Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Ethics of YouTube Tech Reviews with Mr. Mobile!

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

This week, we have our good friend and fellow YouTuber Michael Fisher, aka "Mr. Mobile", dial into the MKBHD headquarters to discuss the ethics involved in reviewing tech on YouTube. Michael is very well-known in the tech community as being uncharacteristically open regarding his business ethics, so he takes us on a journey describing the different scenarios a tech YouTuber faces on a regular basis. Finally, we close out the episode with some questions from Twitter. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com https://twitter.com/theMrMobile Mr. Mobile YouTube: https://bit.ly/3c9cFtv Mr. Mobile Ethics Page: http://www.mrmobile.tech/ethics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out Indecision, overthinking, second guessing every choice you make. In Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out Beige on beige on beige. In Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And today we have special guest

Michael Fisher, aka Mr. Mobile, one of my favorite tech YouTube channels and reviewers. He's been a friend for a while. Recently, I saw he added an ethics page to his site. And reading through it, I thought it was like the perfect communication of what to consider when watching your favorite reviewers on YouTube, whoever they are. So we'll talk about how review units work, you know, where we stand on the ethics of working with companies. We do a little Twitter Q&A. And there's even a horror story from our time in the industry. So it's all coming up. Really great conversation. Let's get into it. All right, special guest, Mr. Mobile, Michael Fisher, Captain Two Phones,

the man himself. Welcome to Waveform. Thanks for joining us. Marques, thank you for having me. It is wonderful to see your face again, even if it is just virtually for the moment. It's great to hear your voice again, too, just in the headphones. Easily best voice that's been on our podcast so far. That's no offense to the others. They're great guests, but I mean, come on, come on.

I wish life and limb to walk to the sound booth, so thank you. It's worth it. We appreciate it. I think this is a really interesting conversation to have just because we've both been doing this, first of all, for a while. And when I say doing this, I mean we've been reviewing tech in the form of online video or online content in some way. How long actually – do you know how many years you've been doing video? I do, yeah. It started in 2011. So I was doing YouTube before that, but tech YouTube, that's when I started.

It was the fall of 2011, right before I met you you that's a lot of years man yeah that's like it's for me it's like uh it's coming up on a third of my life or something crazy like that so it's a lot because you're like you started 2010 right it was about the same time wasn't it yeah beginning of 2009 actually so it's like it's it's a it's getting up there. Yeah. But just like when you, when you take a step back from it all, trying to explain our job to like relatives, you've probably had like the Thanksgiving table talk, like how's work going? And you have to sort of explain what it is again. Yes. Um, it's not a normal job to have. So I feel like going over that, um, what it is to be a tech reviewer. And on top of that, to have relationships with companies that are putting

out new products, you know, what, what it is to exchange a product, to have relationships with companies that are putting out new products, you know, what, what it is to exchange a product, to have an embargo, all of that sort of thing is, it's good to have in one place. We're going to be answering 14,000 YouTube comments at once. In other words. It's great. Yeah, exactly. So here's what I'll do. Let's start it off the top with like company X product Y, how does it work? So work? So you're company X, you're a tech company, and you're coming out with product Y. I guess step one for them is make the product, make the plan for the product. Right. Step two is plan the event to reveal the product.

Be very secretive, of course, before you do all these things. Naturally. And then I guess the next step is to come up with this sort of a media plan. And not everybody, not every company does this, but to sort of give that product to people who review products, let them spend time with it so that when the event happens, there is a big reveal. And then at the same time as that big reveal, when people are considering buying the product, you have these tech reviewers who have given their informed opinions about what the product is and whether you should buy it or not. Right. This is what is always asked about in all of our

comment sections. Every time we're all posting the same review at once, you see us all post it, whatever it is, 12.01 PM, folks. It's because that is the absolute earliest time on the clock that the contract we have signed, the clock that the contract we have signed, the NDA embargo agreement we have signed, says we're allowed to talk about it. So that is like, everyone doesn't have to post at 12.01, but that's the earliest we can talk about it. And since we're all technically in competition with one another, even though I think most of us don't really see it that way, we all just want to be out there in the conversation at once, and nobody wants to be late. So I feel like that's the first point of confusion I see a lot. People are like, did you guys, did Company X say you have to-

Did you plan that? Right, yeah. And you're like, no, nobody said we had to. They just said we couldn't before this minute. Yeah. And I'll go over, I have like a horror story relating to NDAs later, but we'll, we'll get, we'll get into that later. Cause there's a whole lot, there's a whole lot there. Uh, also by the way, are you a 1201 person or a 1202 person? There's actually a little bit of, a little bit of difference there, you know, for a little bit of scheduling action, you mean? Like, do I say, you know, sometimes, you know, there's a, also don't trust, I don't trust YouTube scheduling. I always do it manually. Terrifying. yeah. But when I come up on that time, I refresh my sub box at 12 o'clock

and I see the videos come up and then 1201 happens and then a couple more videos pop up and then at 1202, I publish and that video will be almost on time, but it goes right to the top of the sub box. So if someone logs in at right around that time and you published a right away,

you're immediately buried. Yes. Oh, of course. I don't know if other people even think about this. No, we think, I think about it often and I'm always jumping on. I'm too, I'm too nervous to go first. Even if I've checked the conjure, like the time, 16 times, I'm too nervous. I have to wait on Twitter for, it's usually like tech radar. Like somebody, some big publication goes and I'm like, okay, I'm going. But a publication I will not name, a large publication was, we were at a Blackberry event, I think it was. And we're sitting there in the seats ready to go. We've all got our laptops out ready to hit the button. And one of our friends walks by from publication, you know, Z.

And she was like, what are you guys doing? We're like, we're ready to hit publish. And she's like, oh, we went like three minutes ago. We didn't care. You guys should go. Bold move. Thanks. That is like interesting risk reward there. We're going to break the contract, but for three extra minutes. It confused the devil out of me. I tell you, I've never understood, but they're doing fine. So apparently it worked out. So I think unlike a lot of different genres in YouTube, since tech reviews are so focused on a product that's made by a company and then that makes every one of our videos about a company

that has nothing to do with us, because of that, every single video we post, everything, there's always a chance for somebody to say, this was paid for, did you get paid off for this? Mostly just because there's a really there's always a chance for somebody to say this was paid for did you get paid off for this mostly just because there's a difference of opinions people like to if you don't have the same opinion as them they like to tell you it's obviously because you were paid for not because people have different opinions but um right uh i think it's safe to say every video we've ever published has said how much did x pay for this you're a paid shield something along those lines it gets infuriating after a while um so we've seen you've taken an

extra step to combat this first of all you do a disclaimer at the end of all your videos yeah which is fantastic it explains to everybody that they didn't get a chance to edit the video at all or this is the first time they're seeing it which is great um but then on top of that you created an ethics page on your website um that is a really really long in-depth version of just like why all your ethics how you feel about journalism and being trustworthy and being honest to everybody and and i think it's yeah it's fantastic it's a great thing for people to read when they're starting to question tech YouTubers. So I think we'd like to talk about ethics because I don't think a lot of YouTubers go out of their way to talk about it much except for you. So we were wondering if we can kind of use your ethics page as kind of a rubric, go through it and talk about how we all feel about.

I would love that. Yeah, no. And I think just to give credit where it's due before I forget, the disclaimer I give at the end of my videos is always about copy approval. It is, as you say, it's like, hey, if this was a Motorola video,

say, Motorola didn't get a chance to see this before you guys did. You guys are seeing it for the first time alongside Motorola. And I basically just stole that phrasing right from Lon.TV, a rather large YouTube channel that does a lot of tech videos.

And I just, I had for ages wrestled with a simple, succinct way of saying, hey, nobody, my opinion was not bought for this. And like saying, look, you guys are seeing it at the same time as the manufacturer was the quickest, easiest way that I'd ever seen that done. So I just, I stole it. So thanks Lon.tv for allowing me to ethically appropriate your ethics statement. Yes. I love it. It's super succinct, but it also, I think on the flip side, we'll get the gears turning. If you think about it long enough,

you're like, well, is this untrue about some other things? Is it possible that there are videos that I'm watching where this was approved by the company where they saw it first and got to edit it maybe before it came out? So I think that's where having like a public-facing statement like that clears it right up. So here I want to start at the top of it where basically you know we have all our code of ethics and it sort of comes from this journalistic place. I think people like using the word journalistic or journalism in some way. Sure. Just, I'm curious for you, does it come from, like, you just personally wanted to get it out there? Does it come from wanting to have a public journalistic standard, something like that?

Yeah. You know, I think, first of all, we talked about all the comments we always get, right? There's always a million questions and complaints in the comments. And a lot of them, for one reason or another, some of them valid, some less so, question your credibility. So first of all, I just wanted a place where I could stop having this debate all the time in the comments because I don't know if you guys know, I don't have a life. So I just hang out in the comments and argue with people or talk to people. My first 24 hours is YouTube comments and Reddit comments after every video we post and just like type something up,

backspace, backspace. And so, yeah, right. Oh no, settle down, cool down. Don't say that, say something different. But yeah, so it was just a matter of convenience to be able to say, hey, I've wanted to get this out on paper for ages. Let's make a page. Let's do it. So part of it is that. And the other core part of it is I like that you dropped the J-bomb, you know, it's like, I don't like rolling out the journalism word too often because I didn't go to J-school. I don't claim to be a journalist. Right. Yeah.

But I always have sought to be the best pretend tech journalist I could be because I didn't get into this business for the same reason some YouTubers do, which is to, you know, get brand deals and get huge and get famous. I got into it to like help people initially to help people decide how to spend their money on cool stuff. There's a little less of that decision enablement now, but if I had to pick a side, I wanted to be a tech journalist. So why not have the same style ethic statement as so many of these big sites? Yeah, and I think, you know, I didn't go to journalism school either, but basically a lot of this, what we're doing is self-taught because it either hasn't been done before or we just haven't done it before at all. So we start to make videos and we realize that these conflicts arise. So, okay, what do we do about that here? Let's have a statement of some kind to clear that up.

So you mentioned people get into it because sponsors are a big part of the game, almost a necessity to keep a smart business running. So if you think you can run a tech YouTube channel as your job and never have any sponsors, you'd be in a very, very small group that actually can pull that off. Right. I'm not a member of that group, by the way. Yeah. It might not actually exist, but you know, there, there are a few. And so when that comes up, you have to think about, all right, so how do we, how do we handle sponsors? How do we, you know, separate sponsored

content from the rest of what we do, which is helping people figure out what to buy. Yes. So I guess a question that comes to mind right off the top is having sponsors. In general, how do you, Mr. Mobile, decide what sponsors to say yes to and what sponsors not to say yes to? Because there's always an inbox of constant things rolling through and you have to decide what to say yes and what to say no to. How do you do that? Lots of pitches, right?

Yeah. It's surprisingly difficult to explain, but it's rather easy for me to make these decisions. So I think when I wake up, say you've got more than me, but say I've got 40 emails in my inbox every morning from people pitching me on things to advertise for them. In a perfect world, I'd love to be able to say, look, the audience knows the difference between a sponsor spot and when I'm talking about when I'm sharing my own opinion. So I can I can sponsor anything. Right. I can take money for anything and just put it in front of people because people understand it's an ad. But I think there's a there's a lot of confusion there. And B, no one wants to hawk a product that's going to either make people angry or, you know, potentially hurt people or just waste people's money. Right. So in some ways you have to. And I think I don't know if you find this too, Marques, but like you have to apply a lens to a potential sponsor, much the same as you would to a product you're reviewing, but ultimately it's an ad read, so it's going to be positive anyway. So you don't want to hawk crap, but you're also not being, you're being honest because you have to be according to the law, but it's a weird,

strange gray zone, right? So I just apply that to phone cases and accessories and things that I don't organically cover. That's the short answer. Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a good place to draw the line in the sand. I know when I was first starting, you know, I was doing this through high school and through college and it was not my job. And so my philosophy on sponsored things was, you know, I don't really like watching that many sponsored things. You know, I see some good ones once in a while, but it's not really what I enjoy watching. So I'm just going to have a stance where I just don't do anything sponsored. And for those years when it wasn't my job and I was just going through school, that was the easiest line in the sand to draw is a no to everything. Um, but now that it's a studio and a team and a whole process

and it's a business now, it, it has to move. That line has moved. And so I think I've sort of drawn it in the same place as you, where it's like, if I wasn't going to be interested in this anyway, there's almost no way to push it over the line. And if it's something that, you know, would be cool or something that I think is actually a nice product, like I did. And I'll also use examples literally of companies I've worked with in the past. The Ridge Wallet, I wasn't interested in them. They sent me the product and I was like, oh, that's actually, that's actually kind of nice.

And so it was easy to say, okay, yeah, this is something I could definitely show and share with people. And it made perfect sense. So that's, that's a good place to draw the line, I think. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's a format choice for me too, because I will do, I think the 45 second integration or the one minute integration where you have a sponsored spot in the middle of your video, I think that's as close to perfect as you can get right now for me, because I just don't do full length sponsor videos at all. So if I can

take a break for a second to say, hey, here's a word for my sponsor, you know, phone skin manufacturer D say, you know what I mean? And it's like, this fits on this phone. It looks pretty good. You should buy one. I put them on mine and that's the truth and here you go That's like the ideal situation for me if I could have one of those on every video I would because it's not it's helping people. It's helping me. It's a win-win Yeah, yeah, that might be the a the ideal. Um, I've in the past I've considered doing I guess if we're calling it by name pre-roll mid-roll and roll a pre-roll would be something literally before the video even starts you're

sharing a sponsored message and then jumping into the video and mid-roll somewhere in the middle and end roll somewhere post the video I've never done a pre-roll and I don't think I could ever get myself to do a pre-roll because it it just takes me out of like I have a title I have a thumbnail I'm jumping in I want to learn something I want to see something and then I'm just distracted like I'm just I'm Just I'm annoyed by that anyway when there's like a clickbait title and a 25 minute video and the thing I clicked for isn't the First thing oh, yeah that always has been like that has bothered me so I'm I'm sort of anti pre-roll as a like a personal choice But then I get right into like, all right, if we can integrate this into the video somehow,

that's better than just like chopping it right at the end. I feel like we also spend way too much time doing some like dumb 20 second skit at the start of a video and it would be such a bummer to like, to work so hard on some like kind of funny skit in the beginning and then just go straight into an ad. Yeah. Yeah. That's the tricky thing. no i mean we all as as creatives you know you've got these weird decisions to make that that are very tough to quantify but they are real things like people were wanting pre-roll stuff and i said we'll drop your logo at the top of a video i'll say sponsored by this company this actually helps me out because then we get to disclose out early and open too but i wouldn't want to talk for 30 seconds about an ad in the middle the top of a video. I'll say sponsored by this company. This actually helps me out because then we get to disclose out early and open too, but I wouldn't want to talk for 30 seconds about

an ad in the middle, the top of a video. No, no, no, no. Yeah. So here's another question. And this comes from like, probably from the YouTube comments again, but I'll toss it in there anyway. Is there a such thing as a sponsored review? In Mr. Mobile World, the answer is, I'm guessing, no. No, not on my planet, if I could help it. No, to me, can I turn it back on you first? Sure. Yeah, because I want to hear your opinion on this. No, yeah, I am a hard no on sponsored reviews.

So I will do sponsored showcases where you'll see that this is, you know, I'm showcasing a product and you'll be able to see what it is. And if there are no like cons being said, it's because this is a sponsored message, but that is definitely not a review and it will never be categorized as such. It will never be mixed in with those reviews. It is strictly not a review. And you'll never have a suggestion on to buy the product. Yes or no. Right. On something like that. Like you're not giving your your opinion that obviously if it's bought for, it could cause people to buy things. Right. That's a hard line. Yeah, that is. We have we

have a similar hard line. Yeah, there's I think the idea of a review that's been paid for, like when you come up and say like, hi, you know, I'm Michael Fisher and this is product why review sponsored by product wise manufacturer. Like, how does your brain not immediately short out at that moment? It drives me nuts. I think a lot of it has been this. We've had this dilution of the term review over the years. You know, you can run a video that's like, hey, just to make sure you know, I've used this product for two minutes. I'm yelling at you from a trade show floor.

I obviously barely know how it works, but this is a hands-on. First comment is always great review. Yeah, I see that too. And I'm like, where did I say I was reviewing this? This is strange. Yeah. And I think so now that we have that hard line, I think then it gets into a little bit more nuance where basically you'll see, and I thought about this a lot because I'd actually never thought about it until I was accused of it. And then I had to double back and think, wait, by company. Why? But, you know, there may be some behind the scenes incentive

to say good things in order to, uh, I don't know, uh, keep your relationship with the company and keep getting, uh, pre-release devices. So your coverage can be early in order to keep, uh, I don't know. That's like the general, like accusation is like, you're not getting paid, but it feels like you're being swayed in a sort of biased way that could allow you to say you're not getting paid, but you're still being biased. Does that make sense? I think that's Reddit's favorite argument on almost every thread. Here's my, here's my response to that is this could be very, very early in my YouTube career considered a tempting thought where it was like the first stuff I was ever getting to review.

I was like, whoa, I just got sent a keyboard to review. I better say something nice about this keyboard so that this keyboard company keeps sending more keyboards. Like that could be a thought when you're, this is brand new to you. You've never done, and this is like a watershed moment. But you're nine, 10, 11, whatever this is for us, it's like, you know, if I don't get a product to review, I'm going to buy it and it'll be later and that's fine. But this isn't, this isn't a defining feature or review anymore that I, that it was provided or that I bought it.

It's just something that happens to be a part of the job at this point. Yeah, this is more broadly, you know, this is debated in real media, forgive me, but like broader media all the time. You know, it's this debate about access journalism. I think the most often I see it talked about is when, you know, the White House, like if you're in the White House press pool and you annoy the president enough, like theoretically the White House can deny you access. And boy, that's going to be a big hit for your traffic. So how much do you want to annoy the president, whoever the president may be? These are issues that I think will not get solved anytime soon because there is legit pressure there not to lose

access. Right. But to your point, Marquez, like a, I will, I also will go buy it later because I probably don't have time to, to cover stuff in the first wave most of the time anyway, but be even in a situation where I've had to say like, you know what, this isn't a great product. And I am nervous because I'm new. Cause it's 2011 and say, you know, company H just made a phone that is pretty crappy. And they flew me halfway across the world to see it for a week. And now I have to tell people they shouldn't buy it. Oh, well, I'm nervous, but I'll say it anyway. I have never personally been denied access as a result of being honest. And I've never known anyone who has been shut out with, I think, one exception. There's one publication who just repeatedly just went after a manufacturer for probably like two years.

And I think everybody has their breaking point. But it's like it's not – everyone seems to think it happens all the time. And I am struggling to remember a single occasion of it. I am struggling to remember a single occasion of it. Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like the easiest or best way, I guess, for me to share that that isn't the case is to give all the examples of really glaringly negative reviews I've given products that were followed up by the company sending their next product. Like, check this out. It's better than the last one. We saw how much you hated the first one.

So this is a better one. Right. You know, that's with, you could look at HTC phones. You could look at the Chromebook pixel. This ain't it chief. I'm remembering titles at this point. This ain't it chief. Microsoft, the Lumia nine 50 probably got bludgeoned by you. Like it did me. I think my, my tagline with that was just nope. Yup. Yeah. I mean, and these, these things happen, but like at the end of the day, if you work at that company and you're hearing this truth about your product, that's wrong. Because I can understand if someone's giving you unfair criticism or has got a faulty unit and is just hammering in that this is normal for their product. Something like over the top where it's not really true. But if you work for this company and you're hearing this review and you're like, well, that is true. We did put a small battery in it. Well, that is

true. We did put a seller on in a laptop. Oh, that is true. All these things that he's saying that make it a not a great buy. They're all true. There would be no reason for that company to suddenly cut you off or change the relationship with you. In fact, it's sort of, if I was working there, it'd be sort of motivation to make the next one better. Send the early unit to that guy. He hated the first one. Send this new one to him. Let's see how much better it is. Let's see if we can redeem ourselves here. Assuming again, like you say, you think the criticism fair and yeah, that's usually how it goes. Yeah. So you mentioned something earlier, getting flown out to an event or to a company's headquarters to see something. This is something interesting to me because, again, I did not actually know until last year that that was a thing until I got accused of it.

Wait, yeah, what? I saw this in the notes. What happened? actually uh been flown to a company's anything ever for any reason uh hotel plane whatever and you know someone was saying like yeah marquez you have such a great relationship with these companies but they fly you out to their events and put you in nice hotels and i'm thinking i that's that's the number one thing i spend money on is flights and hotels for my team what are you talking about um well, you know, you didn't know that it was common in the, in, in press circles for that to happen until, until last year, I thought everyone was paying for everything and didn't realize that was a thing. Now, not to say that it's wrong to get paid to fly out to things. You need to go to their

headquarters to see a private product. Then by all means go do it. But would this ever, for example, change Mr. Mobile's opinion of a product? Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I'll just come out and say, I really admire that. I had no idea that that was the case, A, and B, that you didn't know that it was kind of, over the past few years, it's sort of become standard. It's become accepted practice among the circles I travel in. And as I say in my ethics policy, that's one of those things. I'm like, listen, if a company is holding a launch event in another country and they're flying media to do it, we are not in a position as the Mr. Mobile

division of future PLC to be like, no, we're going to buy our own flights and we're going to put ourselves up because look, we had a defined amount of time to make money. And travel and lodging ever since I started in this business has just been one of those things. I'm like, you can fly me to wherever and you can put me up wherever you want. It is not going to affect my editorial coverage at all. And I was nervous, dude. I said that. Coming on the show, I was like, man, I need to make sure. Because you've got to check in with yourself every so often. Am I being, you know, am I being swayed by by the breakfast caviar at company M's event? You know, I don't even like caviar.

7 review, I think, is the one I was watching right before I came on. I'm like, wow, yeah, that was a great, great trip to South Korea. So we could tour the production lines, ask the engineers how they built this stuff. It was a lot of fun. At the end of the day, I said most, you know, this is a pretty boring phone. And most people should probably spend their money better elsewhere. But you know, you just there's nothing wrong with checking in every so often, I think everyone should keep themselves honest, but that is just not one of the lines we could have afford to, to draw ourselves. Now, my question, do you, are you going to change that? Or are you going to keep it the way it is your travel and expense policy? Yeah, man, I think I'm honestly probably going to keep it the way it is just because it's so built into what we do. It's like, I, and we also have like

such a streamlined thing. I think I've had now that I look back, like, and I realized that it's common. I look back and I'm like, oh, yes, I do see that this company here did offer to, you know, put us on these flights. And I said, no, it's fine. I already booked our flights and they're going to get there like an hour before our interview. Like, like things like we have this process all sort of, uh, nailed down, you know, nailed down and it's, it's something I've accepted as a top three expense for us. So, uh, yeah. Well, and I don't, I want to be clear and I would want to move on, but just to, for the record, you know, I'm not being glib about this. I think it is, it is something people should ask about.

People have a right to wonder whether your coverage is being impacted by things like a fancy hotel, you know, or whether you're being, what class of travel you're being flown in or whether you're being flown at all or, you know, whether the company takes you on a trip to test out the phone's camera with a fun speedboat ride, which has happened, you know what I mean?

Like, I think on the surface, it's, it's pretty obvious that the PR companies who plan this. Oh, they're smart. Oh yeah. They want very much the positive sentiment associated with that. They want, this was a fun trip to equal in our brains. This is a fun product and we should recommend it, or at least we should be guilted into not saying bad things about it. But as long as I think we're, Or at least we should be guilted into not saying bad things about it. But as long as I think we're we as in the pseudo journalists that we are maintain an adequate filter and police like a breaking point for them. I think that's awesome because really, like, as an audience member, you have to make your own decisions.

You have to decide who you trust and why. And, you know, we're all going to draw that line a little differently. Yeah, yeah. And like you say, the companies in charge of this, they're smart. And they'll have, you know, I think I now, now looking back at like some of the trips I've seen, it makes perfect sense. Not only are they trying to make their product look fun, um, but you know, the trip's fun. You think everything's great, right? Everything's beautiful. Um, I think it comes down to being in the shoes of, of the viewer where, you know,

you put yourself in the reviewer's shoes and it seems very different. If you're in our positioning, you've been doing this for a while, it's standard practice. And then you put yourself in the shoes of the reviewer, or the viewer, sorry. And they go, well, if I was flown here and got to stay here and got the product early,

I would have said nice things. That's what I think the pressure looks like to someone who is either early or new to it or who's never done it. So I think keeping that perspective is important. And that same pressure applies to products too. I think we'll probably talk about it too, but the other most often thing I see in the comments is, well, you guys are just getting free products, so you'll say anything. I'm like, guys, if, if, if a truck didn't show up at my door tomorrow with more work for me, I would be happy. Amen.

It's the job. You're lucky. The truck showing up to your door or didn't you just tweet about having to chase someone down? Yeah, I sure did. Yeah. That's my favorite.

Like we're sitting at 10 AM waiting for this by 10 AM delivery for the, the whole day's planned out around it. Delivery exception. Customer not available or 10 a.m. delivery for the whole day's planned out around it. Delivery exception. Customer not available or business closed. Yes. I swear to you, that's like a, it's a real thing. Well, they will drive right past your building. Like, yeah, I tried.

I tried to deliver. I promise. I know. I promise it's real. Actually, at the moment, FedEx, this is, see, I'm going to start ranting, but there's been, FedEx, this is, see, I'm going to start ranting, but there's been, I've had this recently, you know, products wrapped up around like a single day of, of like, you know, scheduling around it. The FedEx near me will not only now, you know, they, they stop at the door. They, they don't even try to deliver at this building anymore. So that's already pretty rough.

Terrific. And this is for some reason FedEx Express specifically. So I'm getting really in the weeds. But they'll hold the package, and then I'll go there with my ID, and they'll say, well, this ID doesn't have the business address on it. Oh, come on. It has your name.

And the package is addressed to you, and this is your name, but we can't give this to you because it doesn't have the business address. Do you have like a piece of mail to you here? And of course, I just moved studios So no, I have no mail for the studio yet So there's there's about five products sitting at that FedEx that I haven't been able to pick up Because I don't have any mail Do you ever just feel the impulse to be like look you have a computer right there?

It's a part of your cash register, right? just put in my youtube name and then you can say like i'm me like i really want to i mean this is also like a fedex with like seven people in line waiting out the door and i just i don't want to like i have my business card there and it says mkbhd and the package label says mkbhd but they're like that's not your name it's a whole it's a whole thing there was one time we sort of pulled that off and it was when brandon forgot to register for ces and we didn't find out till we were on the plane going to las vegas so i walked in with him talked to the guy and i was like if there's anywhere i can like pull up marquez's name and show him and show some business cards with enough and sure enough as we're doing it some people from a company come over and they're like, you guys work for Marquez? And the guy was like, okay, yeah, you must be legit.

Okay, you're in. Stroke of luck. Lifts up the velvet rope, you know, stands aside. Yes, come right in, sir. Super lucky. All right, well, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about those review devices

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Okay, welcome back. So, Michael Fisher, I want to ask you about review devices. This might be the number one question I get from friends. You know how stuff sometimes trickles out into the outside of tech friend world where they're like, that was a cool product, or that's a question I have about your job. I think the number one thing is, hey, what do you do with all that stuff? Oh, man. What is your go-to answer for, hey, what do you do with all that stuff? Oh, man. What is your go-to answer for, hey, what do you do with all that? So we were just talking about how I'm in a sound booth a little while ago,

and the top of this sound booth is covered in retail boxes, about half empty, half full, because half of them are still in the rotation being used, tested, compared compared on the other side of this wall is a whole room full of them i share a studio with four other great guys and we all have the same the same youtube problem uh i'm just you know i feel like we could just cover the floor in them and just uh basically fill the entire space uh until we could stoop over and couldn't it would have to hit our head on the ceilings um it stays around is my answer i think are you in the same situation because there's a lot that goes into this i want to make sure that we're in the same spot yeah you know there's a weird a weird collection you might walk into the studio and not be sure

what's going on but you'd be like whatever whoever works here has this weird box collecting habit what's going on, but you'd be like, whatever, whoever works here has this weird box collecting habit and this gadget collection habit. Um, but yeah, I think it's, it's a healthy mix. And the stuff that stays here is like stuff that's arrived, stuff that I've bought and I'm just keeping it around for when the next generation comes out and I can compare them. And then suddenly it's three years in and I still have, oh my God, I can tell you the note seven story in a little bit, but, um, yeah, there's, there's just a lot of stuff piling up around. But I think have, oh my God, I can tell you the Note 7 story in a little bit. But yeah, there's just a lot of stuff piling up around. But I think the question that comes from that is when a review device gets sent, for example, a new pair of headphones, a phone, whatever it is, do you keep it?

Do you send it back? Is there a standard procedure with that? I used to send them back every time because I didn't want to, again, I didn't want to be accused of, you know, making a softball review so I could keep a note five or whatever, you know. But as the product avalanche continued to grow and... That's a great term for it. And my time continued to, you know, shrink, I found that, A, not only did I not want to spend that much time every week sending back stuff, even if it is just slapping a label on something and you have to package it, you have to clear it, you have to do everything. But also the company, the manufacturers

often, or the PR companies at least, I find don't even have a person for it. Or if they do, they're not aggressive about it because they don't want to do that work either. They have to process this unit, turn it over, maybe send it back out, maybe not, probably not, especially not with coronavirus. So no one wants them back anyway, by and large. I don't really want them, but they're useful, as you say, a year later. So they just, they hang around. And I would love to find a way, frankly, I've been thinking about this and not doing anything about it. Maybe it's time to do something about it. I've been trying to find a way to make them do good. Because if you contact the manufacturer and say, hey, remember this BlackBerry Z10 from 2013?

You don't want it back. But I bet you somebody could use it. And what if we donated it? What if we did something to better the world with it rather than just a giveaway? So I'm trying to figure out what that is. Have you done anything like that because i know you do giveaways on occasion but this is yeah like a bulk a bulk action that i want to take you know it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag for me i know i had all these great fancy plans for our new studio space and all the separate smaller rooms

in it andrew doesn't know this or maybe you do because you've been here, but one of the rooms is just a storage room. It's just becoming a storage room now. And that's just because, yeah, like you said, there's stuff we just keep around. I'm not necessarily using, but that ends up piling up. That avalanche imagery is so perfect.

But yeah, I do think there are ways to do good with it, to give it to to family and friends who can use things um i have done the occasional twitter giveaway of something that i think could help someone out um but yeah i think just generally i remember i have a memory of apple apple sent me a mac pro early for review and with that they sent a return label and so when the mac pro finally came out and i ordered my own, I was like, all right, time to ship it back. And I emailed them and I said, you know how the Mac Pro has like that peely box where

you like, as you peel it, it literally destroys the box. Oh, yeah. So I was like, I don't have a box big enough to ship the Mac Pro back. How should I do this? And they're like, oh, right. Like they weren't expecting me to actually ship it back. And so they had to ship me these huge boxes to ship the, the review Mac pro and displays back because I was so adamant about just getting them off my hands. Cause I guess I'm

a little bit like you, where I was like, I don't want this weighing on me, like the bigger products. Um, a lot of the smaller ones, you know, they'll kind of sit around but i for whatever reason just was like i i have mine where do i send yours and i did get the label on there and get it out the door but yeah i'm i'm also still sort of i know both of us saying this into a microphone and putting it online is like asking people to come be like well send them to me oh right of course yeah but um i don don't have an answer necessarily for a solution to the problem. I just, I just find it, you know, curious. Yeah. The difference. And you know, it's funny how it gets to be just woven into the tapestry of the day-to-day life to the degree where you don't want it again, you know, to, in case nobody heard it the first time, you know, I don't want more

products. Today, as I was leaving to come to the booth to record this podcast, I was like, what is this package? Someone just sent me five sets of earbuds, of wireless earbuds. I didn't even know they had my address, this company. I'm like, I didn't want these guys. I don't even like the category. Yeah. I was going to say, do you have, you don't have a public like PO box or anything for just anyone to send anything to? I have a delivery. I do, but it's like somehow they got a hold of my real address. And I was like, wow, you guys are doing your homework. I like that.

But also, I don't, I will not cover this. I didn't ask for these. I do have a suggestion actually for earbuds or headphones, which is funny because we've done this. My wife's a teacher and they're working on Chromebooks and stuff so much now and there are a lot of schools where kids can't afford headphones really like that so whenever we get extra earbuds or something that we're about to throw out I just bring them all home and ship them off to her classroom so she has some backup pairs I mean kids might forget it kids might just not be able to afford it but they're doing so much work on computers now it's it's almost a necessity

and that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I see. That's great. Like that, I want to, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about like doing good, you know, it's just like, it's not just doing a giveaway so that I can have a thousand more Instagram followers. It's like, who actually needs this needs, needs it here. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, do you think the, the difference between, you know, some companies who literally will like pester you and ask for the device back versus companies that are a little more lax and just like, if you want to send it back, whatever. Um, do you think that affects videos at all with, with, I guess with you? No. Um, with me, I'd say no, but do you think that's something people

consider? Uh, in terms of like other other other creators saying like what what tailoring their coverage so they get to keep devices? Well, I'm thinking like the I'm going back to the classic YouTube comment like, well, you're just saying that things because you get to keep the phone or something like that. No, that that thread, you know, excuse me, that accusation is always thrown around there. But for us, no. And I maybe maybe for some people if they really want a thing i mean there have been times when i have petitioned hard to keep a review device i mean i'll say you know i've said this publicly many times samsung when they were recalling the galaxy fold review devices after 30 days was like guys my bad you no no no no no after they fixed them the fixed one oh okay so

the version two they're calling them all back i'm'm like, guys, let me hold on to this. I'm going to do continuing coverage on folding phones anyway. Let me do this. Let me just hold on to it because I want to see what it's like to own one for a long time. Eventually, they're like, no, you have to send everyone sending them back. You have to send it back. I'm like, okay, fine. And then I just bought, I bought them all. And I think that's been the tough thing because it wasn't an overnight, like that wasn't an instant decision on my part. They're very expensive. So is the Z Flip. So are all foldable phones. But I was like, wow, you've got manufacturers actively using the recall. I think in my opinion, I don't have the facts for this, but as a safety measure, because they're very fragile phones and when they break, they're going to get bad PR again. So they want them back. I'm like, well, you're not allowed to do that. I'm going to buy them. And so I think in the, I'd rather do that than, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually an interesting point. Sometimes, you know,

a company that's typically a little more relaxed about sending out products is suddenly super uptight about a product. Like that's, that's not a great sign. Nope. And if you sort of do the math on, we want it back early. Sounds like it's not very durable. Um, yeah. And I did buy a galaxy fold and I still have mine working, but I mentioned the galaxy note seven earlier. Um, you know, moving studios, I've moved a ton of, of stuff down from, from the old space to the new space. And part of that was moving the phone drawer we have. I don't know if you've seen it.

It's been in various videos. But I have a drawer with like a CD rack and like 60 phones in it or something weird. Didn't you and I, Justine, go through it on one special video? Yeah, you like put a phone behind your back and try to guess it. There's that many phones in the box. In the drawer, I went through the drawer again today because I had all these boxes and I was trying to figure out how many years of phones I can, you know, finally clear out

of this thing as I move. And I'm, I'm looking through them and there are two phones in this drawer that are there that are swollen. Oh no. Their batteries have swollen up and have started to puff out the back. And I'm like, oh, that's not good. The two phones were the galaxy note 7 and the galaxy note 7 fan edition my only the only two phones out of like 70 phones in this

in this drawer those were the two phones whose batteries had swollen up and i was like wow that is if that doesn't say uh a certain device was doomed from the start i don't know what does do you i feel like you just dodged a massive bullet there because you know you have a thermal runaway of a battery in a drawer full of other batteries like oh yeah not great so that that one that's the one you have to carefully properly dispose of and i was uh a little bummed about that because it was kind of fun to have one like oh i i have a note seven right like that's right i just like lost it when he found that at the office the one day in his video yeah oh god wow i'm really glad it worked out and i would have been i would have kind of uh had had the handshakes after something like that i'm

like oh no yeah i'm glad i got rid of it um here's uh here's another one uh we talked about embargoes earlier and uh you have as one of your points on your ethics page that a company cannot pay for scheduled or preferential scheduling. Yeah. You know, where you sort of, you have your own, you know, lineup, I'm sure, of videos and projects you're working on. Yep. A company might come in and say, hey, Mr. Mobile, we want you to review this, but we got to get it in by the end of May. So let's expedite this. I'm assuming you just have a line in the sand. That's a no for any sort of preferential treatment?

It is. And it is because I think part of the responsibility of delivering content in the way that I do, I'm not talking about any other YouTubers, this is just my channel, is that people, when they see me post a video, it's because either it's really newsworthy in terms of tech or it's something I'm really interested in covering for some reason. So if any company can just come in and say, well, we're going to drop it. We're going to back up the money truck so that you can talk about this phone that you normally wouldn't talk about or this watch that you wouldn't normally talk about. It's like I, for me right now, don't want to do that. That said, I wouldn't rule it out. I think it's really important to be aware of what our own

limitations are. And if we're drawing hard lines in the sand, this is a line that I draw with like a stick firmly, but politely, you know what I mean? It's not a line I wouldn't ever change. What's your stance on that? Yeah, it almost, I think whether it's intentional or not, I think kind of happens already. Now it's not, I don't think it's the sponsored bit. I think it's when a company gives you access and they give you an embargo, suddenly that product has like slotted its way on my testing schedule. Right. Where like, if I know I have a week before the embargo, and then I have this other product that I was kind of casually testing, but didn't have a date for, well, that just got bumped by the product that has an embargo. So it's not like they're paying to schedule

something early. Right. But they sort of, whether they intend to or not, have altered the production schedule here. Yeah. So I don't know, you know, to say there's a line in the sand for me, I don't know that I would say no either. You know, if I was doing something sponsored, actually, no, that's something I have done where they're, they, they have a budget for a certain month and they're like, are you willing to be a part of this campaign? And I'm like, sure. Now that's created a deadline for that. So I'm not against, you know, having a sponsored bit in an earlier video because that's part of their monthly budget for a campaign or something like that. But like you, I haven't done a full sponsored video, so that's, I guess, a little different.

Yeah. And I try to avoid that too, but in terms of the sponsored angle on the conversation, that has happened with me too, right? Where it's just like, wow, this sponsor wants an integration for say, I don't want to say VPN, but it's the first thing that came to mind so i'm going to go with it but uh let's not talk about that too long uh and and they're like we but this has to go live in the next two weeks i'm like okay that's going to mess up my entire schedule but because again balancing the business with the uh with the editorial okay

i can put this sponsor spot on a video and bump it up in the schedule that does happen sure but i've never i haven't had the situation where it's like i was going to cover manufacturer l and i was going to do that next month but they want to pay to be featured earlier i've just don't do that so yeah i feel like i've ever seen our schedule is so much we don't plan out i feel like every time we talk to other youtubers they have so much stuff planned out and we are just so much the opposite of that. I'm going to tell you what, I'm in the same boat with you guys. Don't, no, no.

Yeah. So like it lets sometimes, but like giving someone two weeks to put a sponsor, and people reach out with that all the time. We want this and X amount of time. It's like, all right, well, you just lost the pitch already because it's just not going to happen. Sorry.

I don't see how you could think that that could be done that quickly i think it goes down to marquez mix says this all the time that he thinks a lot of people see how long a youtube video is and thinks that's how long we took to make this 10 minute video took 10 minutes to make yeah it just seems like people have no clue sometimes. It's true. And it's, you know, when you make them well, they look effortless. I mean, certainly you guys are the experts at that. They certainly look like they just came together because you willed it. But those of us who do it know how hard the work is.

A magician, what is the, I had a quote. And I think I made it up, but maybe I didn't. A magician's greatest trick is making it look effortless. And it's also a creative's greatest trick too. But anyway. Here's another, so we were talking about embargoes before. And I mentioned I had a horror story. Yeah.

I would just like to say that companies who you know they work with creators and they work with uh whatever the whole influencers whatever the industry you want to call it uh should they should consider the perspective of those that they are working with and i say this because there is a the infamous event with dyson where i had dysyson in my inbox where they, you know, they reached out and they were like, we've got this great campaign and we're working on a sponsored video about this vacuum. Would you like to be a part of it? And I, at the time was like, well, it's, it's cool vacuum.

I actually bought the vacuum. I love it. It's awesome. But they were like, would you make a sponsored video? I was like, I'm not going to make an entire sponsored video about a vacuum. So I didn't. And then, you know, the two weeks goes by, I kind of forget about it. And then in my sub box, I see one sponsored video about a Dyson vacuum. And I won't even say any creators names, but you know, you kind of get the picture where like, you see this video and you look back and you're like oh okay i guess you know i said no they moved on makes perfect sense then an hour later i see another video in my sub box another creator i know another video about sponsored

vacuum and then an hour later another one i'm like wait a second and I'm and so I I get a message from another creator involved and they're like listen these videos are all on separate embargoes and this company knowingly intentionally set a different embargo time and this is probably I'll never work with Dyson by saying all this but they said they set a different embargo time for each creator and whether this is intentional or not that sort of like removes you from the like if you don't tell first of all the creator that there are other creators in this campaign that's number one red flag you should definitely tell when there are others in this campaign but then number two to to sort of shuffle them out like that so you create a wave where you can't escape the wave and you're sort of stuck in it. To me, that left a bad taste in my mouth where it's like they should have definitely thought about a creator's flexibility on scheduling and being in a campaign with other creators.

campaign with other creators. Do you have any horror stories with working with unnamed brands that you'd like to share? Because I feel like I throw one under the bus and, you know, sure. Sorry, Dyson, but you should have thought a little bit better about that. But that's one that came to mind sort of not considering the perspective of the creator when it comes to embargoes and others in the campaign. Yeah, I think, you know, I there's not a there's not a particular manufacturer that is guilty of this. I find when I'm dealing with sponsored matters and usually that takes the form of some company wants to pay us to do a 60 second spot in the middle of a video and it's for, you know, whatever phone case battery pack. It's not the manufacturers that often cause the trouble for me. It is this sort of nascent remora, uh, phenomenon of the agency. Uh, this, uh, this band of professionals who gets between

you and the manufacturer ostensibly to manage that relationship. And you know what? I, I know some great people at a lot of agencies, and I like working with them. This goes for PR, too. There's one particular agency where when you read their contract, their contract expressly forbids not only saying bad things about whatever client you're working with through them. So if it's a battery case manufacturer,

you can't say anything bad about them on Twitter. But the agency itself you can't speak badly about, nor can you retweet, reply to, or even like on Twitter negative sentiments about the agency. Wow. Whoa. That's got to be the biggest red flag I've ever heard in my life. Wow. It absolutely was.

You know how when there's like a sign on the side of a dirty river that says, do not swim? Yes. Like, who swam? Right. And what happened? Exactly. That's what that sounds like. Wow.

It put me on edge the first time we did business with them. And it turns out they were a nightmare. We tried again. They were a nightmare. We tried again. They were a nightmare. You know, it's kind of the same category as the companies that try to get between you and your followers or you and your subscribers, you and your viewers, and say, hey, great news. You can charge your viewers for time alone with you. And we're going to get right in the middle of that and take a fee off the top. And I'm like, cool. Understand. Thank you for that pitch. I'm just going to talk get right in the middle of that and take a fee off the top. And I'm like, cool, understand.

Thank you for that pitch. I'm just going to talk to them in the comments for free and you can go F yourself. So how's that? I don't like interstitial agencies when they abuse that position. So those are the ones I have the nightmare stories about. Yeah, you know, there's always a, I almost forgot that whole dichotomy where there's, there are some companies that you work with directly and some where you work with an agency that is communicating with the company. Um, and that's, I don't even know if there's like a, a theme to like which companies tend

to have agencies versus which don't. Um, I don't really have a problem with working with an agency when it comes to like a lot of the stuff I typically work with companies for. It's fine. It's just, that's part of what's going on. Yeah. It's usually fine. And sometimes, sometimes you can tell why they hired an agency because you'll get to, you'll get to know the agency. You have a good relationship. And then you talk to somebody from the company itself and you're like, oh, you're very, you're, you're very angry about the one bad thing we said six years ago about a product. Okay, this is why you have an agency.

Yeah. Oh, man. I remember I worked with a company that commented on a video I did not make. What? I won't say who, obviously, but this company, I walk into a briefing of the second version of a phone, into a briefing of the second version of a phone. And the guy commented on how they fixed that thing I hated from the first version. And I immediately knew whose video they were talking about. And it was not me. It was someone who looked kind of like me. And so I thought that was hilarious.

You know, at least they tried. Yeah, kind of. I guess i should be happy they at least tried but right i thought that was funny um here's a i have sort of the opposite of a horror story when it comes to working with brands and this is this is the day i discovered a secret youtube feature maybe it's not secret it's probably secret but this is uh the day i discovered that you could you know you've ever seen those those articles about how there is like a glitch in an Apple commercial on YouTube? What? No. And then the next day, it's just gone from the video? No. And you're like, there's no way Apple can just like,

there's no way they can fix that, right? Right, because we can. Right, so, and this happened also maybe i think with a pixel commercial there was some sort of like a like a weird poorly rendered google pixel in an ad okay and they embedded it on in other articles and they're like check out timestamp 34 seconds of this this video on google's official youtube channel and then like two days later it was like not in the video anymore. I was like, wow, this is, this is crazy, but maybe Google, if anyone, they own YouTube, maybe they

could replace videos. Right. So, uh, I'm working with a company on an integration and you know, about the typical back and forth of like, okay, we've put together this little, this little sponsored bit. I'm working on the rest of the video, but here I'll send it to you for green light. So if you want to approve it, I can just insert it whenever I need to. Um, I do the back and forth. I send them,

I send them the, the little 45 second cut. They, uh, they have this one edit they'd like to make. Okay. Classic. I expected that.

I go back, I edit it. I send it to them again. One more edit, please. Okay. You know what? Just tell me everything you'd like to change and i'll do all

the things and then we'll be good much more efficient yeah yeah so so they do that so they give me this list i do the list that i send it back they're like all right this is great green light whatever you'd like to go live you're good to to go. I said, okay, great. So I finished the rest of the video. That video goes live. I kid you not. And this was an embargoed video too. So it goes live in the morning. It's like right on time, you know, 9.01 a.m., whatever it is. And like five minutes after, I get an email like, hey, one more thing.

Actually, can you also? And I'm like, okay. Now this is my line in the sand. Like, I gave you the chance. I gave you multiple chances. We went over this. You gave the green light. Here's your email giving me the green light.

So, this is a hard no. I am not changing anything about this video. It is live. We're done. And it's a good, like, why would you, and it was one of those dumb little things. Like, this is a great little sponsored bit, to you want to do this one little change here like no like come on okay just let it go and they're like okay that we are willing to to try to give this a shot we will engage with google and youtube to do a video replace

and at this point i didn't even want to do the change anymore. I was so curious. I was like, wait, what, what? A video replace? This is a thing. And so sure enough, I go, okay, fine. You know what? I'll do it. In the back of my head. I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. I want to see what this video replaces like. And so, uh, they're like, yeah. Okay. So just just so you make the change you re-render it and just upload it to private and give us the link and so i do that i re-render it i upload the video to private i give them the link and they're like we'll take care of it and it did take about about a day and a half uh but by by day two that public facing video was now the private video and the private

video is now the public video and they had done that's like no change in view count like the every all the no change in everything is the same the title the views the comments everyone is still and people who had commented which is funny because i know you you probably can't abuse this feature by like changing the whole video but i was just thinking like if someone had commented about some part of the ad that was now different, their comment wouldn't make sense anymore. Of course. But that was the day I learned that, you know, by working with this advertiser who was really, really picky about this one little spot, I learned about YouTube's definitely real, definitely not meant to be abused, definitely very select video replace feature. That's fascinating. And also, also terrifying, because I'm really glad you've told all of us that because I would have been driven insane by it. Had I ever seen it

and been unable to explain it, I just would have quit everything. Oh, wow. Yes. So we have we have horror stories. Yes. You know,. Working with companies is never really as straightforward as you might think. There's always this little thing they want to change, this little thing they want to adjust. But you do get some fun things out of it. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up earlier with regard to sending stuff in for edits. Because people listen to the disclaimer at the end of my videos, and that's all about the manufacturer. That's about the editorial coverage in the video.

If there's a 45-second, you know, dbrand spot in there or whatever, I have definitely come to an agreement with dbrand or whoever about, like, you guys happy with this? Is it cool? Because that's the sponsored spot. And I think we'll wrap,

when we wrap it up later, I can kind of put a neat little bow on that. But yeah, there's a distinction there. And also, you're right. Sometimes there are really great stories that come from working with agencies and in-house PR people as well. And you know, I have some good friends at agencies and I hope they don't think I despise all of them, because I don't. I really, yeah, I've made some great friends on that side. I feel like there's definitely events we know we're going to and we're like, okay, this is going to be set up really well because that PR agency is fantastic.

And then there are other events we're going to go to and be like, get ready for some terrible lighting, way too crowded, not enough units, not enough time. I will say that it's nice when they're helpful and that is more often than not. Because most of these companies, manufacturers or agencies, they want feedback after these things and will tell them, look, you can't put me in a dark room with a single spotlight over a table with three devices and have it be a great time. This is terrible for us. That is so real. Say it again for the people in the back. I love when they get better over time because there have been some, even like some recent ones come to mind where like they started off like not so great

and then they would literally ask for feedback like, look, we're trying to work with creators more now. We've done this little shift where we have video people and journalists. So what can we do to better accommodate you guys? And they'll actually listen and, you know, try to have better lights and more windows and more space and more units. And that's always great to see when they're actually trying. So kudos to those people too. I think we always say sky panel when they ask that question.

What could be better? A sky panel, please. And one has followed that and has had one at every event since then. It's been fantastic. Yeah, amazingly. God. Amazingly. Yeah. Just give me natural light and a lot of devices It's been fantastic. Yeah, amazingly. God. Amazingly. Yeah.

Just give me natural light and a lot of devices and I'm happy. Yeah. Same. Let's take one more quick break and we'll come back and we'll answer

some Twitter questions. We'll go through the tweets. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support. CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs.

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or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right, welcome back. We're going to go through some tweets. So as you guys know, we've done the Q&A stuff before. We tweet at WVFRM. You guys let us know what you want to know. We said we have Mr. Michael Fisher on the show, and we're talking the ethics of reviewing tech. So hopefully you guys have some good questions.

I'm going to just scroll down and look through. You guys can all scroll down and look through, and we'll talk about them. All right. I have one that I think pretty well goes through over a couple things we've talked about. Do you ever find that it's more difficult to make someone believe you're an ethical reviewer than it is to actually be an ethical reviewer?

It's such a great question. It's like perfectly phrased. Wow. If I was spending the amount of energy that I do on being, and here's what I'll say. I'm obviously trying to do the best I can ethically, and I'm sure that's a pretty common sentiment, but there is no way I will be able to convince everyone about the ethics. Maybe I should have my own ethics page, but there's no way I can actually go through and talk to people and convince them that my opinions are real and that I disagree

with you because I really do disagree with you, not because someone paid me to. I can't really focus on that. Yeah, that's well said. I think just generally, it's much harder, as you say, to get people to believe that you are living ethically. And look, trust in all forms of media is at an all-time low. If we devoted as much time as it would take to convince a significant portion of the population that we're behaving ethically, we wouldn't be able to do the actual job. So yeah, it's much harder to, it's much easier to be ethical than it is to convince people that you're being ethical. Yeah. I feel like even with that, if you find yourself in

the comments trying to explain to someone why, you know, that wasn't paid for, then just as quickly they can be like, oh, you seem really defensive about that now. Like, why are you getting so defensive? Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Yes. Yes. And also, you know, ethics, to a degree, they're subjective. And I think it's important to that everyone needs to again that's why I wrote that big long thing there are different lines for

everyone and I think as long as there's no obfuscation going on that's fine you just have to know what the line is of the person that whose media is you're consuming unfortunately that's very difficult in these days you know what's crazy is that what I like this is that we, this tweet scouring has proven that we've had a pretty good conversation because I feel like a lot of these we've answered, you know? It's nice. It's nice when you see that you're like, all right, we covered what we, we should have. Yeah. So there is one, and we, we touched on this earlier, but I think, um, maybe there's something left to it. Um, there's, do you ever, um, what is the line in the sand between a company providing accommodations for a fair review, saying such as paying for airfare and hotel to an event and outright trying to buy a positive review?

And because there are creators out there who have a very different kind of channel that is typically not characterized as a review channel where, hey, look, the stuff that appears on this channel may be sponsored, it may not be, but I'm not helping people reach a buying decision. And so a company pays me X amount of money to showcase something, and here it is. I mean, that's the very easily defined, I think i think line in the not line in the sand but the the border between those things yeah yeah and i also think it's uh another little tweak to that is like there at least for me there will never be uh content that is an ad that is disguised as not an ad i think that's what a lot of people think they're seeing when they see something uh that they're confused about it is this opinion bought or not maybe they're trying to hide it it's like if it's disclosed as such legally hashtag ad all the all the appropriate disclosures then it is and if it's not then it isn't simple as that i will say this i don't have an answer to this i would like your

input into this do you ever run um an ad as i did the other day for a a streaming stick that you plug into your tv and have you ever had it it's clearly disclosed it's an ad it says hashtag ad it says they sent me this it's sponsored this is paid for And then have your comments full of questions that you would typically see on a review. Um, cause I don't know what to do with that. I keep saying, look, I will tell you, I'll answer you honestly, but you're asking questions on an ad and I, I don't know. How are people supposed to take this totally seriously because it's a paid for video in the first place? That place. That's very interesting. Yeah. You know, I would say my go-to answer, and I don't think this has ever happened to me, but I would say my responses are not part of the ad. So I will be honest in my responses,

but I don't think that's going to be as clear to people listening. So I think when you see a response to an ad, you're just going to assume all the other good stuff is also paid for. Would I even say something bad about the thing in response? I don't even know. That's an interesting question. Could that turn into a company then saying you have to make X video and part of your contract is answer 10 questions in the comments? And then they start wanting to pay for that. So then do you have to hashtag add every comment you make after that? You absolutely would have to.

I can't imagine seeing a creator in the comment section with hashtag add at the end of every response. It wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, even though, you know, effectively that is what's happening. I think in different, we should point out that the FTC requirements are U.S. only. So there are plenty of countries out there where those requirements are not as strict. And suddenly you're watching a piece of content and you're like, oh, I know for a fact that this is sponsored because I know this person. But it doesn't have to say hashtag anything. Okay, that's different.

It doesn't have to say hashtag anything. It's okay. That's different. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a whole nother rant about, you know, the, the FTC and how enforceable that stuff is. Cause you know, we all adhere to obviously the guidelines as best we can, but I think I tweeted maybe two months ago or something like that about like an LG phone appeared

in an M and M video. Oh yeah. And of course, of course that's paid for. They don't just organically flash the logo on the screen for a solid second and a half of a record. Like that's obviously a paid for a bit, but there is never any disclosure. You know, it's not a review.

Is it an ad? Do they need the hashtag? Like that's a whole nother subject. That is it. That's exactly the delineator because you're watching a music video. You innately know or most people should innately know that when they see a T-Mobile Sidekick 2 in a 2005 era music video, well, that's product placement. That's an ad because the music video is so you can enjoy Jay-Z's latest. It's not so that you can decide whether you want to buy the Sidekick 2, right? so that you can decide whether you want to buy the sidekick too, right? So that's the real danger, and I hate it when people intentionally blur that line because it's just so icky and it's so dangerous to people who are trying to make a decision.

Yeah. I have another one up here, another tweet. It says, should you criticize the flaws of a new invention or emphasize the uniqueness of it? I think, I think for me, that's super clear. Uh, for me too. I don't know if it's the same answer. I mean, I just think if, if I'm reviewing something, I have an opinion about it and if it works well, it's going to get praise. And if it doesn't work well, or if it detracts from the experience, it's going to get, it's going it's gonna get shot down i'm gonna say it's bad now here's here's the one caveat when there is such a like form factor breaking or like new concept i will nitpick less and i know i know

i've done that with like galaxy fold for example we're like okay it's not high refresh rate okay it's not super thin. The bezels aren't what I would want. But look, the thing folds in half and that's what I'm focusing on. Now, is that me like brushing away the flaws and just focusing on the one cool thing? I don't know.

I think if I'm clear that I'm focusing on the one cool thing and I'm like not nitpicking, then you get the idea. But I don't know. I think as any detail pops up, I will probably give my take on it as a positive or a negative. I think it's entirely possible

and even desirable to do both things. Your Galaxy Fold example is spot on, man. It has just been in my head for ages. Every time I use the galaxy fold in public people ask me about it and i am always like listen this is the most exciting excited i've been about a phone in a long time you can do a lot of great things with it it's amazing and i love it should you buy it absolutely not no no no no you should not spend that much amount of money and that's you can have both things in your head at the same time and you can express

both things at the same time and it can be true. And I think as long as you're, as long as you're hewing to that, as long as you're saying true things, then conflicting facts can exist, can coexist. Right. Yeah. And I've also had that, that, that conflict before, even, even if it's like a personal thing where it's like, this is a great product, it's just not for me.

Like it's not for a certain type of person and I'm that type of person, you know? That can exist too. So I think, yeah, knowing who you're talking to and being able to say like, this is really exciting and interesting, but I don't think I'd tell you to go spend $2,000 on it. That's important to be able to say.

I do have one here that might dovetail with what we were just talking about. Most tech videos, it says, generally give off a positive review of the product no matter what it is. Is tech overall that good, or are there some potentially behind-the-scenes business at play? I know exactly how I want to answer this one. Do you want to go first? at play? I know exactly how I want to answer this one. Do you want to go first? Sure. I have a two-part answer to that. One is generally a lot of the things that we choose to cover are the things that we find interesting or cool or worth sharing in some way. So generally, a lot of it is going to be pretty positive because, hey, look at this interesting, cool, new thing. I'm making a whole video about it. I use it for a while. I'm sharing it. Yeah, I have positive

things to say. But number two, there are some pretty glaringly negative reviews that I've given that we've both, you know, we've gone through products where it's like, there isn't much at all good to say about this product. And you watch it and you're like, there's no way anyone buys the product after watching this. Like that's happened a couple of times. So I'd say to the person, you know, asking that, you know, check, check twice. There are some pretty negative reviews as well. And that usually comes from like a sort of a PSA perspective. Like this is so bad that I just got to tell you about how bad it is and how you shouldn't buy it. Right. Yeah. That was basically the answer I was going to give.

Yeah. There's an inherent bias towards things that are good because as you say, our selection criteria are, well, this is interesting and I want to cover it. So there, yeah, there's an innate positive jump off, but. I feel like I see a lot of people also say, like, not so much that reviewers aren't negative, but that they're too easy on negatives. And part of me thinks that kind of just comes from, like, personality in general. Like, people are popular on YouTube because their personality is great. They're a pleasure to watch. So more often than not, these larger youtubers or whoever you're watching are they're bubbly they're they have a great personality they're upbeat they're fun to

watch so maybe the way they describe something negative feels a little less glaring than somebody some keyboard warrior on reddit making eight paragraphs about why no one should ever buy this so it might come off as like maybe they're taking it a little easy on them, but I think it's just, you're seeing fun personalities out there and sometimes they don't get, they don't freak out about things. They just know it's not that great and they explain it calmly. Yeah. And I think to, to, to piggyback on that point, I think you would see a greater spectrum of good and bad reviews. If we all didn't take so long to make a YouTube video. If making a YouTube video was a lot easier, I'm not saying writing reviews is easy. I've done it. It can be really hard, but it doesn't take as much time to write a thousand word review as it does to

do the kind of videos we make. So if you could just crank out, say, 50 more reviews a year, you'd see a much wider swath of good and bad. It's just, you have that inherent selection bias of, as you say, Hey, this is cool. I want to check it out. Hey, it turns out it is cool. Cause what do you know? I know something, you know? And I'll add one more thing to that. A lot of times the criticism of a certain aspect of a product will either be just straight up bad like a bad choice they made but sometimes there's a sympathetic aspect of it too like i know they worked really hard on this and i know how hard it would have been to do this different thing

like i want to nitpick and say dude just put a better camera in here like i just want to say put put the best camera in here but like that's that's actually really hard. So if I'm going through and nitpicking a camera and I'm like, you know, it's fine. It's not the best camera, but it works and you see how it compares to others. I could be much harsher on it. Like this camera is trash. I would never, I would never use this phone as my main phone because the camera is so bad. But there's 99 other phones I wouldn't use as my main camera too. So, you know, I have to have a little bit of consideration for how difficult it would be to change the things I'm mad about. And that's, you know, that's again, why viewers,

I think, should carefully, carefully choose is not the right word, but decide who they're following. I want people to understand that, look, I don't know about you. I won't speak for you, but I have innate biases. We all do. I think I try and remain as objective as possible. But if a phone doesn't have a design that I feel like a lot of thought has gone into, I'm not going to like it. I'm not going to carry it. We're going to talk about that in the video. People should follow me if they, I think are of a similar mindset or or get something out of that other otherwise if you uh if you're following somebody who talks about cameras for 15 minutes of an 18 minute video and you don't care about cameras consider a different reviewer you know

there's a lot of us yeah yeah we need someone to make a website that helps you calibrate to a YouTuber that fits your... That sounds very hard. But yeah, like you need to calibrate to somebody. So you... And you can do that in positives and negatives. You can be like, I usually dislike this things. Maybe Marques doesn't like everything I like, but he really dislikes the things I dislike. So get views from different people, calibrate yourself to all of them,

and then use that to form your own opinion. We're not here to tell you this is what you're buying. Yeah. But then you'd have to make sure that you would go out of your own way to watch reviewers whom you do not agree with because you don't want to be stuck in your own echo chamber either. Exactly. Dangerous. Okay. How often do you see genuine improvements from pre-release to retail slash post-launch software, camera quality or otherwise, and should old reviews still be up in that case? This is a tough one. We've talked a lot about this on Twitter. you brought up the difference between a written review and a video review in the past. It's also very difficult to go back and edit a video review on YouTube, unless you just have video replace available to you all the time, in which case go for it. Um, yeah, yeah. You know,

some products do change a little more vigorously than others. I think my rule that I've spoken before is buy a product based on what it is today. And if it happens to get better over time, that's a nice bonus. But if you don't like what you're buying in the first place and you're buying it based on the promise of a software update, you're making a mistake. So that's, you know, I guess that's my blanket answer generally for that. You will sometimes see products who have like C minus cameras turn into B plus cameras. And like that's a big enough of a difference

where now you would buy it versus you wouldn't have. Those are rare, but sometimes they do happen. And I'd say it would be nice to be able to go back and edit the video. But best I can do is probably pin a comment. But yeah, I think that's pretty few and far between.

That would be where annotations come in perfectly, if you could still do it. Oh, I miss those. I get it that people abuse the hell out of that, but you should be able to work your way up to being able to use annotations. And it's way better than having to make a video updating it. Cosign.

Just go back and say, oh, a software update came out about this, and a link to an article about how it changed or something. Yeah. And you know, there are companies out there who have this like serial track record of releasing a product and then having a day zero update that changes a lot of stuff materially. But here's the thing, and people get on me about, you're beating up on this manufacturer. You know, they do this, you know, on launch day, they're going to have an update and it's going to change the thing. And sometimes the way my schedule works out, I'll be able to hold the review and, you know, maybe I evaluate it after launch day because that's the way it worked out.

But look, the minute those phones or whatever they are are on preorder, which they are usually for two weeks before launch, and people can spend money on the thing. Look, if you didn't ship it with software that I can evaluate based on that foreknowledge, then there's nothing I can do for you. I'm going to run this review and I'm going to say, hey, I sure hope they fix this, I don't know, Zoom problem with an update. You know, and we'll see if they do, but I don't think you should spend money on it until they do.

And that should be the whole point of a review unit. Yep, shouldn't it? Is to represent the thing that we're reviewing. I have an interesting one here. And maybe you can think of something you have in the past, but do you think large reviewers like yourself have actually shaped the trends in tech? Like they give examples,

my hard stance on flat glass versus curved glass or a higher refresh rate. How much do you think those have maybe affected products in the future? And I think maybe it comes as like a trickle down effect, like we will express an opinion and with enough agreement from an audience, then it looks like a large group of people have this opinion and then it sort of makes its way into a product. I think you're right. I think it's more of a broad thing, at least in terms of me and I think a lot of the folks that I know and watch.

You can move the needle. Like Marques, you've had videos in the past where you have been the first one to discover something really wrong or really right with a product and the rest of us are like, oh wow, okay, they're definitely going to change that already for the next gen. I think, you know, I can't point to any examples of my own. I'm sure there have been ones. I'm sure I've been in conversations with engineers after the fact. I will say this. My tone is what I watch. I think it's easy when you first get into the reviewing game, maybe especially if you're trying to make a name for yourself and you want to be, you know, you're a little crass. You're a little, well, this is, this is just amateur hour. How could anyone not, not foresee this when they're designing a product? And you

talk to these people who make these things. And it's, first of all, not only is it hard, but tens or hundreds of people have put real work and effort into, into making this thing that you just kind of spent five seconds tearing apart. Uh, and you didn't really need to do that. So I think that's what it's been for me. I, I, I've, I don't, I can't say I've seen changes. I've, I've seen changes in myself in terms of how much I respect the work and how hard it is to make a product. And I try to criticize them a little more professionally than maybe I used to. All right. So someone asked, what's the most outlandish pitch you've ever gotten when a company wants you to review their product? And I guess we could take that as,

we've already talked about sponsors and reviews not being in the same. So let's just say most outlandish pitch someone sent for a paid promotion or something along those lines. Oh, wow. Outlandish. There's so many. Well, that i don't i can't remember many

i mean i just know maybe maybe it's just people who are blanket carpet bombing like emailing tons of people um but just like will you review our like pregnancy product will you review our our jewel like just just don't have anything to do and they're not even like trying to sponsor it it's just like you why would why did you clearly don't watch the channel and just are trying to hit all the big names pretty much absolutely and then they and then they reply all oh yes don't don't reply all folks my god why would you do that? Actually, I did. I'll tell you about the pitch that broke my heart.

I just looked it up. Hi, Michael. I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to bring you a travel opportunity to see if you might be interested. Our cruise client will be setting sail on a 14-day Thailand and Vietnam journey from Singapore. Yada, yada, yada, yada. It's going to be great. It's going to be amazing.

The dates are these. Are you available and interested? If so, I will follow up with details and an itinerary. Man, I have never answered an email faster in my life. I'm like, I am deeply interested in this opportunity. Let's talk and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll figure it out. I have never heard from that agency again.

Oh, my God. I followed up like four times. I was like, Masha. The tides have turned. God, it was, oh, just broke my heart. Have I mentioned how much I love my friends at agencies? Please, back to the inbox. I think on that, we can end it. Michael Fisher, thank you for joining us on the Waveform Podcast. I think on that we can end it.

Michael Fisher, thank you for joining us on the Waveform podcast. I think we covered a lot of good stuff, and hopefully people learned from it. Hopefully people can take their own calibration tools from watching other creators from this. And again, thanks for spending the time. I am just so glad that we got to talk. I was so nervous at the start of this. And thank you for putting me at ease because there's so much to cover, right? But at the end of the day, I think the takeaway, guys, is that, look, I understand there's a lot of mistrust out there.

And, you know, a lot of it's justified. When in doubt, ask. I'm always very happy to talk on Twitter. As I mentioned before, I don't have much of a life. So ask in the comments, ask on Twitter. happy to talk on Twitter. As I mentioned before, I don't have much of a life. So ask in the comments, ask on Twitter. And if any of us set out to actively deceive you, we wouldn't be in business. It would be a total collapse. And the only way I can continue to do this is by being credible, and that's all I care about. So I think that's the best note I can leave on.

I think you wrap it up in your ethics page perfectly, and we can wrap this podcast up with it. You say, Mr. Mobile lives and dies based on your trust, and I'll continue to put that first and foremost every day. I think that's a beautiful way of putting it. And like he says, all of these channels are based on the trust of the audience. And once that trust is broken, they're pretty dead in the water. Yeah. One lie does way more damage than the buildup of a thousand truths. Well said. But when in doubt, might as well ask. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Waveform. Catch you guys in the next one. Waveform is brought to you in part with Studio 71, and our intro outro music is created by Cameron Barlow.