Gadgetory

what's going on everyone wanted to take the time to a first off use the green screen for the first time in an official video which think it's pretty cool also answer a very important question that a fellow follower on Twitter had mr. Jeff Murray he kind of called them to question our ethical standards and also other tech tubers that he watches a bit confused as to you know what dictates an ad whether or not we're getting paid for reviews or just add spots kind of where the gray lines are and how we particularly handle things like that so I'm gonna talk in this video about our ethical stand points kind of how we do things here and for the sake of other tech tubers out there kind of speak on some of their behalf because I know that some of them do things a certain way but I would encourage all of them all the major guys out there all the big league players to either create a dedicated video like this one or answer these questions on their social media platforms to help appease the concerns of their viewers so first I'm going to read Geoff's for tweets again an idea of where he's coming from you're not going to believe the timing on this but I just now opened a tab to look at my Twitter feed to make a comment about something related to this one don't worry about the post he's talking about I've been noticing in the past three to six months that all of my favorite YouTube tech channels are doing many and in some cases a majority of their content being paid or non paid advertising for products under the umbrella of reviews or outright promotional ads this trend is really worrisome to me I initially sub to these channels for the pure education that they were teaching me and now I don't feel as if I'm being taught anything anymore but rather being sold a product or service under the guise of Education I am thinking of what I should do with my feelings in this considering the reasons I sub to these tech channels in the first place are my thoughts out of place here are you in disagreement with my sentiments on where things like this have been heading of late or is this becoming the new norm for YouTube channels to keep a revenue stream coming in just to make a living so I want to start off by saying that under no circumstance should any person or business sacrifice his or her or its ethics for the sake of making a living that's basically saying that it's okay to take money for the sake of compromising what you deem as a right and wrong another point that Jeff brings up is that he thinks that some tech tubers are being paid to review products now that just kind of like in a black-and-white sense is wrong I will take a stand on that right now being paid by a company to review a product is just shady at best and the reason why I think that is because if you want more money from a company you're gonna keep saying good things about their products right they're gonna keep one and send you things as long as you say good things about them and the moment that you say something wrong they're gonna cut that funding totally get that but what if a company wanted to pay for shelf space that is the opportunity for the tech tuber to review the product what they're saying is essentially hey look you have you know tons of companies wanting you to review their products so we're gonna pay you I don't know thousand bucks to put our product at the top of your list so you can make that video next there's still the issue of being paid for a review live I mean no matter how you look at it no matter how unbiased you think you are you love the fact that a company is giving you cash essentially to review their product doesn't matter what the intention of the payment was you're attributing that review to the money you received and that is a huge ethical issue in my book I will admit I was on the fence about this at one point until a few of the bigger tech tubers out there I know Jay for one really stuck his neck on I appreciate him for doing that made a very clear point that receiving money at all for any type of review is a bad idea even if you trust yourself if you trust you know your neutrality in a review the fact is if anyone even finds out that you're getting paid to review a product it isn't gonna end very well so that is why it will never happen on this channel I will never receive money for a product review or product review consideration now the company is paying money for hey promote this product that's totally different that is called an advertisement okay they are paying for the promotion they're paying for you to say good things about the product I'm about to do a video for Intel on obtain that is a paid video it's a paid sponsorship they want me to say good things about it I'm gonna inform the audience of what octane does but I'm also not going to say anything negative about it because it is an advertisement and I will be sure to let everyone know as such right at the beginning of that video all tech tubers should and usually do this so there's the difference between a paid review and a sponsored video one is wrong in my book and one is ok as long as the audience is alright with it I mean they don't want to watch an advertisement they'll just click away to something else they're not losing anything they're not being mislead I'm not gonna say anything inaccurate in the sponsored video but I'm not going to take the time to point out some flaws now there's a third concern I want to bring up regarding Jeff's tweets and that has to do with paid promotional spots usually at the beginnings of videos it lasts about 15 seconds or so where they say hey check out so-and-so's product we want you to you know click on the link in the video description and purchase a product blah blah blah maybe get a discount code or something to kind of stimulate that purchase right they want the buyer to click the link and then they want the buyer to click the Buy button once they click on that link in the description it's a call to action it's what an ad is supposed to be it's how it drives sales so a company comes to let's say they come to me and they say hey we want to pay you a hundred bucks to insert this ad for this case if the case cost ten dollars they're banking on me being able to sell about ten cases at least but then they get a return on their investment and for me to have a decent paycheck to go home with I don't lose anything in the long run just a few minutes of filming b-roll they don't lose anything in the long run as long as they make sales and the customer the viewer usually doesn't lose anything either because it's like what 15 seconds ok just fast-forward if you don't want to watch the ad the ethical question though is whether or not it's okay to promote a product with which you have no experience I try my best to not promote products and advertisements and just full-on dedicated videos that I'm not familiar with because if the product ends up sucking and a bunch of my viewers end up clicking and buying the product and finding out that it doesn't fact suck they're gonna come back to me and say hey Greg what if you promote such a crap product and then from then on out they might not trust my reviews or my opinions on other products because I'm just ill informed right so this is more or less a question of integrity not necessarily ethics although they do both go hand in hand obviously so if I promote a product that sucks people aren't going to trust my opinion anymore when it comes to any other product my viewership will go down I might lose subs in the process and then I really get hit hard in the long run so there's kind of an incentive there to not promote a product that sucks but some people will do it anyway because hey fat paychecks right so I want to thank Jeff for the tweets I'm grateful that he you know had the courage to ask that question and he asked it in the right way he didn't ask it a snarky way and kind of like trying to demean tech tubers and stuff because then I just don't give you the time of day whatever I'll ignore it but he asked it in a genuine fashion and I appreciate him asking the question I encourage all of you to check the integrity of the channels that you watch even hours especially hours because if you don't agree with something or a way of doing something then you should tell us because we need to check ourselves change the structure if it is wrong so that we can keep our integrity in check this is a science channel after all most of that stuff is fairly objective but when it comes to reviews and being paid for products and product placements and advertisements I want to make sure that I'm doing things the right way and that's where all of you come into play if you liked this video be sure to give it a thumbs up thumbs down for the opposite click that subscribe button if you haven't already and stay tuned for more videos like this this is science studio thanks for asking with us