Online reviewing has some pretty glaring problems… and it’s getting worse, not better.
Plus a little update on what’s up with ART below. Keep reading…
I’ve opined previously on the issues surrounding trust in online reviews and how the balance between keeping the lights on and actually doing an honest and ethical job that serves your audience is a very difficult balancing act.
There’s a lot of people out there, and I don’t entirely blame them, who figure that anyone reviewing a product is automatically on the take in some way. It’s absolutely endemic in the mobile video space whether you’re talking YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or any other video source, but it’s not a whole lot better when you’re talking written reviews or podcasts either.
The problem is… it’s getting worse. Take this approach, which is incredibly typical of the kinds of approaches I get every day. I’ve blanked out the specifics not to protect a given brand, but because this may as well just be a generic approach that is being applied by a LOT of them.
Hello, friend.
I’m PR REP from the COMPANYNAME Team.We’re inviting select customers to experience our PRODUCT:
1. Order through Amazon as usual.
2. Share your honest experience report after receiving the product.
3. Qualifying reviews will receive a 90% reimbursement. No professional writing required—we value honest user opinions.
If you’re interested: Please provide your Amazon profile link. I will review your link and determine your reimbursement percentage.
The product link is already displayed on Amazon. If you’d like to see product images and more product details, please contact me.
*Limited to 5 participants in your region.
Sincerely, PR REP
To say that I doubt PR REP’s “sincerity” would be an understatement, but then I’ve been accused of being cynical more than once. I can live with that.
The traps here appear obvious to me, but just in case they’re not…
Anyone taking part is essentially buying the product on the promise that they’ll get a substantial discount.
Nothing wrong with saving money, but… the real incentive here is to keep PR REP happy, AKA “write us a positive review and we MIGHT give you some of your money back, unless of course the ‘5’ participants in your area have already ‘claimed’ at which point you’ve handed out a glowing review of questionable accuracy and you’re… SOL”.
This stinks to high heaven, might even cross some legal lines — I’m not a lawyer and the brands involved are typically international which complicates matters even more — and it’s far from atypical.
I also get approaches from major brands that misidentify me as an “influencer”. I have been walking the tech journo road for decades now, so I guess I do have some “influence”, but that’s a different thing.
What’s also different in the influencer approaches I get is how blatant the promise of money is. I mean, I get it, again, something needs to pay the rent, but I’ve had some emails from brands that have given me both the “journalist” and “influencer” pitch… and the difference here are the bribes.
I think that’s massively unfortunate, which is why here at ART I’ve always put disclosures clearly and at length upfront.
If I buy a product, you know about it. If I’m loaned a product, you know about it, and if I am keeping a product — not always clear when things are sent my way, but I do try to clarify with brands before publishing or update after the fact — you’ll know about that too.
Sadly, though, the market is going in the other direction at a rapid pace… and the losers here are the audiences fed this PR REP approved garbage.
Rant over.
What’s going on with ART, then?
So those who do follow this publication might have noticed that it’s been… rather quiet around here of late.
I did always position ART as an adjunct to my freelancing work, but of late updates have been even more sporadic.
To a large extent that’s been because I’ve been busy with other paying work, some of which bears my name, and some which doesn’t. Again, keeping the lights on and all that.
If you want to catch some of my product reviewing with my imprimatur on it, you can catch some of that over at places such as Pickr, Digitally Downloaded and TweakTown to name but a few.
Still, I could see this was coming, which was why I decided to suspend the supporter Ko-Fi and Patreon setups a few months back; it didn’t feel right to me to be asking for funds for a project that I knew I couldn’t give expansion-level time to.
If you want to support what’s already here or future projects, you’re 100% still free to do so in a “buy me a coffee” sense (the details are at this link) but I don’t see updates coming thick and fast for the next little while… and once again, transparency matters to me.
I would like to think that the broader tech industry might see value in supporting honest and ethical tech journalism, but… well… they’re much more keen on supporting paid-off “influencers” and sites that go to lengths to avoid calling themselves “journalists” because then (and I quote, without names because defamation law is a thing, but this is one genuine one I’ve heard more than once) “If I’m a journalist, I’ve got to hold to ethics, and f#ck that!”… so it is what it is.
I am, to be clear, not part of that mindset… but I sometimes feel like I’m a dying breed.
About the Author
Great Oped. We need transparency and journalists like you more than ever!