Are We Entering The Age Of Bullshit Plugins? 🤔

[El Diablo]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Including threats of being sued to intimidate him and, of course,  pressure to take down critical reviews and being shut out of getting additional products to review. I've recommended to him that he do videos sharing his experience with these developers so that sample buyers can understand the way the system works. 

How could you be sued?

[PavlovsCat]

16 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

How could you be sued?

The developer allegedly threatened him that they would sue for his negative review comments.  I think she claimed they were defamatory. Those were very frivolous threats -- an influencer giving an opinion about a product or a developer's product quality is not the stuff of a legitimate defamation case. But she was allegedly focused on manipulating and intimidating the guy to do what she wanted. If you go through is channel he does discuss it, and he and I have had discussions about it. In fact, I had touched base with the developer (in this case,  the husband of the person who made the alleged threats). While I didn't see emails or PMs, I definitely believe Cory's story. He also told me about bad experiences with other developers-- one I actually had a rather bad experience with myself -- and what he told me was  pretty consistent with the developer reputations among the developer and contractor community. Really, no surprises. 

There's also no surprise in developers pressuring influencers to edit out strongly negative content about their product in a "review." That's very common, even standard.  If an influencer goes and points out serious problems with a sample library or plugin, a very high percentage of companies will try to get that edited out or softened. Do you think if I'm a marketing VP from a developer I'm going to pay an influencer-- which may be a direct payment or in the form of buying ads -- if the review is largely negative? Heck no. Your buying the influencer promoting your product and negative reviews don't sell products very well. 

Of course,  even the biggest shill influencers claim they won't do that.  That's pure BS. Any marketing professional deals with influencers and will tell you that they're eager to please you -- as the brand you hold power with influencers because you hold the purse strings. That's no BS. 

Edited September 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[El Diablo]

8 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

The developer allegedly threatened him that they would sue for his negative review comments.  I think she claimed they were defamatory. If you go through is channel he does discuss it, and he and I have had discussions about it. In fact, I had touched base with the developer (in this case,  the husband of the person who made the alleged threats). While I didn't see emails or PMs, I definitely believe Cory's story. He also told me about bad experiences with other developers-- one I actually had a rather bad experience with myself that sounded pretty consistent with their reputations among the developer and contractor community. 

But there's absolutely no surprise in developers pressuring influencers to edit out strongly negative content about their product. That's pretty standard. If an influencer goes and points out serious problems with a sample library or plugin, a very high percentage of companies will try to get that edited out or softened. Of course,  even the biggest shill influencers claim they won't do that.  That's pure BS. Any marketing professional deals with influencers and will tell you that they're eager to please you -- as the brand you hold power with influencers because you hold the purse strings. That's no BS. 

If you buy a product or test a trial version of that product and give your honest review, can you still be sued or "pressured to remove the bad review" (if so, pressured how?)

[PavlovsCat]

48 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

If you buy a product or test a trial version of that product and give your honest review, can you still be sued or "pressured to remove the bad review" (if so, pressured how?)

You can always be pressured, and according to Cory, he was pressured by being threatened that the developer would sue for defamation and some other details I don't want to get into. But it's very common for businesses to pressure influencers they work with to remove or edit negative comments in reviews. They pressure through using their power to withdraw future free product, advertising dollars, or direct payment, depending on how they're compensating the influencer. 

Edited September 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[El Diablo]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

You can always be pressured, and according to Cory, he was pressured by being threatened that the developer would sue for defamation and some other details I don't want to get into. But it's very common for businesses to pressure influencers they work with to remove or edit negative comments in reviews. They pressure through using their power to withdraw future free product, advertising dollars, or direct payment, depending on how they're compensating the influencer. 

If your an anonymous You-tuber that never takes money from any company, be it free product, money, etc., what can the developer do?  If they send you a threatening email (If they could figure it out your email address), you could show that to your users as proof of your being threatened by stating your own opinions.  In reality, you could also show proof of purchase (without showing your personal details / product activation codes).

I'm trying to figure out the best way to start this for myself... I have a channel ready to go... I could start my own product reviews, but I want to prove to the public I'm not a paid influencer.  How would you best do that?

[Carl Ewing]

5 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

He's the most honest influencer I've ever known of.  If any influencer "reviewer" deserves funding, IMO, it's this guy.  

What's your cut?? 10%? 15%? You're clearly being paid to promote this promoter! 

[PavlovsCat]

6 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

If your an anonymous You-tuber that never takes money from any company, be it free product, money, etc., what can the developer do?  If they send you a threatening email (If they could figure it out your email address), you could show that to your users as proof of your being threatened by stating your own opinions.  In reality, you could also show proof of purchase (without showing your personal details / product activation codes).

I'm trying to figure out the best way to start this for myself... I have a channel ready to go... I could start my own product reviews, but I want to prove to the public I'm not a paid influencer.  How would you best do that?

I would suggest you start by figuring out what you think are the most valuable influencer reviewer videos you know.  Figure out what you like about them,  figure out what you think is missing and do your best to put together a solid outline for your video. As far as proving that you're not just looking to shill to grab free products, I'd recommend that you're just really thorough and sincere.  If you're doing that and you're good on camera, it will likely shine through and you can tell people in your videos how you operate. With Cory, it's rather obvious when he does a video and discusses serious issues with a library that he's clearly not shilling -- a developer isn't going to pay for that. But a review doesn't have to be negative to be believable. 

[Carl Ewing]

10 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

but I want to prove to the public I'm not a paid influencer.  How would you best do that?

Do a negative review of an 8Dio product. Post it on Youtube. Resist the lawsuits. I'll believe anything you have to say about products after that.

[PavlovsCat]

52 minutes ago, Carl Ewing said:

Do a negative review of an 8Dio product. Post it on Youtube. Resist the lawsuits. I'll believe anything you have to say about products after that.

But you're probably basing it on the less than honest thread at VI-CONTROL and the mob mentality attack on 8Dio. Consider that the person who did that was am independent contractor working for an 8Dio competitor was pretty angry that 8Dio turned down her 6 figure pitched project for them. She wasn't wronged.  She was leveraging Cory and some other folks she was aware had bad experiences with 8Dio. I actually went back and forth between Troels and Cory trying to work things out. I make no money from this stuff, I just did it because I could see how the person that started the thread operates, I realized that she and others weren't disclosing that they are 8Dio competitors -- notably four people posting were affiliated with Impact Soundworks and weren't interested in fairness, nor was the site owner. Let me be clear too. I don't think the person who created the thread and the other developers were acting upfront in that. There was a lot going on they didn't disclose.  It was a vendetta take down of 8Dio by two developers and their contractors. If you think those other developers or the person who launched the attack were the good guys who don't engage in ethically problematic behavior,  we'll have to agree to disagree.  Cory was leveraged to be exploited to make an argument. He chose not to be part of that attack. I attempted to work things out between Cory and Troels.

If you've seen my opinions on 8Dio's and SoundPaint's libraries, I'm pretty critical.  I will say this, because Cory shared it on YouTube. The person that he worked with wasn't Troels,  but his wife. I doubt that Troels is even aware of what occured between the two. But if you're looking to gather the story from a rejected contractor not honest enough to disclose that she works for a competitor when doing an attack thread, I'd suggest reconsidering what you witnessed.  It was easily a defamatory attack by competitors. And I'm not exactly an 8Dio fanboy. But that thread was dishonest, deceptive and in a highly controlled environment where dissenting opinions were quickly deleted by the competitor/forum owner,  who weeks ago was just told by 8Dio that they were pulling their advertising from VI-CONTROL and sought other devs to join them. The competitor that owns the forum was deleting dozens of posts that disagreed with the attack; by his own words he deleted dozens of posts.  It was witnessed by many community members,  including me. So my take,  I believe Cory's version of events.  I think the person in question was aggressively pushing him to edit his videos. While a lot of developers do that, she allegedly went a step further, which is crazy, but it intimidated Cory. The fact is, the other players in that thread are at least as bad. The only good guy in that equation wasn't participating -- Cory-- because he knew his story was being used to prop up other attacks that had nothing to do with him. 

Edited September 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Carl Ewing]

6 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

But you're probably basing it on the less than honest thread at VI-CONTROL and the mob mentality attack on 8Dio. Consider that the person who did that was am independent contractor working for an 8Dio competitor was pretty angry that 8Dio turned down her 6 figure pitched project for them. She wasn't wronged.  She was leveraging Cory and some other folks she was aware had bad experiences with 8Dio. I actually went back and forth between Troels and Cory trying to work things out. I make no money from this stuff, I just did it because I could see how the person that started the thread operates, I realized that she and others weren't disclosing that they are 8Dio competitors -- notably four people posting were affiliated with Impact Soundworks and weren't interested in fairness, nor was the site owner. Let me be clear too. I don't think the person who created the thread and the other developers were acting upfront in that. There was a lot going on they didn't disclose.  It was a vendetta take down of 8Dio by two developers and their contractors. If you think those other developers or the person who launched the attack were the good guys who don't engage in ethically problematic behavior,  we'll have to agree to disagree.  Cory was leveraged to be exploited to make an argument. He chose not to be part of that attack. I attempted to work things out between Cory and Troels.

If you've seen my opinions on 8Dio's and SoundPaint's libraries, I'm pretty critical.  I will say this, because Cory shared it on YouTube. The person that he worked with wasn't Troels,  but his wife. I doubt that Troels is even aware of what occured between the two. But if you're looking to gather the story from a rejected contractor not honest enough to disclose that she works for a competitor when doing an attack thread, I'd suggest reconsidering what you witnessed.  It was easily a defamatory attack by competitors. And I'm not exactly a big fan of 8Dio or its owners behavior. But that thread was dishonest, deceptive and in a controlled environment.  The competitor that owns the forum was deleting dozens of posts that disagreed with the attack.  It was witnessed by many community members,  including me. So my take,  I believe Cory's version of events.  I think the person in question was aggressively pushing him to edit his videos. While a lot of developers do that, she allegedly went a step further, which is crazy, but it intimidated Cory. The fact is, the other players in that thread are at least as bad. The only good guy in that equation wasn't participating -- Cory-- because he knew his story was being used to prop up other attacks that had nothing to do with him. 

Lol.

[El Diablo]

I don't go searching for sample libraries, unless I need a certain instrument that I don't have... Line Saxophone or French Horn... As far as Drum sets, once you have one, you can change how it sounds to be anything you want.

[Ted Franklin]

18 hours ago, El Diablo said:

If you buy a product or test a trial version of that product and give your honest review, can you still be sued or "pressured to remove the bad review" (if so, pressured how?)

I am not an intellectual property lawyer, but, from what I recall truth is an absolute defense to defamation claims. Opinion is protected, but misstatements of fact are not. If you state something as a fact and it turns out to be false, things get fuzzy and more complicated. If challenged on a factual statement and you are being threatened with legal action, you should take it seriously and make sure you got it right. If not, issue a quick retraction and add the retraction at the bottom of your post.  Opinions are protected by the first amendment, but talk it over with a lawyer friend, if you can, if someone threatens you for stating what you believe is just an opinion.  Opinion: "He was the ugliest man on the whole team." Factual assertion: "He lost most of his left cheek to cancer."  Reviewers and publishers of reviews should get the facts straight.

As for "pressure," I do recall Boyle's law from high school.

[PavlovsCat]

3 hours ago, Ted Franklin said:

I am not an intellectual property lawyer, but, from what I recall truth is an absolute defense to defamation claims. Opinion is protected, but misstatements of fact are not. If you state something as a fact and it turns out to be false, things get fuzzy and more complicated. If challenged on a factual statement and you are being threatened with legal action, you should take it seriously and make sure you got it right. If not, issue a quick retraction and add the retraction at the bottom of your post.  Opinions are protected by the first amendment, but talk it over with a lawyer friend, if you can, if someone threatens you for stating what you believe is just an opinion.  Opinion: "He was the ugliest man on the whole team." Factual assertion: "He lost most of his left cheek to cancer."  Reviewers and publishers of reviews should get the facts straight.

As for "pressure," I do recall Boyle's law from high school.

Well, from what I know the pressure Cory received wasn't based on a legitimate claim that he engaged in defamation. It was frivolous. I communicated this earlier, but it appears it was overlooked. The situation that occurred though is that it had served to intimidate Cory. I believe him. I also know -- only from years of PMs that go back 20 years and a mutual friend -- Mario /Evil Dragon, that he also faced a similar legal threat from 8Dio long ago. It appears that they have been really aggressive with developers over the years and I think both Mario and Cory are pretty nice people but neither is knowledgeable on laws -- and they don't know about US laws (both live outside the US, where 8Dio is based), and when a company threatens to go after them legally, I believe them both that they were scared (plus I know from a mutual friend that what occurred with Mario did serve to scare him).  So again, I do not believe the threat of a defamation lawsuit was legitimate -- and for the record, that's civil law, not criminal law. The fear was about a company suing someone without money and the financial and reputational harm it could do. 

As Ted wrote above, opinion is protected. Let's say an influencer says in a video: 

"I bought XYZ Company's plugins and I found that it crashed my DAW, it had numerous bugs and sounded terrible. All in all, I think the product is complete garbage. I wouldn't recommend it if it were free." 

Now, if everything he stated was accurate, it is not defamatory. However, if he lied/exaggerated when he claimed the plugin crashed his DAW and about it having bugs when it actually ran perfectly and had zero bugs, he has engaged in defamation. But subjective opinions are not defamation. I have written in this forum, that I find 8Dio's string libraries don't have intuitive scripting, that they tend to be dumps of articulations. Now, that is highly critical and the developer is definitely not going to love that. If that were in an influencer video, I could easily imagine the influencer getting pressure to edit it out, based on past history. But if I was threatened that I would be sued for defamation, it would be a completely frivolous claim. Why? Because I was sharing my honest observations/opinions. That said, a person or business could still file a defamation lawsuit that it would cost you time and money to defend.  

When I last year shared that a developer had ignored every support request I had for 11 months until I finally took to Facebook to try to get him to respond to me. I was complimentary of his libraries but stated the lack of support was a deal breaker. I had hoped that he'd contact me to respond. He did respond by deleting my post and blocking me on Facebook. I made a thread in this forum to share the experience. When the developer emailed me, he finally responded to my support requests. At first he apologized for deleting my FB comment and blocking me. When I told him that I wanted to buy more libraries from him but I was concerned about his lack of response, he became hostile and insulting. I told him that when he didn't respond to my support tickets and then blocked me on FB that I shared the experience on at the Cakewalk forum, but since he now was in contact and things were being resolved we could share that things were resolved in this forum. The guy became upset and instead of making friendly posts, he made posts calling me a liar, claiming I threatened him and was mentally deranged. All of those public statements are clearly defamatory and resulted in his posts being removed from this forum and VI Control. That is the line of defamation. Oxford Dictionary defines it as "the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel." Now I am able to share exactly what occurred between us without concerns of defamation -- even if it's incredibly unflattering to the developer, because it is factual/true. If you make something damaging up or exaggerate,  it can cross the line into defamation. The bottom line is, if you report facts and share what is clearly your opinion and not something asserted to be a fact, that you are likely to not be engaged in defamation,

Edited September 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Starship Krupa]

On 9/6/2023 at 1:59 PM, El Diablo said:

Plugins are as hazardous as a normal program is and you shouldn't just download any plugin as if it was safe.  That's another reason I don't use free plugins!

Have you experienced or heard of an audio plug-in being or delivering malware or harming someone's computer?

I'm curious because I've downloaded and tried every freeware plug-in I've heard about for the past 10 years (hundreds of them) and never had one turn out to be destructive.

A number of these free plug-ins are ones I consider essential.

[El Diablo]

3 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Have you experienced or heard of an audio plug-in being or delivering malware or harming someone's computer?

I'm curious because I've downloaded and tried every freeware plug-in I've heard about for the past 10 years (hundreds of them) and never had one turn out to be destructive.

A number of these free plug-ins are ones I consider essential.

I've not heard of, but I treat all freeware the same.  I don't get them unless they are open source and I can compile them myself.

If the freeware is from a company that sells plugins, then yes, I'll install those... Otherwise, I avoid freeware as the potential to be malware is much greater.  They could put a harvesting Bitcoin program on your computer to harvest Bitcoin too.  It may not "harm" your computer, but they are stealing your resources.

[PavlovsCat]

@El Diablo On a related note. I just bought another plugin from Hornet Plugins yesterday after a thread in this forum. I searched Google and YouTube to find any "review" videos of the plugin. Not even one moderately successful influencer had covered the plugin. Some influencers, like White Sea Studio -- whose videos I really enjoy -- have done reviews of Hornet's other plugins. It's easy to see why. He's a small developer of low-priced plugins that aren't going to generate much revenue for these influencers -- either through him giving them free products (that's priced cheap anyhow), affiliate program (I don't think he has one), advertising (I don't think he does much, if any, advertising) or cash in exchange for a "review. In one sense, if you review products like his, they get A LOT LESS searches that Waves or Izotope. However, you could look at it as something you do to build your audience, as few developers are covering his plugins, you can be a big fish in a small pond. 

[Patrick Derbidge]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

On a related note. I just bought another plugin from Hornet Plugins yesterday after a thread in this forum. I searched Google and YouTube to find any "review" videos of the plugin. Not even one moderately successful influencer had covered the plugin. Some influencers, like White Sea Studio -- whose videos I really enjoy -- have done reviews of Hornet's other plugins. It's easy to see why. He's a small developer of low-priced plugins that aren't going to generate much revenue for these influencers -- either through him giving them free products (that's priced cheap anyhow), affiliate program (I don't think he has one), advertising (I don't think he does much, if any, advertising) or cash in exchange for a "review. In one sense, if you review products like his, they get A LOT LESS searches that Waves or Izotope. However, you could look at it as something you do to build your audience, as few developers are covering his plugins, you can be a big fish in a small pond. 

You must be a schill for Hornet. How much are you making off that $2 plugin?? 🙂 LOL

[PavlovsCat]

45 minutes ago, Patrick Derbidge said:

You must be a schill for Hornet. How much are you making off that $2 plugin?? 🙂 LOL

Um, the plugins are $2. I get a 25-cent cut on every sale made from my affiliate link.   

I kid, I kid. I shill for no one and I'm not part of any affiliate marketing programs for any developers, just a paying customer who's never even had an email or PM with the developer (Hornet Plugins).

My goal is to have angry irrational, ill-tempered developers with bad practices lash out and libel me in public forums. Again, I kid. It's completely unintentional. My take is that these forums SHOULD BE for users, not developers. They exert their influence in other forums driven by ad revenue from those developers, so they tend to be heavily moderated/edited in favor of the developers, especially developers who pay and negative commentary about those developers tends to be heavily censored. That's no accident. That's one of the many aspects of this forum that is so great. Bandlab does an excellent job of keeping it musician/user-centric and not developer-centric at the expense of open discussions, and critical discussions about bad experiences with developers. 

Edited September 8, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Patrick Derbidge]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Um, the plugins are $2. I get a 25-cent cut on every sale made from my affiliate link.   

I kid, I kid. I shill for no one and I'm not part of any affiliate marketing programs for any developers, just a paying customer who's never even had an email or PM with the developer (Hornet Plugins).

My goal is to have angry irrational, ill-tempered developers with bad practices lash out and libel me in public forums. Again, I kid. It's completely unintentional. My take is that these forums SHOULD BE for users, not developers. They exert their influence in other forums driven by ad revenue from those developers, so they tend to be heavily moderated/edited in favor of the developers, especially developers who pay and negative commentary about those developers tends to be heavily censored. That's no accident. That's one of the many aspects of this forum that is so great. Bandlab does an excellent job of keeping it musician/user-centric and not developer-centric at the expense of open discussions, and critical discussions about bad experiences with developers. 

25 cents would be awesome, count me in on that!(: I kid too, of course. You're always full of good advice on this forum, and it's appreciated. Being an influencer seems like an interesting pursuit these days. You either go 100% Patreon funded, which is pretty hard to do, or you deal with getting paid through affiliate links, or you just plain rely on advertising and try to walk that fine line between selling out and not losing your relationship with these companies. Even just affiliate links can be a mixed bag. I remember looking into some affiliate links where the company required that you had a consistent amount of traffic and conversions within a specific time frame (6 months or so) or you would lose the ability to use their affiliate link, so even going that route can have an influence on what an influencer will and will not say about a product.  I've just found that the only thing that works for me is to find as many walk through videos on the product as possible or, if available, a free trial that I can test myself. Nothing is one size fits all, so I even take forum members advice with a grain of salt. Take 8dio for example. You don't get along with their work flow very well, whereas I really like the workflow of their string libraries. I just wish they weren't so darn slow to load (even after a batch resave)

Edited September 8, 2023 by Patrick Derbidge

[PavlovsCat]

39 minutes ago, Patrick Derbidge said:

25 cents would be awesome, count me in on that!(: I kid too, of course. You're always full of good advice on this forum, and it's appreciated. Being an influencer seems like an interesting pursuit these days. You either go 100% Patreon funded, which is pretty hard to do, or you deal with getting paid through affiliate links, or you just plain rely on advertising and try to walk that fine line between selling out and not losing your relationship with these companies. Even just affiliate links can be a mixed bag. I remember looking into some affiliate links where the company required that you had a consistent amount of traffic and conversions within a specific time frame (6 months or so) or you would lose the ability to use their affiliate link, so even going that route can have an influence on what an influencer will and will not say about a product.  I've just found that the only thing that works for me is to find as many walk through videos on the product as possible or, if available, a free trial that I can test myself. Nothing is one size fits all, so I even take forum members advice with a grain of salt. Take 8dio for example. You don't get along with their work flow very well, whereas I really like the workflow of their string libraries. I just wish they weren't so darn slow to load (even after a batch resave)

Thanks for the kind words. I absolutely agree with that workflow-related opinions and sample library sound opinions can be highly subjective and that EVERY forum member's opinion -- including mine -- should be taken with a grain of salt. A workflow or library that I don't like may be a great fit for someone else.  I only sharing my experiences, tastes and preferences and can't speak for anyone else -- and definitely am no expert (A LOT of forum members here know A LOT more than I do about mixing, mastering and all sorts of audio; I was once a working musician, but I never knew much about the sound engineering side of things; I played drums studios and my most popular band had two sound engineers, but I only ever made demos on my own where I mixed everything and I never knew what I was doing and am only know learning that stuff). I'm well aware that others perspectives may be very different than mine. When I'm seeking advice on sample libraries though, I do highly value the opinions of others at this forum -- realizing, of course, they have their own workflow and sound preferences that may be quite different than mine. I've really found a lot of value in hearing from other users at this forum. It's one of the big reasons I stick around and spend very little time at other music-related forums anymore (I was once very big into KVR, where my username is still eDrummist). 

Edited September 8, 2023 by PavlovsCat