Understanding Common Issues in the FPV Drone Industry

Heads up, this is a wall of text, but I really hope it helps save someone money.

I have to be honest with you guys, I have a major personality flaw that compels me to try to help people if I think I can. The thing is, sometimes that gets annoying, like if Im commenting on all the posts here or if I call out something someone you like does. Hopefully this isnt too annoying.

Before I get into it, this isnt about Stew at all, it is an industry wide problem. This isnt a commentary on these people as people, sometimes “useful fools” get taken advantage of by others through no fault of their own (until it becomes a recognized pattern). This seems to have happened with someone I used to watch a lot and that helped me get into fpv. They have been back in my feed again and today they released a video that looks pretty positive on the surface, but all I see is them taking advantage of their audience. 

A little bit about YouTube, there are a lot of ways to make money on the site, most of them involve advertising and sales commissions, which isnt inherently wrong. After the recent changes to the site, the reports Im seeing are claiming that for an individual to do YouTube full time, with low level sponsorships, they now need around 250k- 500k subs. So if someone is using YouTube to support a family, with a +2500sqft house, and has under 100k subs, they are making a bulk of their money from something else. If their description of each video is literally full of referral links and +90% of their content is product showcases presented as reviews, then their money is likely coming from your pocket in the form of secondary ad money and sales commissions. 

Now if someone has a patreon, that money is still coming directly from you, but ive noticed the people that specialize in product showcases dont advertise patreons very much. The difference isnt necessarily in the amount of money you give them, it’s what you get in exchange for the money. If you watch the product showcasers, they really aren’t honest in the long run. Sure there has to be the token criticism of the product so people watch, but pay attention to what they say in their future videos. A lot of times they end up contradicting themselves because they are selling you products, not information.

So, if someone makes videos about a controversial topic, like latency, to sell a new/unproven system to beginners and farms engagement from it by saying it doesnt matter, that might be a red flag. HOWEVER, there is a genuine argument that beginners shouldn’t care about latency and need encouragement to spend this much money. BUT if they do all that and their next video is promoting racing, thats 100% a giant red flag. Its like this:

Step 1: promote new high latency, unproven system using drama and personal insecurities of your audience, audience "defends you", buys the new system with your links, profit.

Step 2: wait a week or so for the drama to die down, hope people move on

Step 3: promote beloved community racing event, dont address the recent controversy directly or use analog for the video. Audience becomes energized about a fresh topic.

Step 4: audience races for a week or two and realize latency, penetration, etc matters, so you make a new video and promote the same company’s low latency analog system. Second profit.  

The company wins, the YouTuber wins, but the audience is either stuck with 2 low budget systems or they just lose all their races and get discouraged. Ultimately the outcome of this series of videos will be unnecessary frustration for at least a portion of the audience and end up doing the exact opposite of what the YouTuber originally intended.

But this isnt even the first time this YouTuber has done something like this recently. the first thing that put them back in my feed was a "leak" for a supposedly amazing drone that got people amped for weeks before its release. Then that drone ended up being one of the most anti consumer/anti repair/pro planned obsolescence fpv drones I have ever seen.

So in summary, there isnt anything wrong with having "a favorite host on the Shopping Channel," just try to keep in mind the differences between that type of person who is primarily extracting value from our community and someone who is genuinely doing reviews, aggregating information and adding value back into the community.

Thanks for reading!