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 ;-)
