Not to defend him (can’t really stand his videos at all) but he’s not a journalist. He’s just a freelance spokesman for products that will sponsor him.
Comment on Uncovering Every Lie in MKBHD's Softball Interview; a scathing critique of 'brand safe' influencers
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Quite a shame that the vast majority of people this video is targeted at will just not care. Especially in the US, or the UAE, if your Apple device breaks, you just get another Apple device, because it’s a status symbol.
On the topic of Marques though - I haven’t watched any of his stuff in quite a while, after I’ve had an eye-opened moment from his content. He would scald and roast companies that make mistakes, and make bad choices, but when Apple, or lets say Tesla, make the same mistake, he lets them off the hook. That’s not unbiased journalism at all.
Rakonat@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Yes! He’s literally done this ever since his first iPhone review. I think it was the iPhone 4s? Somewhere around that time…
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I think it’s clear he’s a fan of Apple and Tesla but he does make negative statements about them, the Cyber truck was not a positive review and he always criticized the fit and finish of Teslas. And he critiques Apple’s idiosyncracies like the proprietary charger and lack of calculator app on the iPad.
I guess my point is that he’s not a journalist he’s a reviewer, we are tuning in for his judgement, his opinion. If he personally likes the products from a certain company, that’s not a bias that impacts his capacity to do his job well.
Like movie reviewer giving Pixar a bunch of 10/10 reviews, and then criticizing Cars 2 as a mediocre cash grab. Maybe they are biased for Pixar, or maybe Pixar just puts out a lot of good movies. As long as you’re calling out the bad moves, that’s what we want from a reviewer.
The fair concern is when he gets exclusive access like this, I don’t necessarily care about the puff piece interview but you hope it doesn’t influence his future reviews.
viperex@lemmy.world 4 months ago
MKBHD the tech reviewer and Louis Rossmann the tech repairer get the tech at different points in their life cycles. Does anyone expect MKBHD to open up a MacBook and start probing motherboard components? He reviews the form and function of new tech when they’re polished and running at their peak. Louis sees them when something has gone wrong
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Probably has to suck-up inorder to get products early so his reviews can be viewed first. I wish all of these reviewers would be honest as Steve Burke (GamersNexus).
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Being honest isn’t where the money is. Not reaching out towards that takes willpower, and strong principles
ikidd@lemmy.world 4 months ago
www.youtube.com/@ProjectFarm
This guy has 3M subs and doesn’t take free samples for reviews. I think he’s doing OK, and damn, if you want a detailed review of something. He’s branched away from the mainly mechanic oriented stuff recently, but still staying unbought.
recursive_recursion@programming.dev 4 months ago
Thanks Steve
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I legit upvoted every Thanks Steve comment right before I posted this thread! 🤣 I love that meme.
recursive_recursion@programming.dev 4 months ago
ditto😆
Intel really set themselves up for a perfect memefest😂
reddit_sux@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This is true of apple as reviewers critical of them are never invited for their events.
n2burns@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
No. Apple and most major tech companies are pretty good about giving reviewer samples to anyone with a large enough audience. The only thing that gets you disqualified is breaking the moratorium and releasing your review early.
What conducting softball interviews gets you is more interviews.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
That isn’t true, for example LTT doesn’t get seeded Apple products anymore because of what they have said about Apple. NVidia has also been caught revoking early access to products to some outlets because they were unhappy about reporting as well.
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 4 months ago
As @reddit_sux@lemmy.world stated there are more perks than just earlier reviews.
Sometimes a large company will stop assisting you if you go against their talking points. For example Hardware Unboxed got in trouble for saying, raytracing isn’t as big of a deal as Nvidia is making it and it will remain that way for at least the next few years. Thanks to influence of several big Youtubers (like Steve Burke and Linus Sebastien), NVidia changed their minds.
slumberlust@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Are you assuming this simply because apple doesn’t state the reason they end a relationship? Access journalism isn’t new or unique to apple.