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Comment by econ | Hacker News Reader

> Half of tech YouTube has been sponsored by companies like...

It just struck me that the product reviews are a part of the social realm that is barely explored.

Imagine a video website like TikTok or YouTube etc where all videos are organized under products. Priority to those who purchased the product and a category ranked by how many similar products you've purchased.

The thing sort of exists currently in some hard to find corner of TEMU etc but there are no channels or playlists.

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The reason you don’t see videos arranged by product is because everyone knows not to trust unknown creators telling you how great a product is.

Viewers want to see opinions from specific people they’ve come to trust, not the first video that comes up for a product.

Coincidentally or not, those folks who have more subscribers usually charge more for their consideration. That’s why I generally trust Steve of Gamers Nexus more than other folks, because they don’t do ads except for promoting their own products, so there’s no conflict of interest. On the one hand, Gamers Nexus doesn’t manufacture their own hard drives, but on the other, they publish their methodology and have a reputation to uphold, so I would trust their judgement regarding testing computer hardware more than folks who do engage in outside advertising.

Alternatively, unknown creators have less incentive to falsely promote or lie. It’s the reason I tend to trust random strangers on Reddit than popular YouTubers who have achieved monetization and sponsorship.

No, that’s the opposite of how it works.

I’ve seen how PR firms interact with creators. It’s much easier to get the small time creators to take your product and make a positive video because getting some free product is the biggest payout they’re getting from their channel. They will always give positive reviews because they have more to gain from flattering the companies that send them free stuff than from the $1.50 they’re going to earn in ad money.

The PR firms who worked with the company I was at had a long list of small time video creators who would reliably produce positive videos of something as long as you sent them a free product. The creators know this game.

They don't have to tell you anything. Just unbox and show what they got.

I just purchased a bicycle chain cleaning device. It was absurdly cheap. The plastic was extruded poorly, it was hard to assemble, it was not entirely obvious how to use it. However! It did the job and it barely got dirty. I expected it to be full of rusty oil both inside and outside but it accumulated just a tiny smudge on the inlet. If anyone made a video it would be a fantastic product.

1. You could be that anyone.

2. The world is filled to the brim with videos about "fantastic products".

God, the flood of absolutely useless "review" videos Amazon has incentivized customers to shit all over their site which are nothing more than unboxings are the worst thing about that ecosystem. No thank you.

Think of it like a football channel, a place to contain such things.

Amazon is just not interested in organizing it properly.

You should have a look what river of fresh nonsense is uploaded to YouTube. The difference is that amazon has you look at it as if something valuable.

I don’t trust big channels especially, because I assume they have just sold themselves out to the biggest sponsor. Influencers only exist due to campaign deals, where companies try to sneak their ads into your mind by abusing your inclination to trust another human being. All of it is sickening.

In comparison, I’d rather read a general review magazine with a long history. At least they don’t try to trick me into believing they are working out of the goodness of their hearts, and they usually aren’t married to a single big sponsor.

Online reviews are broken beyond repair.

>I’d rather read a general review magazine with a long history.

Do any of these still exist?

Consumer Reports

There's Kakaku.com[1] in Japanese Internet for all consumer electronics, Minkara for cars, bookmeter.com for books, and 5ch.net as fallback. It's surprising that there's only Goodreads on English Internet that everyone have heard of...

1: https://review.kakaku.com/review/K0001682323/ | https://review-kakaku-com.translate.goog/review/K0001682323/...

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