Are These Reviews True?

As with most things I write about, something triggers a thought that starts during away in my brain. Once it reaches a critical mass, I either go looking for more information, or other things I consume start triggering the same feelings. I try hard to avoid conformation bias, so more often than not other information crops up to prove the opposite of what I expected, and the thought stops there. Like some kind of Zeigarnik effect.

The trigger was a video by Becca Farsace. One of my favourite YouTubers, laying out what it’s been like for her income in the first year on Youtube. A surprisingly open and frank video that I found fascinating because YouTube monetisation doesn’t make up the majority of her income, its brand deals that make the whole thing worthwhile.

since Kim and I have been working together, I have taken home, and that means after his $113,483.55, which made up 75% of my income last year.

Seriously, 75%! A range of brands are paying Becca, and with good reason as her videos are outstanding, the vast majority of her income. Naively, I always expected the big chunk to some from YouTube directly. This may be a relatively new thing, MKBHD talked about revenue split back in 2021 with Decoder, its a swarm of Verge adjacent links today, and outlined about 40% being from YouTube Ad Sense.

It’s important to diversify your income, as big companies have a habit of moving the goal posts when they want to, but needing this much income from deals with brands is a little scary to me. Not Becca specifically, she seems to have a very ethical way of choosing brands and only covering products she believes in, but how many other creators are either encouraged or feel obliged to be positive?

Nilay Patel onThe Vergecast talked about this in passing, when discussing the Verge subscription model ultimately being their editorial independence. Removing the need for brand deals like this and also the worry that if you say the wrong thing, those brand deals go away. This quote is cleaned up slightly by me.

In the end, everyone who’s successful in this space is doing brand deals. If you’re tuned in, you can see the pressure that puts on people. In tech especially, nothing changes until the collective thinking finally cracks — because no one wants to be the one who speaks up and risks losing future deals.

I take this with a pinch of salt, Nilay has spoken about these things very often, but it does come very closely after Becca’s video who is an ex member of staff there. I don’t think there is any animosity there, or even if he was directly relating to it, but I think context is important.

You can observe this as a consumer of content, particularly reviews of new products. They typically say the same, or very similar things, and cover the same talking points. No doubt as a condition of the pay check. The age-old questions is, how critical of an Apple product can you be, if they have just flown you out to California, and let you get hands on with the product weeks before anyone else?

At this point, I need to be clear that I am not calling anyone out at all. In the same position, I would more than likely do the same thing. And this post isn’t directed towards any of the people mentioned in this post, nor anyone else specifically. More so an observation from an average person, even if you are reading this thinking it is obvious.

It used to be the case that you could watch a few different creators and get an overall sense of the product in question. However, I feel as if I need to start questioning everything or rely on later reviews that have purchased the product themselves. Motives are everything, especially when everything seems to be an ad.