My take on this is no they don’t. As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
If your product is shit your company does not deserve to be shielded from the backlash, this is the core of (classic) capitalism after all.
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who gives a fuck about companies?
People whose entire personality is what stocks they follow.
To the moon, bro!
I work for one and hope it goes well enougs so I can get my money for the work I’m doing.
Maybe the people who lose their job when they go under. That being said we shouldn’t prop up a bad business just because people might lose their livelihood
Companies also include small genuinely good startups and a dishonest negative review could ruin them.
Yes. Everyone agrees.
There’s a different way to look at companies. They’re not just profit-making entities. They are ways of organizing people to accomplish things nobody could do on their own. The profit is just there to keep the lights on and pay everyone a living wage.
Our current system doesn’t encourage that approach, but that’s just a problem with the current system.
People with jobs.
People with jobs.
I have one, still don’t care about the company or bad reviews about it when they deserve it.
Ok? “Caring about companies” only means “caring about your job and income and benefits” it doesn’t mean “I wonder if the CEO is happy”
how is that then caring about the company? This is clearly caring about yourself…
I care that my company continues to exist and does not experience financial hardship that will impact my income.
How is this hard for people?
Because it’s the equivalent of saying society should not stop using coal or fossil fuels or those people who pump your gas for you because “what about the employees???”. No, the world needs to move on.
If your company produces shitty products that people don’t want, then they shouldn’t exist and you should find a different job rather investing your livelihood in such a bad idea.
This is the equivalent of telling people to “just move” of their home town sucks
Consideration is required; it’s much easier to be a knee-jerk contrarian one supposes.
I also care that whatever company I work for moves to take corrective action as well. This isn’t at all difficult to think through.
The reviewer should be truthful and fair. If that means trashing a shitty product then that’s how it should be. Not calling out shitty products hurts the consumer and means the reviewer is doing a bad job.
He didn’t even trash the product — he just accurately described it.
For anyone wondering, this is a response to a review Marques posted about Humane’s AI pin, which he called the worst product he’s ever reviewed. A member of the company complained he was going to kill their business:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/marques-brownlees-humane-ai-pin-review
Its a joke to think a single reviewer could hold that much power. Fact is, multiple reviewers are in agreement that it’s shit.
Yeah, especially when it’s a total nothing product ‘we removed the useful bits of a phone and charge a big subscription for the free tool most people disable or ignore’
I feel like no one even needed a review to know this is trash
If that thing was a lightweight, cheap companion to a cellphone with a decent camera I could maybe consider buying it, because I do like some concepts like dealing with single tasks like adding an item to a todo list, playing a song, checking out a qr code or grabbing a video while I’m riding.
The way it is now it’s a grandiose piece of crap, too expensive for its own good.
Oh it was a member of the company? That’s embarrassing.
Lmfao I had a feeling it was about humane. Marques’ criticisms were valid af, as usual.
An honest review isn’t what’s going to kill their business. Even a bad product in and of itself isn’t necessarily what could cause the death of their business — it’s their not adequately tempering consumer expectations. From the sounds of it, they’ve oversold what the product can actually do, and are charging a price based on this fantasy.
If you’re honest in your marketing as to what your product can actually do, and charge a corresponding price then consumers and reviewers may be more forgiving. Where companies like this one which are doing fairly experimental stuff fail is when they over-promise and under-deliver. And reviewers will always take them to task when they do that.
Don’t think he’s a member of the company though.
Absolutely. LinusTechTips had to issue a formal apology for dumb stuff someone had said about another reviewer, but in the unveiling of all their shit, it was revealed that they had mis-reviewed a gaming mouse.
The mouse was in prototype stages, and the LTT member that reviewed it did not take the plastic off the gliders and said that the mouse was horrible and dragged a lot. The company then floundered and had to sell the prototype and rights at auction at the next CES.
The worst part is that they assumed that a competent reviewer had the fucking common-ass sense to remove the plastic that… you know… comes on almost every gaming mouse, so they didn’t even dispute the issue.
Ah LTT, the “go fast and break things” of the tech review world.
No single bad review ever killed a product. Because we all know that some things are just a matter of opinion, user error, etc. Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. If I’m interested, I’ll read several positive and negative opinions.
But if your product is bad enough to warrant several bad reviews, that’s on you. Should’ve done better research, should’ve made a better product.
This video clearly wasn’t “opinion” or “user error”.
He put in heaps of work and throughly documented an extensive list of major problems, many of them are individually bad enough to sink the product. Put them all together… ouch.
On the other hand, he did have some positive things to say. There’s scope here for this to be a good product. They just didn’t make it happen. I think where they went wrong was creating a standalone device. It should be an accessory to a phone — similar to a pair of ear buds. You don’t put an entire operating system, cellular connection, screen, voice assistant, etc in an ear bud. You put all of that on the phone and link the two with bluetooth.
He does excellent reviews and stuff in general.
I actually watched it before the ‘controversy’ and I think it certainly was a fair assessment. He clearly states the goal of the product and where it falls short. None of his criticism seems unreasonable.
Clearly, it’s trying to be an always-online communication, assistant and logging badge. Like a Star Trek commbadge on steroids. In theory, that’s a product that I’m very interested in. But when features are structurally unsound or actively annoying to use, well, I’m going to stick with the phone I’ve got.
Ironically, his ‘bad review’ got me interested to see what a version 2 will be like. Assuming they make it that far.
Well, Ralph Nader certainly was the catalist and voice that spelled the end of the Corvair and Pinto many years ago.
What are we supposed to do? Give bad products good reviews so the poor little million dollar startup doesn’t get its feelings hurt?
If we were talking about dishonest, malicious reviews, I’d understand.
That’s not the case here though, not only is Marques’ review honest, multiple reviewers reached the same conclusion as him.Maybe try making a good product next time.
Is this about the Humane thing?
In his video, he mentions the Humane review - but also the Fisker car review which was equally scathing.
Just watched the whole video (and the car one afterwards). I think if MKBHD is being disingenuous, as one of the most influential reviewers, he would’ve been the first to be called out (based on the facts he’d got wrong in the video instead of conspiracies.) that didn’t happen so I’d say it’s safe to assume the problem stems from the product itself, at least in these cases. Anyway, great watch.
A plurality of negative reviews kill those companies that make bad products. And that’s a good thing. Wheat from the proverbial chaff as it were.
Comcast is a great example.
It’s not bad reviews that kill companies, it’s bad products.
@[email protected] has an example of a bad review killing a potentially good product.
“Bad review” as wrong review.
Generally speaking true. However some companies manage to get the hype train going which leads to people buying bad products. As a result, a company can still survive by selling bad headphones or bad water bottles. Bad reviews can balance things a bit, but if their marketing budget is as big as the defense budget of a small country, there’s not much a bad review can do.
Obviously, this doesn’t really apply to small startups with only pennies to spend. Their marketing consists of sending samples to reviewers, and if that gamble backfires, for any reason, things aren’t going to look very good for the company. Maybe the product was bad, and they had it coming. Maybe the product was ok, but the review sample was broken. Who knows.
this is a perfect example of why @[email protected] should get posts downvoted and account banned of most major platforms (dont actually do this but see what i did there?)
Yes, my comment assumes the reviewers are being genuine. However, in a lot of cases, those people can be weeded out and themselves fail over time because they, too, are peddling bad products (reviews).
Ackchyually
This is the core of markets and markets have existed long before capitalism.
Sssssshhhhhh! You’re scaring the Americans!
The baseline of this entire discussion is that not all companies deserve to survive. You make a good product - you grow. You don’t make a good product - you adjust for the losses. There are no participation trophies there. Worst case scenario, someone will pick up on the same idea, and turn it into something actually good later on
I’m legitimately shocked there are people defending the garbage Humane AI Pin, which leads me to think a lot of the criticism levied at MKBHD is made up by a PR firm working for the company. I already hated the god damn thing because it gave you hallucinations on demand. But watching his review and The Verge’s review, its an overpriced gimmick that has a camera on all the time, and does nothing a smartphone can’t already do. They didn’t ask for bad reviews, they made a godawful MV–sorry, shitty product. Now they’re gonna reap the whirlwind.
A smartphone is just better in every way imaginable. I also don’t have my phone hallucinating all the time either, so I have that going for me.
I’m also gonna say the obvious quiet part out loud: He’s black and they’re targeting him first. Not The Verge, not Engadget, him.
I’d think a bigger difference is he’s a single YouTuber, the Verge and Engadget are actual companies with $ and man power.
No, he’s mentioned he has a team. He may be the final say on a product, but there’s people under him shaping what he gets.
I respect MKB for the hustle and his success, but he’s not a one man band.
They seem to think he is single at least…
Good. Make better products and support them after you made them.
If your company sounds scammy and you say it can do things it can’t, I hope your company burns before you burn customers who believed your lies
As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
Well, yeah sure. The problem is whether or not that’s actually what’s happening in any given circumstance. Most reviewers I’ve seen are more than happy to include personal opinion, and some will exagerrate points for the sake of getting views.
Things get even more fraught when the reviewer is a bigger company than the company whose product is being reviewed. For example the debacle with Linus Tech Tips and Billet labs that they were dragged for. That’s the kind of coverage that absolutely can sink a company that seemingly only ever did exactly what they said they would.
Reviews are good if they present the important facts and generally act with integrity, but sometimes that’s a really big ‘if’.
I feel like in most cases if a product has such bad reviews that it kills the company that made it, there’s a good reason for that.
Of course there are exceptions, and it is expected that a reviewer do their due diligence to make sure they’re giving an honest, accurate, and reasonable review, but no company should be shielded for being told their product isn’t good if it isn’t.
I gave a keyboard wrist rest a 3 star review because the pad is this weird shape that gets narrower in the middle. From the images on Amazon, it looked like it was more or less rectangular. Rounded ends but with a consistent width throughout. The seller started harassing me to change my review to 5 stars. I reported them to Amazon. The emails from the seller stopped, I haven’t bought something from Amazon since.
Sellers that demand or worse make up 5-star reviews are the ones who sell shitgarbage products and need to go out of business. Seeing 6 5-star reviews that all say “Great product! Would purchase again!” pretty much means the product will give you glans cancer and the doctors are going to have to cut off all the nerves that make it possible to orgasm.
I want to see a product get negative reviews by idiots. That’s how you know the product is good and the source is genuine.
Give an example: I bought a little inverter that works with my power tool batteries. It can deliver 110V60Hz AC at 150W from a drill battery, plus it has USB ports. I’ve run a desk lamp from this during a power failure, or charged my cell phone. Works fine. I knew it was legit when I read people’s reviews saying “Doesn’t run my hair dryer. 0/10.” Because there’s plenty of idiots in the world who don’t know how electricity works.
The problem on Amazon, especially for all these dropshippers that all sell mostly the same products: if you don’t have the best rating, nobody will buy your shit. So here it might indeed kill the company. Or at least this listing.
Which…fine. Don’t build your business on a faulty model.
For tech stuff, the best reviews to read are always the 1 or 2 star reviews, since you can see if the people complaining have legit gripes or they’re just idiots who bought the wrong thing for their task.
5 star reviews are mostly worthless, they have a strong likelihood of being fake, or for people who only ever post 5 or 1 star reviews. A product with fewer 5 star than 3 star reviews will likely make me shy away, if for no other reason than the dissenters are drowning out whoever the vendor hired to fake reviews for them. That’s noteworthy.
4 star reviews are more worth reading. There is a set of folks who thinks 5 stars should be reserved for extremely good exceeded expectations, and merely “as expected” should not get top marks. These are more likely written by people who bought the product and care about what they’re talking about.
3 star reviews will have actual good consumer information in them. “I was looking for a box to hold my Shark Model no. 24352097ASDF0872RSD vacuum cleaner accessories in, and this box does okay but the wide brush attachment thing doesn’t fit anywhere.” Okay, if I have that model of Shark, I know this might not be the box to buy for my vacuum accessories. It’s not that the box is a bad box, it’s just this isn’t the correct use case. Thanks fellow citizen!
2 star reviews are almost never written because you seldom dissatisfy a customer below the middle of the scale without completely pissing them off.
1 star reviews come in a wondrous variety. Anything from “product never arrived” which you’re warned is wrong to leave in the product review because so many of these platforms are designed to separate the product, seller and delivery service for maximum customer violation, but okay. You’ll get “Product wasn’t as advertised at all, ordered a coffee grinder got a salad shooter” which can sometimes happen when dropshippers misuse the listing sub-options menus. You know how if you order a T-shirt from Amazon you get one listing on which you select size and color from drop down menus? Or Duct tape: 1 pack, 2 pack, 5 pack? I’ve seen sellers who probably don’t speak English as a primary language market completely different products like this, which leads to dumb shit like reviews for several different items mixed together. If I see a lot of 1 star reviews, and many of them are “soldering iron did a terrible job curling my hair” I take that as a good sign, because the seller feels legitimate enough to let those remain up. Illegitimate sellers can’t tolerate low review scores and will try to have them removed or hidden. Or, you see a pattern of “flashlight power button quit working after 3 months” in which case you know to legitimately avoid this flashlight because it legitimately isn’t well made.
He makes a pretty good point near the end of the video where he claims that reviews are only a catalyst, and only speed up whatever trajectory the company is already on. Assuming that the reviews are honest and objective I agree with this point 100%.
Ultimately the quality of the product or service on offer steer the ship, the reviews are just the wind.
