Influencer ethics

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.

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.

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!

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. :-)

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

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 my son watches alot of youtubers who minecraft and fortnite, hes yet to understand that these people are playing on 5k-10k setups.

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 ;-)

I just think there’s a reason influencers are called influencers, not reviewers. Though, some are both.

Personally, I have no problem with influencers PROVIDED they’re transparent about what they’re doing. Some are, but many aren’t.

The ISBA contracts linked to up above give the game away for some - anyone signing those contracts isn’t a reviewer. They’re a paid marketing shill. And fair enough …. if they’re transparent about it.

One thing that winds me up (and I’m not thinking of the coffee segment here) is those saying “I’m not being paid, but I did get this £x.000 machine for free” Sorry, but payment doesn’t have to be money in the bank. It can also be payment-in-kind, especially if you can then sell it (whatever it is) for a non-trivial sum and put that in the bank.

The problem is there are good reasons for companies to provide free equipment, and/or a reviewer holding on to it for a protracted period (with the supplier’s agreement to do so, of course). One such reason is to do long-term tests, and another (especially for market leading products) is to provide a reference benchmark by which to judge future products.

Also, sometimes companies don’t want products back because it’s just not worth it to them to pay for collection. As soon as they ship a reviewer some product, for argument’s sake it’s a widget, and the reviewer uses it to try and test the widget, it’s a used product and the value has significantly dropped. If the product has been shipped from abroad, getting it shipped back to ‘abroad’ is potentially very expensive, both in the administration required, and in simple carriage fees (and possibly import taxes).

As a reviewer (as I was, back in the dark ages) I saw a lot of kit coming and going. Most was here and gone in a few weeks, not least because magazines picked it up to do product photography, but some sat here for weeks, months and even years. At one point, I added up the value (at cost) of the stuff sitting here, and was a bit shocked to find it exceeded £250,000.

How much of it did I sell? Not one item. I gave a few away, AFTER verifying (in writing) that the company that had sent it was comfortable with me doing that. Some, I actually used in the reviewing process, and the supplier got extended value from that, as it was used in future reviews. Some sat here in boxes, awaiting collection, and a few of those are still here. Given that I’ve been retired about 15 years, I don’t imagine they’ll be collected now. At least one company is no longer even trading. I doubt I could even find a taker for items, after this amount of time, if I gave them away. But I want my warehouse …. I mean, spare bedroom, back!

Could any of those companies have threatened to stop sending stuff for review, if not happy with my review? Sure. Would I have cared? No, because I was being paid by various publishers for writing the reviews, and there was always plenty of stuff to review. What I wasn’t doing, EVER, was being paid by the suppliers of equipment, for either “reviews” or for marketing “content”, whether in money directly, or in kind. Goods that were left here were always on loan, and still the property of the supplier, and they could, at any time, ask for them and expect to get them back. The only exceptions to that were the few rare times, and for items of relatively low cost (say, £100 or lower, RRP) where the company explicitly said not to return them when I notified them they were ready for collection, because the current value was less that the courier costs though some (quite a few) collected them even then. I was never quite sure why? Maybe they were given away to their own staff?

So I see the “free hardware” issue as a grey area. There are good reasons for holding on (with the company’s permission) to some items, entirely consistent with an independent review. But there are also ways to abuse that and use it as indirect payment-in-kind. How the hell the viewer is supposed to tell the difference is the problem.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a Youtube channel for a couple of years. One reason why I haven’t is the general …. scepticism …. evident in his thread.

Here’s the thing. I’m not wealthy, but I DON’T need to earn money from YT. Beyond that, the notion of it generating an income is horrible. Why? Because it took me long enough to shut down my businesses, get clear of Companies House and reporting requirements, and to convince HMRC I wasn’t earning any income from business (which I wasn’t).

The last thing I want in life is the hassle of fending off HMRC or, worse yet, having to start filling in more forms.

So, if I do it, it won’t be monetised, I won’t be adding in any adverts, adwords, I won’t be using affiliate links and I won’t be pimping for “likes”, “subscribes”, “notifications” etc because …. well, in short, because I don’t care how successful the channel is, if it is. I will also release content when it’s ready and I’m satisfied with it, not to sate the whims of the Youtube algorithm(s).

I reckon I can keep myself amused producing some content I hope some people will find, and then find useful or helpful. But if they don’t, so be it. The object of the exercise is for me to have fun doing it. I believe I can get enough content in my area of expertise (and no, I’m not saying) by buying some product, reviewing it, in some cases doing detailed guides to use, then selling it on to recoup a portion of the purchase cost. And repeat.

But what do I do if it turns out some people do like it, and want to “contribute”. Patreon maybe. Or if suppliers decide I’m fair, thorough and honest and want to supply equipment? The latter I guess I can deal with by only accepting such equipment if they are willing to agree to my conditions for a review, including that such equipment will either be strictly on loan and collected by them after the review, or given away to viewers, or Patreons etc, should it ever get that far.

I really, really don’t want to end up making money, and complicating my life with HMRC, etc. If that looks to be happening, I’ll shut it down in a heartbeat.

But given that general level of scepticism, even cynicism about content on YT, will people ever believe that I really, sincerely am not out to make money? That anything I say is purely my own opinion, and that some manufacturer doesn’t have their hand stuck somewhere uncomfortable and is using me as a marketing sock-puppet?

I have my doubts. Which is why, so far, I’ve pondered it, but not done it.

When the flash of Light 🌅 hits the Earth, coffee influencers will be the last thing you will be thinking about.

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.

See those two peaks in the last 20 yrs. That’s when I hand to buy a house lol

Not to derail but as a nation and now 41, we are coming to the peak of being super skint.

Cost of living plus the gov millionaires who don’t give a f, life will get harder.

My pension is bricks and mortar, tbh having a pension like my dad all they do take it off you in tax