Comment by nixgeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nixgeek | Hacker News Reader

It feels like the 'influencer economy' has money plus goods/services changing hands in return for reviews all over the place, and the bar for disclosing things like affiliate links exists, but adherence to that bar is mixed with influencers, and enforcement of that bar also seems rare (at least in the US).

Is it possible to believe that a travel influencer with 700,000 subscribers (plus whatever other channel statistics matter to doing these deals with Marketing departments; number of views, watch times, number of click throughs?) would expect a free flight, some accommodation, a food allowance, and some money in return for the time and effort to do the flight, edit a video, post it? Likely yes.

Does that make it okay to post his personal details? No.

But this does seem like the definition of "Fsck around; find out", given the influencer in question has posted lots of stuff *slamming* other businesses, and they've now done it in a country where the airline's response isn't illegal, and the airline isn't covered by IATA's code of conduct, so they have no recourse.

In the article it says that the airline accused him of asking for a free flight but the airline has posted no evidence whatsoever that he has asked for this. In all likelihood the airline is lying.

Furthermore the rest of your comment is oddly deferential to these airline companies. One should be able to post a negative review of any corporation’s product or service. You shouldn’t have to worry about retaliation for doing this. A negative review could be in the form of a written review or a YouTube review.

Also the article talks about how this same person was banned by Qatar Airways after he posted a negative review of them.

I’m shocked you say “fuck around and find out” in response to all this in your comment. How the heck is posting a negative review of a corporation’s service considered “fuck around”? How is retaliation by the corporations part of “find out”?

Absurd

> the airline accused him of asking for a free flight but the airline has posted no evidence whatsoever that he has asked for this. In all likelihood the airline is lying.

What's your basis for that "in all likelihood"? My gut says P('influencer' asking for free shit) is near 100%. Isn't getting free shit from corps the whole point of being an 'influencer'? They're like mercenary-shills.

I don’t know if the airline is lying or not, but the evidence for the airline lying is that the airline claimed Cahill demanded $50k which is “too rich” for an airline so he would never have asked for that much.

I just want to point out the ridiculousness of saying $50k is too rich for a company flying planes which require 10s of millions of dollars as an upfront investment followed by 8-$10k per plane in fuel costs alone.

So basically $50k isn’t even the fuel cost for flying a single plane from NY to LA.

Of course, it’s ridiculous that the airline posted a copy of the passport and not the messages, which is the strongest evidence that they’re lying, not that the $50k demand is too ridiculous.

Assuming he did ask for $50K (and I have no idea if he did) it seems likely this would have been done over the phone or in person, rather than in an easy to copy email or text. If you are going to make questionable demands, doing it in a deniable hard to prove way seems strictly better. If the "strongest evidence that they're lying" has the easy explanation that there is no hard evidence, I don't think that exonerates him in any way.

Aero Dili has two planes in its fleet: a Cessna 207T and a 14 year old secondhand Airbus A320. They started leasing the A320 last year with help from DAE Capital. They operate out of Timor-Leste, so neither they nor their passengers are exactly rolling in cash. They run one 55 minute flight a day to Indonesia and a couple of times a week they extend it to Singapore.

It is not ridiculous to say that they might not be able to afford $50k for some random YouTuber. They certainly don't have tens of millions of dollars invested in planes. They have one plane, singular, capable of international flight. Probably they could scrape together the cash if they had to, but from a back-of-the-napkin estimate it'd be more than a week of fuel costs for their regular route-and-a-half.

And even if they could afford it, they probably don't think it is good value for money. How many extra seats will it help sell them?

I agree that it's bad for a company (or other powerful entity) to have a chilling effect on criticism.

But devil's advocate on this bit:

> but the airline has posted no evidence whatsoever that he has asked for this. In all likelihood the airline is lying.

Phone call? Not speaking when a nod will do? Intermediary and ambiguity around that?

Why lack of paper trail is plausible: Influencers live and die by their brand, and presumably know that a solid bit of unflattering evidence (e.g., that they're selling good reviews, or running an extortion racket) can go viral, and hurt their brand badly.

Or maybe the company has evidence, but, culturally (I don't know about Qatar, but do know there are places where commerce evolved to be built upon reputations more than law&government), maybe doxxing a person in accusation is an accepted response, with the accusation implicitly backed by one's own reputation. Or the culture respects power, and this is a flex in response to being threatened. Contrast with a culture brought up in judicial process thinking, or with company structures that are designed to defend against the many legal liabilities, which might tend to think more about evidence.

Or maybe it's a mix of everyone being wrong: questionable behavior by influencer, marketing person drops the ball in handling them, negative review, internal butt-covering, communications up the chain get mangled at each step, someone receives bad information and doesn't confirm it, acts out in a way that's not internationally advisable.

I don't know what I could say about likelihoods of this particular situation, based on the info in the article and what we know about the world (even prejudices).

One should be able to post a negative review of any corporation’s product or service.

I think it is important to recognize that's a predominantly Western take, and that free speech with consequences for reactions like this isn't close to a universal right today in the world.

In a lot of places, posting criticism and negative takes of things can have pretty serious ramifications, ranging from being doxxed (in this case) by a business, to at the very extreme end, your critical speech can lead to a trial, conviction, a penal colony and your death (Navalny in Russia).

What I meant with "Fsck around; find out" is the threshold for that absolutely varies by the geography. In the US (to pick an example country), as you say, this would be outrageous behavior by the airline with potentially serious consequences in either a civil or even criminal liability sense. Overseas? Potentially not so much, and I think your risk calculus as an influencer on these things (i.e. thinking about flying a small/local airline like this) needs to factor in the local atmosphere?

You say "corporation," I see an airline employee in one of the poorest countries in the world, being forced to deal with an obnoxious rich asshole. He might as well have said "Fuck it, I'm not paid enough to deal with this," and that would've been literally true.

Was the employee wrong? Yeah, maybe. The asshole Youtuber is free to sue them for damages. In East Timor.

Reporting the income paid to the IRS would lead to an easy to review disclosure stream for courts and other enforcement agencies. Normal workers and bankers have their income reported, so this money / value changing hands should be reported too. (Even if presently it isn't.)

While Josh does indeed thrive on drama, AFAIK he never takes free flights or anything.

How do you know that?

To start with, we know his name is not Josh Cahill, but Aljoscha Wendholt...

No glowing reviews

There is zero way to know that.

When the cheesegrater Mac Pro launched in 2019, I was interested in one. I am also interested in photography. So I loved watching at least 6 or 8 videos from my favorite photography YouTubers unboxing and reviewing their launch day Mac Pro and Pro Display XDRs...

All of which they'd "ordered".

I put that in quotation marks because as I watched and rewatched these videos I noticed something: every. single. one. had exactly the same non-baseline spec: 18 core CPU, 384GB memory, Vega II Duo GPU and an 8TB SSD. And every single one had got the Pro Display XDR with the nano coating and the stand.

And it wasn't a case of "maybe that ships faster", or anything, and besides, that's a $25K setup with the screen.

Also, if you're a photographer, even if you're working on medium format digital, and 100MP images, you in no way shape or form need 384GB of memory, or that GPU - the whole thing was massively overspecced. For me, LightRoom / Capture One and Photoshop all did not break a sweat on my 12 core 192GB W5700X variant (which was mainly specced that way for other reasons).

It was pretty obvious that though they may well have ordered one, that Apple had sent them all a launch day setup, all identically specced. They could substitute theirs when it arrived and send back the other unit, or whatever.

But not one single one of them ever said anything about it.

I think the more interesting part here is you alleging a coverup of Apple supplying a review unit. Why?

I think most YouTube channels actually brag when Apple sends them review units. It’s a sign they’ve made it — their channel is influential enough to have been noticed by Apple. Most channels are happy to let their followers in on that.

My guess for what you’re noticing is that there’s also a (in my opinion kinda gross) trend of influencer types buying expensive kit, doing their review, and then returning within the window. In this case, it doesn’t surprise me that someone would spec out a unit well beyond their needs or means, because they don’t intend to actually pay for it.

> I think most YouTube channels actually brag when Apple sends them review units. It’s a sign they’ve made it — their channel is influential enough to have been noticed by Apple. Most channels are happy to let their followers in on that.

I'd agree with that, generally. It's also true that in the photography sphere, there's a notable segment who are all about being "self-made", somewhat. That they're so successful. Their videos are "look at my new studio I'm constructing", "look at the six digits of gear I'm casually playing with", etc., to the point that for a few of them, people are quite well aware that photography is almost a sideline or hobby to them, and that their career is "YouTuber" (which is certainly valid)... it's the "when do you actually find time to do shoots?" vibe.

> My guess for what you’re noticing is that there’s also a (in my opinion kinda gross) trend of influencer types buying expensive kit, doing their review, and then returning within the window. In this case, it doesn’t surprise me that someone would spec out a unit well beyond their needs or means, because they don’t intend to actually pay for it.

What are the odds that 8 (that I found!) ordered the exact same CPU/memory/GPU/SSD spec?

Was that the top spec, or top spec available for immediate shipping?

In my experience Apple keeps a few different configurations ready for pick up or shipping, and their return policy sounds pretty flexible (though I haven’t personally had to use it for a major purchase).

> What are the odds that 8 (that I found!) ordered the exact same CPU/memory/GPU/SSD spec?

If that's the spec you get when you just max out all the dropdowns, pretty high?

> What are the odds that 8 (that I found!) ordered the exact same CPU/memory/GPU/SSD spec?

Pretty high. What are the odds that 8 devs that bought new MacBook Pros all choose 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD? Both specs are above the baseline config, but they are in stock for same day delivery and worth the extra cost. Upgrading further forces you to either upgrade the CPU too or wait a few more days

See: Vision Pro

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