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cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/152656
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Illegal hidden advertising?
Yes, he would make a paid advertisement camouflaged as a review and never disclose that it was in fact not a review but an advertisement.
He had even set up a scheme to hide the fact, and make it look like the payments were for something else, like consulting.
The guy is absolute scum, and the success of his channel is based on illegal practices.
That is not the reality as I see it. They don't hide the fact that it's a sponsored video (marked as "sponsored video") until the end of the video. They seems mindful to always disclose conflict of interest (everytime framework, the NAS company) and they stopped working with Anker publically and immediately when the eufy camera scandal broke. They seem to hold them selves to a high ethical standard and disclose information even though it paints them in a negative light (they admitted they knew honey was swapping advertiser links but they didn't make it a big story)
Source: I watch around 2-3 LTT videos per week and around 50% of the WAN show podcast
I used to watch less because I couldn't bring myself to click on the god-awful distasteful thumbnails but then I installed "dearrow" and sponsorblock and they are more than tolerable.
OMG the honey fiasco was such an incredible explosion to watch. I never trusted it. I knew it was shady. But I never actually studied it. Just dismissed it as ridiculous shit being shipped everywhere and avoided it. Then the truth came out, LTT and many other got caught with their pants down and looked really bad, and I felt my distrust validated.
So satisfying.
Yeah I thought there is no way it can work effectively and never tried it. I was wondering how they could afford so much advertising. I just expected to be bankrupt. I bet others thought that too. That the shadyness was only about investors.
He only changed practices to be more transparent because he was called out with clear evidence.
I bet he still breaks the rules if it fits his purpose, but since I haven't watched his dishonest channels for years, I cannot really say. But once a fraudster always a fraudster, that's my experience.
Youre forgetting that time they did a scrapyard war which was sponsered by dbrand, in which somebody was constantly in view, playing on a switch with a dbrand skin.
Product placement has always been a thing. I once saw some show on tv where there was a hospital with shiny Apple computers in every scene and I laughed my ass off at how tonedeaf that was.
Not that it makes it any better, but that just seems like typical business practices. Almost everything we watch in America is an advertisement.
No it's not, it's clearly illegal even in USA. Gamers Nexus never did anything like that, or Hardware Unboxed. Those are channels that are renowned for their integrity. Although Hardware unboxed is Australian they are addressing the same market. Except for not being a goofy joke like LTT.