Did you mean Standard Notes CEO?
Have not read anything above yet, will mostly react to the initial video first.
But it is indeed quite sad that a channel like his with 1/2 a million of subs is not making him anyhow sustainable given the efforts over the years.
Having integrity and make a living is total opposite apparently.
Sponsorships are also tricky I think, because they are for the smallest and most dedicated people that would have deep values but also ready to speak with their wallet.
In his case, there are 2 ways to make him sustainable IMO:
- taking some money from unrelated sponsors as he mentioned, like tabletop games or bag-packs or alike
- making his own product (if thatās even a possibility)
Because YTās ADsense will never be sufficient and people are far more ready to pay for a service/good product rather than be a donator (from which you only send a political message, that doesnāt solve any of your problems).
Hence why, having a big YT channel is only 1 part of the equation but it should be a vector and not the promised land of financial stability.
Also, the current society doesnāt value strong principles and values that much. While most people could understand the benefits of some software/hardware quite easily.[1]
I do love what Wolfgang is doing and Iām fine ignoring some potential conflict of interest by just skipping over the sections. I think that a company like PCBway would be a good sponsor but at the same time, you never know what could be revealed the next week and the damage of promoting a company would already be doneā¦ 
On the other end, Cleo is doing some amazing content that is optimistic and very well done. Yet, she also needs to be sustainable to pay all the crew that she has meaning that she indeed interviewed Jensen, Mark etc.
I havenāt even clicked on those videos because I know that they are not āoptimistic scienceā but more of a āoptimistic company sales speechā. Which is a fine line because promoting a company trying to solve a social problem (nice move in itself), yet I wonāt call Nvidia a philanthropic company[2]. 
I didnāt follow Techlore closely enough over the years to have an opinion so Iāll refrain from talking about him.
I love THOās stance on not putting all your eggs into 1 single basket regarding Proton too. And I donāt like lots of politics but Proton looks like it is constantly in the middle of it for some reason[3].
Which is quite saddening because Proton could just be our wholesome PCBway for privacy. Yet it looks like some drama is always around the corner with them. I donāt want to start/continue a debate about that company, more concerned about THOās situation tbhā¦
In the end, there are a few kinds of YT channels:
- getting ADsense money only because spamming negativity, fear and drama (easy to make clickbaity thumbnails and endless stream of daily content)
- people that try to preserve their integrity as much as they can with some relevant to their audience products salesman speech
- people that achieved to mix a YT audience [4] and are able to be sustainable without too much costs like Everything Smart Home?
To top all of this, some people just gave up and sold their audience to a private equity (or some AI hype company) with a down the hill quality, like Fireship.
Diversifying your income resources also sounds like the only healthy way to go, like some donations, some part time job for a company, ADsense, your own product etc. But that also requires a lot of knowledge across a lot of different fields and be known in the industry. 
Moreover, you cannot be popular with your values only, otherwise someone like Gamersnexus or Louis Rossman would be billionaires from my POV. ā©ļø
THO did a good job with his interview with Tuta on that regard asking hard questions. ā©ļø
I know there are plenty of posts on the forum about them but I do honestly not want to spend my time reading those in detail, they do a decent product at the end of the day and that is fine with me ā©ļø
that is not shadow-banned ā©ļø
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I think there are multiple reasons why he is struggling. His refusal to do sponsorships is one of them. But another key one is that THO is very bold with criticism of Big Tech companies, which is why they get demonetized or completely removed. Linus Tech Tips (LTT) got their video about degoogling removed after it went viral within 24 hours. LTT is a huge channel. If THO was as big as LTT, I definitely think he would get in more trouble because of what his says about Big Tech.
Unrelated sponsors can still be a conflict of interest
Taking sponsors that have nothing to do with your channelās topic is a good way to shield yourself from potential conflicts of interests, but the risk is not gone. There are popular YouTube sponsors that are considered to be terrible and morally bankrupt companies by a lot of people, such as BetterHelp or Honey. When the YouTubers who are sponsored by them get informed by their users about what these companies are up to, they often donāt react.
Few influencers have the courage to sever a relationship.
Established Titles
I remember when Established Titles was exposed for being a scam. I am not gonna lie, I was among those who actually believed that for $20 you could buy a tiny piece of Scottish land and officially be a Lord or Lady. I never paid for it, but I believed it was true. 
When Established Titles were exposed for being a scam, quite of few of the channels who were sponsored by them immediately reacted by saying it was a lie, and that Established Titles was a good company. They didnāt even look into the claims they were being made. They locked their comments and didnāt let anyone mention their sponsors on their videos.
Thankfully, more channels who were sponsored by them realized the truth and severed their relationship, but a lot of them stayed silent. That goes to show how a conflict of interest can make an influencer deny the truth because they donāt want to lose their income. Itās understandable, but itās not right.
THO has a tough decision to make
I would not hold it against THO is he took in sponsors that have nothing to do with what he covers on his channel. But the risk of a conflict of interest will still be there, even if it is lesser.
I think selling merch is definitely worth exploring, but that still requires spending some money first.
On the flip side, Marques Brownlee is not a journalist, but he has a huge audience. He reviews tech every week on his channel, so I am sure that he has some ethics about how he does them. But he doesnāt feel the responsibility of asking hard questions to the powerful people he talks to.
Yes, he is good at what heās doing but thatās pretty much all, he doesnāt want to take any risks. Even when he tried to create his own app, didnāt go that wellā¦so I guess heāll just play it low like he did for the past decade and be nice to everybody.
Which is also fine I guess, you donāt need to have strong opinions all the time. 
The only one I can think of right is is when Joanna Stern of WSJ interviewed Craig Federighi about the failure of Apple Intelligence
Oh, I forgot to watch that one. Sounds like an amazing one with no pre-planned answers. Quite curious now especially given the disaster Appleās AI is.
It may not be the best communication, but making a whole thing about it seems bit overreacting to me.
I guess it all depends on how long is the wait. Did THO wait 3 days or 30?
Iād say that after a given amount of time, itās fair to call it ghosting especially if the initial exchanges were quick. But asking for an interview with a higher person at the company is indeed harder than your go-to planned and oiled process of having a sponsorship I think.
I wouldnāt mind watching a video where THO is asking for help, pretty much what this video is about. No specifically about Proton but maybe Iām wrong?
LTT is a huge channel. If THO was as big as LTT, I definitely think he would get in more trouble because of what his says about Big Tech.
He carries his name well I guess.
Being a critic rather than a people-pleaser is always a harder role.
Itās unfortunate but thatās what he chose with his channel, too late to 180 degree turn now.
BetterHelp or Honey
Never heard of any drama about BetterHelp but it is by default some touchy subject to begin with. Regarding Honey, itās unfortunate but yeah just a few stood up to themselves and cut bridges.
Hopefully, not all sponsors are corrupt and nobody is shielded against that oneā¦
Established Titles
Haha, some common sense before committing to accept a sponsorship is required.
Not gonna be sad for people who sold that kind of product, itās on them.
Selling some product should be a serious concern where you do commit your reputation and believe in it. Established Titles looks quite a meme tbh.
I guess that some people are very short in terms of finances sometimes that they donāt have a choice and accept any kind of low quality product.
I think selling merch is definitely worth exploring
Merch can also be a bit low quality white-labelled basic stuff but might be a good enough start for most supporters.
I indeed do not expect people to build their own screwdriver or alike. LOTS of money upfront and lot of logistics etcā¦
I do also love supporting a cause, getting something physical out of it and allowing my favorite creators to being able to pay their bills/employees.
No one is arguing for a 180. Even if I donāt always agree with him, I personally love the kind of videos that THO makes. I like that heās not here to make friends. He is there to inform and his videos are always very well documented. If thereās one thing I appreciate about THO and that very few YouTubers and podcasters do, is that he documents everything he says. He shows you all his sources in the description. I get sometimes annoyed when podcasters and YouTubers mention a research paper, an author, or a book, and they donāt link to it in the description.
I have exchanged with one of my favorite journalists, asking them if they could please include their sources in the description, as they mention so many. They kindly responded by telling me that it would take too much effort for them to do that, because hey are a solo operation. I can appreciate that, but there are definitely content creators who have staff and can afford to include sources, so I hope that they at least do.
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The video was quite unspectacular. I donāt think it is weird to not get an answer for an interview and the declined sponsorship was not necessarily the cause for being ghosted.
He has got a point with influencers selling out. I understand that ads are the way of earning money on YouTube, but it is just odd profit from a solution to the problem you tell your audience about.
I watched Tech Lore a few years ago and eventually I was disappointed. Not because of sponsorships or clickbait, he just seemed to lack competence. I had the impression that Tech Loreās research is reading news articles and talking about it (I can do that too, no need to watch a video about it), instead of questioning claims and auditing software himself.
The privacy community is really annoying, as there are naive people buying āprivacyā phones missing years of security updates, and paranoid individuals claiming all hardware is backdoored and Proton is a honeypotā¦
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I think itās weird to suddenly ghost someone when you were actively in conversation with them for weeks. We donāt know for sure why Proton didnāt respond, but I think itās fair to say that their timing was weird, and that it likely has something to do with THO declining a sponsorship.
I disagree. Iāve learned a ton from them and continue to do so. Having dedicated sources that exclusively comment on privacy news is extremely useful.
I donāt think itās as easy as you think it is. Most people donāt have the time to do that. Having one or more go to places to get your privacy news is very useful. And itās absolutely not true that TechLore doesnāt bring any critical thinking to their commentary. They do it all the time.
I donāt know what you mean by auditing, but most people in the privacy or tech community are not professional auditors, including journalists who work for big tech publications. That is a specialized skill. But TechLore has reviewed and compared a lot of different services over the years, and theyāve done very well.
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Yes it is weird, but that does not mean Proton deliberately ignored THO. Another explanation could be that the department for sponsorships or whatever assigned the case to the CEO and it takes a while to be processed? That would still be bad communication, but no intentional ghosting.
Thatās the point. It is important that people you listen to know what they are talking about. Many journalists and YouTubers have no technical expertise and spread bullshit. I donāt care about random tech magazines that claim specific Android custom ROMs are secure and private, while experts examine the software and come to a different conclusion.
I wonder if Tech Lore verifies e2ee products he advertises have working encryption, or if he reads the press kit and superficially checks the reputation of the company online.
Just my two cents here, I think there is a genuine misunderstanding of what many privacy content creators could do.
At the end of the day, there is a massive information gap in this type of field. To do the level of verification you mentioned, we would need security researchers with strong academic or technical backgrounds in Computer Science and Cryptography. There are not a lot of people with these credentials that care for video content production.
If I recall correctly, Henry/TechLore started his channel when he was quite young and it blew up from there. We canāt possibly expect him and the vast majority of creators out there to verify this information beyond reading what other people researched. At the end of the day, there is a genuine need to translate primary sources into a format that is accessible. Hence why we have secondary sources.
That being said, nobody here should take content creators seriously without doing research. Would you trust a random person who happens to be interested in privacy and cryptocurrency? While some may have generally good takes, a lot of them do make mistakes. Other are quite malicious about it and overstate their credentials. That is when it becomes harmful.
So please, read a good academic paper and learn something for yourself. Maybe you can be that source one day if you become really interested in security research. Consider content creators as a bridge but not an authoritative source out there.
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One thing I didnāt observe there was the date on the last email he sent to Proton.
It may also be that the person he was speaking to simply hasnāt gotten back to him regarding an interview, or there may be some other reason theyāre not interested in doing so. THO is a relatively small YT channel so whether they would have done an interview irrespective of the offer is still something not known.
A lot of those customer outreach people will always give āoh sure we can look into thatā kind of replies even if they really have no intention of doing so, or it is stopped further up the managerial decision tree.
I agree thatās why I tagged the Proton Team to give their side. However, on the first glance it does seem suspicious. THO is someone I respect in the community so I am willing to believe what he is saying. And while his channel may be āsmall" in the wider sense, he is known in the community.
However, I donāt want to speculate and add to the divisive drama and would appreciate response from the Proton Team. Until then, I think the resulting and speculative drama is just gonna add more harm and distraction in the community.
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From working in an overlapping industry on the legal and PR side, I can say access journalism exists, but itās usually nowhere near what people imagine, or think it is. Iāve had to verify plenty of things over the years, and not once has a tech company (or any company for that matter) told those we work with, āyou canāt ask this.ā They do send press releases, talking points, and internal notes about what theyāre allowed to discuss, but Iāve never seen anyone demand to prescreen questions. Not saying it never happens, but in my experience with a lot of major companies, that hasnāt occurred.
Iām also going go out on a limb here and say 99% Youtubers likely arenāt card carrying members of SPJ, and theyāre definitely not following any formal code of ethics. Some are armchair reporters at best. Even so, I donāt buy the idea that Proton is ghosting them out of spite.
Silence happens all the time in professional communication, especially when trying to schedule interviews and podcast. In my experience, thatās actually extremely common. Sweet Jesus the stories I could tell you guys about attempting to herd cats on something like this, is infinite. One person responds for a while, then stops, and itās not some big plot. Right now it feels like people are drifting into conspiracy theory territory without anything tangible for those assumptions.
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THO has a long history of rage baiting and trying to pick fights for attention.
This is more of the same and best ignored.
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Thatās not what I meant by access journalism. What I meant is that there are incentives at play when a news outlet or journalist has frequent / exclusive access to high profile sources. Most of the time itās not explicit. It becomes more explicit when the outlet does something the subject doesnāt like. A lot of journalists have been fired or demoted for focusing on stories that make politicians and companies look bad.
To me, thatās irrelevant. If you have a large audience, you have a responsibility. A random person with 10 subscribers saying the Earth is flat is not the same as a YouTuber with 100K or 1M subs doing the same thing. Especially if that YouTuber is considered an authority in a given subject.
IMO, close to 500K is not small.
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Keyword here is relative. In comparison to LTT and mkbhd, THO is small, compared to our channel, he is enormous, its all a matter of perspective ;).
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Indeed. I just donāt think 500K is negligible, even if channels with 20M subs exist. Anything above 100K is significant influence. There are YouTubers with 20K subs that consistently get high profile guests and are not part of any major outlet. I donāt know how they do it.
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You would be surprised how far you can come when you simply reach out, ask nicely, and have an interesting hook or idea. Not all folks are only in it for major exposure :).
Yes