"Cuprajake"#144 sadly discovered, the payoff is just lots of keyboard warriors trying to ruin your day. Honestly for the amount of work that goes into some of the videos and the resulting backlash, sometimes a free grinder/machine barely seems worth it! Obviously it can be lucrative but not until you’ve put in a lot of work. The mask of the internet really does bring out the worst in people. For whatever reason, presumably unresolved personal issues, some people seem to get a kick out of being critical of others. They don’t like seeing others happy. Sad really but a fact of life I suppose. One thing that does irritate me is people taking things they’ve read/seen online about equipment they don’t own as pure gospel and then arguing with actual owners/users about how they’re wrong… As with everything on the internet, trying not to take anything to heart or too seriously is usually the best way to consume info/content.

Adding a comment as I realise I didn’t really answer the OP question 😅 If someone’s flat out lying about a feature or specification where they’re being paid/offered free goods to produce content, that’s not right. I often just assume equipment has been supplied for free even if not mentioned. I think in the UK paid promotion has to be explicitly flagged, on television and certain platforms at least. I’m sure this is a grey area so it’s easier to just assume the reviewer isn’t completely impartial.

Wow Tom, hats off too you for opening this can of worms! I am pushed for time right now, so here are a few random thoughts which will not be coherent. Why would anyone wish to be an 'influencer'? I can think of two reasons only……fame or fortune. How do you get to be famous in an ever crowded marketplace? How do you make people listen to you? If as a relative newcomer you are lucky enough to be sent a product for review, then I guess you can be brutally honest, or as bent as most. Can you be honest about how bad a product is (or talk about its shortcomings rather than its good points), still be attractive to your audience and keep manufacturers on board. Is the whole point of influencing just selling, either of the product or yourself? Absolutely no criticism here of those who decide to go on camera and talk about things. There are clear differences between young influencers who try to sell. sunglasses , restaurants etc and someone doing a review of equipment. Which brings me on to our own @"DavecUK"#1. As you may have worked out by now, Dave detests the usual commercial structure that exists amongst influencers. He does his reviews out of love. His YT channel is not monetised so he cares not who he offends. He does both manufacturer reviews that never see the light of day to the public, and does reviews of things he likes. So Tom, I guess the $696,000 question, is what do you want from your hobby? I suspect money is not the answer. Youtube seems awash with folks who review anything. You specialise in coffee grinders. If you do not want to make a living from this, then you do not need a complicated studio, a film crew and full editing suite. That is not to say you cannot appear professional though. Once you have your thoughts clear, I would make a statement up and when manufacturers offer you things accept as long as they sign your declaration of impartiality and have some fun!

Hey Tom! An interesting question which made me stop and think about my perception of online reviews. My underlying assumption is that if the person making the video has had any sort of kickback from the manufacturer, whether or not that takes the form of payment for a review, a free machine, or a bag of coffee, they cannot be wholly objective. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t trust that reviewer, but it does mean I won’t consider their opinion as anything other than an advert for the product. I may still choose to watch the video to get an idea of what a grinder or machine looks or sounds like, but that’s really all I’m interested in, and usually I’ll look elsewhere. There are also some reviewers who I just don’t watch, like Lance Hedrick. I have, perhaps unfairly, decided he is so desperate to be part of the online coffee ‘influencer’ community that he will do anything for views and attention, and the videos of his I have previously seen take a very sensationalist approach. In my eyes this grossly undermines his credibility, as I have no way of knowing whether he is making a video as a critical, considered review, or just to get as many clicks as possible. Coming back to your question, to me an ‘ethical’ review is not just one in which all competing interests are declared, but one which is only undertaken if there are no competing interests. This is surely the only way to be objective and devoid of bias towards the manufacturer. As an aside, I think your reviews are fantastic Tom. I value your opinion of equipment very highly precisely because of your integrity and objectivity.

you can be objective, it just means you dont get free stuff

I must admit I have a sense of admiration for a lot of these content creators, divisive and occasionally insufferable as they might be. If I was a grad coming out of Uni, 50k in debt or whatever it is these days, faced with the prospect of busting my backside for awful (and worsening) pay in a job widely viewed by society as a ‘proper career’, or shooting videos and learning production about a subject I was passionate about for enormous sums of money… I know which I’d prefer. Some of these people earn serious money, like many millions. I can see the appeal, and I really don’t think you can blame people for chasing that. In 2023, it’s like telling your Son to ‘go and get a proper job’, where a ‘proper job’ in the modern age is usually soul-destroying and underpaid. Also, I think for better or worse, YouTube is becoming a more general entertainment platform rather than the personal vlog platform it started as. Just like TV, truth and honesty becomes blurry at the cost of entertainment value. Not saying I support dishonesty, but as in my post earlier, taken at face value and not as a fully factual analysis, I think there’s some good stuff to be watched. Forums like this are where we go for honest, factual review and comment.

Everytime I hear the word 'influencer' I am reminded of Andy Warhol's quote, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." It's a sad reflection of where we are when wannabees can command followings into the millions. We have entered an era of mass self deception.

If you are paid to review something on Youtube isn't it supposed to have a tag saying, "contains paid promotion", or similar? I guess that if you have done this once, the assumption will be that all reviews by that entity are paid for, going forward, Muddying the pitch with respect to transparency & shilling. If things are supplied from the manufacturer for free, irrespective of review findings, this is a little suspect to me, in terms of cherry picking the item for review. I'm not so concerned about ethics (it currently seems a very grey line somewhat in favour of puff pieces, whether paid, or not - it's difficult to see how the bar can be raised in the public perception) more concerned about the pitiful level of competence that most display in the field I am interested in, being brewed coffee, Once one of the the influencers raises a point/concern, the others start repeating it, parrot fashion, without critical testing - with little evidence that it is a tangible thing. For example, I have seen product break during review and the presenter employing a 'work around' to complete the review, rather than just stopping and giving the product a thumbs down. I'd even go so far as to say that grinders that don't grind from a cold start/need adjusting coarser whilst grinding, should also fall into this category.

Influencer ethics

tompoland

HarveyMushman I don’t really get the hate for them.

Me neither. There seems to be a generous supply of self righteousness floating around. You find people who are unethical in every industry. And we all make money from each other. It’s the way the economy works. Some just do it more directly than others.

Sure, ripping people off with misinformation is not to be tolerated, but there are some pretty decent influencers out there, including James Hoffman. It’s hard for me to put them all in the same basket.

dfk41

tompoland I read your post with a big BUT Tom. I quite agree that not every YT personality should be labelled in the same way. I also agree with you that Hoffman is a good example of a professional YouTuber. Now for the ‘but’.

I worked for 25 years as a self employed Independent Financial Adviser specialising in investment and income advice to the (fast approaching) retired sector. We were regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. They had a rule book many inches thick with a compliant procedure to cover every single topic you could think of. The advice we gave had to be in writing and stayed with us to the grave and beyond, meaning that 30 years after I gave the advice when I was dead, the client still has the right to sue my estate if I did something wrong. This means that even in retirement, I am not ‘safe’. So yes, I get very annoyed when I see folks making a fast buck and yes I do see something wrong with that.

When someone is giving advice or opinion, they have a duty of care. Look at Meticulous. Even a blind man knows that it has some serious shortcomings yet it has been bigged up by the influencers like nothing else on earth. Now the campaign has closed do you see any videos on it? Is it being mentioned anywhere? Have any of the influencers even talked at distance about the downside of ownership before the circus moved on to the next town? How is the nearly $5,000,000 raised being spent? Tell you how it is not being spent. Everyone knows that Meticulous are being sued and they are crowdfunding for that, but when you have a team and offices and lack of experience of bringing a mass produced product to the market, funds are soon eaten up. Anyone who backed Meticulous slightly worried yet?

drdre89

tompoland Sure, ripping people off with misinformation is not to be tolerated

The mainstream media does this every single day yet people keep watching

Platypus

tompoland
They certainly make my coffee hobby more colourful, it would be very dull without them.
IMO we are all adults, you can only be influenced if you allow yourself to be, they are not grooming the vulnerable here.
Not all content is about encouraging people to part with money.

JonWoo187

Cuprajake Yep spot on as I can’t begin to count how often I see people living in front of a screen… they just have to be involved with YT, TT, FB, IG, etc. every hour of every day. They just have to check in, tag someone, walk across busy streets looking down and so on. Take away that and the majority of the population would be lost and dumbed down instantly. Take away the financial compensation from sites and things would really scramble.

tompoland

Probably time to close this thread down. It is not longer about the question I originally posted. For all the flack that HB get, they do a better job of moderating this type of thing. Bye.

JonWoo187

tompoland Well, there are plenty of valid points made for/mostly against influencers, bwahaha… Sure, threads drift a bit off topic often, but makes for interesting reading at times. Problem with H-B is they tend to get butthurt if you go against their ‘logic’ and rarely see there’s more than 1 side to the discussion.

dfk41

tompoland Come on Tom……this is a great discussion. Not many forums allow things to flow like this forum. Sure it creeps off topic a little but so what matey? You never know what you either might learn, or be able to pass on your own info by remaining in the discussion.

Cuprajake

@tompoland not at all its great discussion and will show you what you will be in for,

every time i post a vid of a simple extraction i get a youtube expert telling me what i did wrong, its going to come with the territory im afraid,

what i would plead with you is to be a breath of fresh air and use measuring tool and give real world evidence not just opinion, as taste is way too subjective, but if you can give refractometer and kurve sift grind numbers etc, it would be soooooo amazing.

MacPhisto

Speaking as an old fossil myself, I appreciate the role that influencers and other voices play in the marketplace. I’m glad that I can hear about things other than through the traditional gatekeepers of information and marketing. Yes, there is something distasteful about the facade of impartiality that is really just lower rent advertising, but, at its worst, it’s really no different than the days of glossy and wholly beholden magazine reviews that just so happened to feature flattering reviews of their advertisers. My industry heavily relies on reviews and ratings. I get daily solicitations for various types of purchased reviews. One industry magazine even gives me a list of prices to appear on the cover, to be interviewed, to have a favorable blurb, yearly awards, etc…

There is simply a lower threshold for others to jump into the reviewing game now. Some will be terrible, some will be new versions of the same old marketing crap. Others will be interesting and relatively independent sources. It’s still buyer beware, we just have a lot more dreck to sift through on the way to finding useful information. It means relatively small players with a good product can get good buzz. And it means a lot of gullible people will believe stupid promises across every subject.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. It’s just that we old folks will disapprove of how the next generation will make an easier buck doing it differently than us.

Systemic

In times gone by, experts earned their laurels through training and experience. Sadly, the downside of the Internet age is that we are all experts now - all we have do is upload a few videos and Bob’s your uncle.

Gagaryn

Systemic Much the same was said after the introduction of the printing press in the fifteenth century. :-) Publishing across all media continues to become increasingly more accessible, some might call it democratised. With that you get the good and the bad - with printing it led to the moral horror of nineteenth century penny dreadfuls. With the internet we get the moral horror of hipsters making little videos of them talking about things they barely understand. On balance though, the good outweighs the bad.

The increasing amount of information available demands that information consumers develop a new skillset - that’s the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. Once you are able to do that, the wise thing is to ignore the chaff. That means inter alia, identifying the YT channels that you think are full of BS and ignoring them.

If others haven’t developed this skillset and are watching stuff you disapprove of, and being misinformed that’s their problem - not anyone else’s. There are some on here that seem to think that they have the right to police others’ viewing habits. It’s all a bit Mary Whitehouse and prescriptive.

dfk41

Gagaryn the wise thing is to ignore the chaff.

The trouble is, most people cannot……thinking it to be nothing more than harmless entertainment

Systemic

Gagaryn The increasing amount of information available demands that information consumers develop a new skillset - that’s the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Agree but not sure I see that happening. I think there is a problem with shortening attention spans requiring the subject matter in question to be reduced to easily digestible bites.

Gagaryn

Systemic Agree but not sure I see that happening. I think there is a problem with shortening attention spans requiring the subject matter in question to be reduced to easily digestible bites.

Having spent some time reading through this thread, I fear you are correct. :-)

HarveyMushman

Given the misery of the real world currently I can kind of sympathise with those wanting to live in a fantasy one…

Jokes aside I read that the next generation is the first in history to be worse off as a whole than the previous.

Like the mention of investment advice for retirees earlier in the thread… I very much doubt too many future retirees will be looking for ways to invest their pension/savings. Because they won’t have any.

dfk41

HarveyMushman Like the mention of investment advice for retirees earlier in the thread… I very much doubt too many future retirees will be looking for ways to invest their pension/savings. Because they won’t have any.

The reason they will not have any Harvey, is because they spend every penny and more than they have now fuelling a lifestyle without a thought as to how they will maintain that in the future. What were once all over the place were guilt edged final salary pension schemes but these are now becoming rarer due to the cost of providing benefits. Instead more and more folks have ‘money purchase’ schemes that carry no guarantees. By the time Gen Z etc have paid for their daily coffee and lunch habit, car finance, car insurance, white teeth, getting hammered multiple times a week, couple of foreign holidays a year, monthly clothes allowance, then there simply is not enough left to consider the future and is also why they cannot save the deposit for a house without the Bank of Mum and Dad stepping in…….and with each generation it gets worse and worse

HarveyMushman

dfk41

That’s true and I think the changing attitudes of debt have probably not helped. When I was growing up debt outside of a mortgage was frowned upon whereas now it’s rare to find someone without a credit card, car on finance and personal loans or all of the above.

Not necessarily a bad thing if you’re smart with interest rates but it’s far too easy for people to get very deep in debt these days.

Back on topic though I do think young people are being forced to find additional incomes. Salaries are ridiculously low in almost every industry. For much of the country, certainly south of the Midlands, most traditional professions don’t even come close to affording people a home even after many years in the job. House prices will go up and down and I appreciate they’ve been inflated for some time, but wage growth is viciously flat.

You can see why the allure of big bucks on YouTube, Twitch etc can tempt people to go all-in on their online persona.

BrendaninBrooklyn

dfk41 There is definitely some truth here, however Harvey is also right.

The global economy is squeezing those in the wrong part of the pyramid. Not the first time mind. If you look carefully at the history of Athens and Rome, you will see many reasons for their declines, but fundamentally unsound economies were certainly among the primary faults.

I modify your position when speaking with those younger than me whom I care for to understand the squeeze is occurring and will only worsen, and to live life on that basis, not some Hollywood fantasy..

FadedFrontiers

dfk41 The reason they will not have any Harvey, is because they spend every penny and more than they have now fuelling a lifestyle without a thought as to how they will maintain that in the future. What were once all over the place were guilt edged final salary pension schemes but these are now becoming rarer due to the cost of providing benefits. Instead more and more folks have ‘money purchase’ schemes that carry no guarantees. By the time Gen Z etc have paid for their daily coffee and lunch habit, car finance, car insurance, white teeth, getting hammered multiple times a week, couple of foreign holidays a year, monthly clothes allowance, then there simply is not enough left to consider the future and is also why they cannot save the deposit for a house without the Bank of Mum and Dad stepping in…….and with each generation it gets worse and worse

Utter nonsense, akin to the old “they can’t afford houses because they’re spending it on avocado brunches and lattes” drivel.

The cheek of accusing influencers spouting misinformation.

Platypus

dfk41 “By the time Gen Z etc have paid for their daily coffee and lunch habit, car finance, car insurance, white teeth, getting hammered multiple times a week, couple of foreign holidays a year, “

Most young people are not like this and work incredibly hard to pay extortionate rent for rentals owned by the older generation.
Young people who have no option but to live in family home are having their normal growth and development stunted in every way.
The young have paid a huge cost with Covid to keep the older generation safe, a debt that will last decades, I think we should remember this .

dfk41

HarveyMushman Yep, a lot of truth in that but we are straying! I had been tempted to start on the modern trend of products coming to the market by not using their own money therefore no risk to themselves, but instead fundraising on Kickstarter……..but I fear Tom might pull out his remaining hair! Still Harvey, you could always start another thread!

drdre89

None of this matters as the Epstein client list will be released soon and all hell will break loose in the world exposing all the elite pedos. Brace yourselves

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