The corrupt world of the Youtube 'influencer'

[Robert]

A horrible term 'influencer' but something which is rife within YouTube and social media.

Here is some insight into the corruption sitting behind many of those flavour of the month tech reviews and 5 star product ratings.

BTW, cudos the Lon.TV for repeatedly calling this out = it's a great tech channel with warts and all reviews.

 

[Tony L]

There is a lot about and one learns to spot it, just as one does on forums etc. I have next to no interest in new audio kit so tend not to watch the channels that cover it (my interest is in vintage/classic kit and its restoration), but I certainly notice it on the guitar channels where there will be a glut of virtually identical glowing reviews of a new pedal or guitar the reviewer has obviously been allowed to keep. It is what it is, I find I can view around it.

I love YouTube and watch way, way more than terrestrial TV or movies/drama these days, but the stuff I’m interested in is restoration, retro-computing etc. Most computing channels seem sponsored by PCBWay to some degree, but that is easy to factor-in for what it is. I’d certainly never take a rave modern DAC or headphone review with anything but a very big pinch of salt. I’d assume it was a freebie or even a paid review and work from there.

 

[stevec67]

It's no more than the hifi mags used to do in the 90s. Glowing review of an item you'd never heard of one month, full page ad and the item was next month's star prize.