Influencer ethics
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gagaryn the wise thing is to ignore the chaff.
The trouble is, most people cannot……thinking it to be nothing more than harmless entertainment
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.
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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.
La Marzocco Linea Mini - Mazzer Philos
Ikawa Roaster
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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
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.
La Marzocco Linea Mini - Mazzer Philos
Ikawa Roaster
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!
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 
MWJB I didn’t know who any of these people were one year back. Then I stumbled on James H and was originally ambiguous. However, I read his Coffee Atlas, which is excellent and highly useful, and made him credible to me.
Then I looked a bit further and found that a percentage of his videos were informative, highly nuanced, well thought through; that he does respond (sometimes) to comments (impossible to do all if you look at the numbers), that he would modify his position if new knowledge convinced him to do so and would do this publicly without prompting, and that although many, perhaps most, of his videos are entertainment, those intended to have solid content were usually useful.
BTW, not what to buy but rather what questions to ask oneself and vendors too before buying.
This made me think it was worthwhile to look at other YT channels. MAJOR FAIL! I found myself experiencing a range of reactions from “well-intentioned at best; his mother is proud of him” though “entirely repulsive”. Very occasional exceptions include a few noted on this forum, TWG et al.
On reflecting further I found a small number of persons, some now deceased, online in forums, whose posts were so packed with evidence-based opinions as to be very worth following. One of them left the primary forum I used then and I wound up here to keep listening. (Thank you Jake & Dave)
And thanks to the many non-YT persons who post across several forums with intent to provide good data, seasoned opinions, sound advice. If all those of good intent simply ignored “influencers” they would eventually disappear in puffs of hot air.
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..
It’s a recent news, an italian influencer ( not specifically in the coffee business) claiming she was participating in a charity operation while she promote some third part products, even under her brand, but was not true at all and she has been sued for misleading advertising….maybe even the companies that collaborate with her will have some juridical consequences.
Obviously this is a matter of greed and dishonesty, but i think that it’s a first step to increasing a control to the whole field by authority.
The very best influencers (think GamersNexus in the PC world) both get free components, and are quite obviously beyond reproach. Their willingness and ability to take down a company like Asus (and still get free gear from Asus) prove this.
However as a small influencer, the company has a lot more ‘control’ over you, if they are to provide you with ‘free’ stuff. Even in the GN vs Asus case, they attempted to lean on them to hide the terrible reviews and control the narrative. If you’re a small influencer getting free stuff, how much financial and legal pressure would cause you to fold? It’s an indiviual question and you may not care, but some companies can and will get very aggressive once you trash their products to an audience. It’s a personal question that only you can answer.
If company A sends you a product, and you really think its bad, what is your reaction? Would you publish a review (after trying and failing to resolve issues with them) warning consumers not to buy, would you not publish, or would you publish a ‘lukewarm’ review? I think my personal answer would be that I wouldn’t publish, which would make me a bad reviewer in my opinion, but I just wouldn’t want the hassle and legal threats from the company.
There are some companies who will absolutely take reviews on board and completely redesign a product (Qiditech a great recent example of a fantastic company who use reviews positively; they made the product so much better that the reviewers hid their initial reviews from public view as it didn’t accurately represent the updated product.) Other companies will simply attempt to muscle you though and use them negatively.
capuchin This is an old problem, faced by whistle-blowers and critical journalists, for centuries, although with greater visibility in the last hundred years or so – David vs Goliath. No single answer, I think. The Platonic ideal often clashes with necessary practicality.
With coffee though, many of the firms are themselves to small for effective punitive action other than cutting off future product samples. James H seems to have pioneered a system that circumvents this, and others could follow if they choose and if their viewer base is large enough to support this method.
Smaller viewer bases imply free samples will be needed. However, if a reviewer has a clear history of truthfulness, and some company chooses to ostracize him / her for this, then that reviewer still has a weapon to use. He/she can post the “xyz non-review” using public-domain visuals, etc, and note that despite documented requests for a review sample, he/she was either refused (documented) or ignored, and then reference his/her original review that caused this response by the firm in question. Going further the reviewer can then ask those reading or watching to contact said firm requesting that it supply a loaned sample for independent review by a credible reviewer, and supply a link to make it easy to do so.
A firm that will not do so is essentially “reviewing” its own product, and not in a positive way. Basically, the same principle as Judo.
That said the real “influencer” problem, it seems to me, is uninformed, instant-gratification consumer-sheep, who want someone to tell them what to do, rather than taking the time and effort to investigate for themselves. As long as there are sheep, there will also be wolves.
Thanks for mentioning GamersNexus! Entirely new to me, and likely to be useful soon ;-)
