How a Chair Exposed the Worst YouTubers transcript

I believe this chair right here revealed how massive YouTubers, like your average consumer and Matthew Moniz, hide their sponsorships, hide affiliate links, and even sometimes view bought their videos to defraud money out of you, as well as the brands that they work with. This is not my typical content, but because it involves chairs and YouTube, two things that I love, I felt like I had to talk about [music] it. I didn't reach out to any of these guys for a comment because if I did, it would be really easy for them to cover up everything I'm about to show here.

Also, the damage is done. Even if they say, "Oh, it was just a mistake. Uh you know, someone else's fault. Our uploader, we have some guy to do it. He made a mistake." >> [music] >> It's not like they're going to give back the money they earned illegally. Allegedly illegally. The purpose of this video is to help you all identify when these shady tactics are being used by YouTubers and to advocate for those that are operating with integrity and keeping it honest.

Please do not harass anyone in this video, and everything in this video is my opinion, but I will give evidence to back them up. Let's get honest. >> [music] >> In June of 2025, a brand new company, Libre Novo, launched their Omni Chair via Kickstarter, and it was a massive success. They raised over $10 million, and a major part of their strategy was to sponsor YouTubers and other creators. Because this is a chair review channel, they naturally approached me, and I told them that I would only accept a sponsorship on three conditions.

One is that I must be able to test the product thoroughly to make sure it's an actually good product. Two is that I must be able to disclose honestly, without any kind of hindrance, the cons of the chair. And three, I must be able to talk about the riskiness of a Kickstarter. Libre Novo agreed to all my terms, and they stayed true to their word. When I submitted my draft that had criticisms about the armrest, about the seat density, about the lumbar support, they did not ask for a single revision.

I tell you this not to say, "Ooh, look at me. I'm amazing." That that's not why. I'm telling you this because when I work with Libre Novo, they never asked me to do anything shady, and they never asked me to hide anything. Therefore, the stuff I'm about to show you, from the shady all the way to straight-up illegal, it seems like it was the decisions made solely by the YouTubers. I believe the worst offender is Your Average Consumer with 3.4 million subscribers and later on we'll talk about channels like Matthew Moniz, Kevin the Tech Ninja, and another Twitter review channel BTOD TV.

But first, let's start with Your Average Consumer. I believe Your Average Consumer hid his sponsorship, hid his affiliate links, and even view botted his video to get more money out of the brand. Your Average Consumer was one of the first handful of people in the world to have this chair and make a video on it. It was during the Kickstarter period, so keep that in mind. Now, I watched this video and as I was watching it I'm thinking, wait, is this video sponsored?

So, I watched it again and there was no sponsorship disclosure. I watched it again, no sponsorship disclosure, and I'm thinking, wait a minute. Something's not right here. Now, as a general rule of thumb, if a YouTuber makes a video outside of their typical niche, it is probably sponsored. #robotvacuums Paired with the fact that he's one of the first people in the world with a chair that's not even released because again at the time it was in Kickstarter phase, I'm thinking, look, this video has to be sponsored.

I'm not a lawyer, but based on research, a YouTuber must disclose a sponsorship in two ways. One is written in the description you must show that the video was sponsored [snorts] or whatever the sponsor was. And the second is that you must show on screen somehow that the video is sponsored either verbally or you can hit the check mark in the YouTube video upload [snorts] settings that will show that includes paid promotion tag on the top left screen.

Now, I know a lot of YouTubers who are worried that clicking that option is going to mess with the algorithm, which is why many opt to use the vocal feature and state to say this video is sponsored by blah blah blah blah. I watched the video again and I didn't see a sponsorship disclosure anywhere. I watched it again and again and again and finally I realized why I didn't see it. It's because he buried the sponsorship disclosure.

You see, Your Average Consumer's video is 17 minutes and 24 seconds long. Do you know when he disclosed his sponsorship? In the last 12 seconds of the video at 17 minute and 12 seconds. But that about wraps it up. Shout out to Libre Novo for sponsoring today's video. I missed it because I assumed the video was over and I exited out. It's not just a me thing either. This is a universal truth that when the video is towards over, everybody leaves.

If you ask any YouTuber for their videos retention graph, which shows you how much of your audience is still watching, there is always a significant drop off towards the tail end because it's like the credits in a movie. Who the heck sticks around? Like maybe like a handful of freaks or two. When you look at the video's description, there is no sponsorship disclosure anywhere. Does this sound like he's trying to hide a sponsorship?

Let me know what you all think in the comments below, but according to the FTC, you must clearly disclose a sponsorship and it doesn't seem like your average consumer would meet that bar and it seems like he may have broken a law. That's not the only law your average consumer may have broken. Let's talk now about hiding affiliate links. You see this long link in his video description? This link takes you to a site called Kickbooster.

Now, Kickbooster is an affiliate tracking website for Kickstarters, which means that this link is most likely an affiliate link. If you're not familiar with affiliate links, it means that if someone were to click that link and make a purchase, then the owner of that link would earn a commission. The link is now dead because the Kickstarter has ended, but you can see that when you click it, it does take you to kickbooster.com.

Now, if this link is an affiliate link and there's no disclosure anywhere that it's an affiliate link, then your average consumer has broken the law again because the FTC states clearly that you must disclose if you have an affiliate relationship with a company. Now, this might be an earnest mistake. Maybe he just forgot to add it, but I looked through his most recent videos and everywhere he had affiliate links, there was not a single affiliate link disclosure anywhere.

In some of your average consumer's videos, you may see an affiliate disclosure next to pictures here in the description. However, that disclosure applies to YouTube's own shopping platform, not to his individual links down here. >> According to the FTC in the USA, you must disclose when your video is sponsored and you must disclose if you earn commission from your links. Not doing so is against the law. Beyond the legality of it all, here's why it matters to you.

I use affiliate links on this channel, that's how this channel survives. And I've had people tell me, "You are dishonest. We cannot trust you because you use affiliate links." Now, I would obviously disagree with that. Just as a matter of fact, here is a chair called the Habada X7. I stand to make $150 per sale of this chair. And this is what I had to say about it. I think it fails in its most basic function of being a good chair.

I'm also an affiliate with Razer and Elgato and they pay high commission rates for their chairs. Great brands to get chummy with, right? Here's what I said about their chairs. And so, because of that, I can't fully recommend the Elgato Embrace when the Clatina Mellet exists and the Hayworth Soji exists. Man, this thing just doesn't I I I I would not recommend this one. While I disagree that using affiliate links makes me somehow dishonest, it's not up to me.

It's up to you. It's your decision and you should have all the facts before you decide who you can trust and who you can't trust. So, as much as I want to stand here and go like, "Oh, I promise I'm honest." it's not up to me, it's up to you. And if a YouTuber is hiding their affiliate links, they're not giving you all the facts you need to make a decision and they could even trick you into thinking, "Oh, this person is somehow more trustworthy because they don't have affiliate links." when as a matter of fact, they do.

They just didn't disclose it. We're going to see many, many YouTubers hiding their affiliate links, but more on that later. Let's move now to my final point for your average consumer. You guys thought view botting on Twitch was bad? It is rampant on YouTube and I believe your average consumer view botted the hell out of his video to get more money out of sponsors. Your average consumer's video on the Libre Nova Omni supposedly has 500,000 views.

Here's a couple problems with that. The first is look how many likes this video has. 1,200 likes. That is an incredibly low ratio. If you Google, what is the average view to like ratio on a YouTube video, it says, "Generally speaking, an average rate of likes is 40 likes for every thousand views." It seems like review channels have even lower like ratios, averaging about 20 likes for every thousand views. That means on a video that got 500,000 views, it should have 10,000 likes. 10,000 likes 1,200 likes Contrary to what I look like, I'm not very good at math, but the math ain't mathing.

Using the average views to like ratio, this video should actually have somewhere in the ballpark of 60,000 views, which is a far cry from 500,000. Let's dig even deeper. If you put this video inside of youstats.com, you're going to see a weird graph. This graph goes skyrocket up and then it just flatlines and dies. This is an abnormal graph. You see, any YouTube video, a real YouTube video with real people views, what you should see is a slow decay, right?

I mean, this is common sense. If a video has 10,000 views the next day, it's not going to get 20 views the next day. It's going to go from 10,000 to probably 8,000 to 4,000 to 2,000 to 1,000 100 and you should see a gradual decaying of the video in a more rounded slope. If you see sharp sharp, that means these views aren't real and nobody else is watching the video, right? That's what it means. If you want to see what a legitimate graph looks like, here's a video from Gamers Nexus, who is arguably one of the most trusted people on YouTube.

You can see that the video has a strong start because it gets pushed out to subscribers and then slowly those videos those views start to die off and you can see a rounded curve at the top. If you think maybe it's because it's a chair video, here's my video graph. You can see again that natural decay. A lot of people are interested at first and then slowly that video dies over time with a nice rounded graph, not a sharp point and then a flat line.

If you think maybe this is just a one-off thing or those who are in the industry might think, "Oh, maybe it's a boosted video." Remember that I also did a sponsorship with Liber Novus, and they never boosted my video. The contract I received didn't have any language whatsoever about boosting or white-listing, and we also found multiple videos on your average consumer's page, recent videos that all have very unusual viewing activity, as well as a low view-to-like ratio.

View botting is clearly against YouTube's terms of service. So, why would a YouTuber do it? To squeeze more money out of sponsors. We're talking a difference of tens of thousands of dollars if a video gets 500,000 views versus 60,000 views. Brands have limited budgets, and I know so many channels that deserve a shot, so many channels that deserve a sponsorship, but fraudulent behavior like this prevents them from ever getting a cut of that pie.

The next massive creator we'll look at is Matthew Moniz with almost a million subs. He was also sponsored by Liber Novus, and in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, like he literally said it so fast, he said this. Literally massages you while you work. I had to partner with Liber Novus on this video. Now, the Liber Novus What the does partnered mean? Does partnered mean they sent you the product? Does it mean you're part of their affiliate program?

Does it mean they paid you and this is a sponsored video? What does partner even mean? I think this is shady, and I'm not the only one. Someone needs to give this hamburger person a medal because they said it better than I could. When you go to the description, this caption is AI slop. He left the prompt in here as well, and it says, "Video in partnership with Liber Novus." Again, what does that even mean? Now, Matthew Moniz is Canadian, and those Canadians be crazy.

So, I decided to look up, maybe Canadians have different laws, maybe they got different language for what this stuff means, and nope, it says, "Look, you need to clearly disclose what that relationship was." So, what does partnered mean? Are you guys in a relationship? Like, you guys going out, going steady? Like, what what what what is partnered? Moving down to the link, this link looks pretty affiliate-y, right? It's got his name at the end of it, but there is no affiliate disclosure anywhere.

So, if it's an affiliate link, again, he is breaking the law here, Canadian law, by not disclosing that affiliate link relationship. And again, this is not just a one-off. I looked at some of his other videos where he has products that he has affiliate links for, and none of them have been disclosed. Did Matthew Moniz view bomb his video? It's hard to tell because for some reason view stats gives us a really zoomed out look on his graph, so you can't even see what's going on.

Now, the like ratio is a little bit low, but it could be because people saw Hamburger's comment and decided not to like the video. What I did do though was I looked at some of Matthew's most recent videos, and they all looked fairly normal, but then I looked at some videos that had really high view counts on topics that I thought were pretty boring, and you'll see they have a very unusual view graph. Like look at this one heck of a graph right here.

Here's another video from 9 months ago where he covered an Acer laptop, and again, it has a very unusual view graph with a really low [snorts] like ratio. Moving on now to Kevin the Tech Ninja with around 200,000 subs. Now, Kevin the Tech Ninja received his Liberal Nova Omni very early, made a video on the Omni very early. Uh Matthew Moniz was a little bit later after it launched, but Kevin the Tech Ninja received it very, very early in the Kickstarter phase.

Now, he properly discloses on screen with that check button in the box, so it shows includes paid promotion on the top left of the video. So, this video is all about this chair, they sent this chair out and sponsored this video, but when you scroll down to his description, there's no mention of a sponsorship anywhere there. In my opinion, that's miles better than the other two. Now, moving on to the affiliate link. Again, this link, when you click it, it takes you to Kick Booster.

Again, the Kickstarter has ended, which is why it just takes you to kickbooster.com. Kick Booster is an affiliate tracking link for Kickstarters, so it seems like this is an affiliate link, but there is no disclosure anywhere. Now, you might think maybe he forgot to add it. Well, this is a common practice for Kevin the Tech Ninja. When I look at other videos where he clearly has affiliate links, there are no affiliate disclosures anywhere.

So, did Kevin the Tech Ninja view-botted his video on the Liberator Omni? I think this is probably the most clear indication that it was view-botted. If you look, his video has 30,000 views, and yet it only has 100 likes. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Looking at his viewership graph, again, you see that spike and then a complete fall off of views, which is again a strong indicator of view-botting. I found a couple of recent videos from Kevin the Tech Ninja that have very unusual viewer graphs paired with a really low like ratio.

Moving on to fellow chair review channel BTOD TV, these guys were also sponsored by Liberator Omni, and if you look at their video, they properly disclosed it by clicking the check mark inside of the video settings. So, that's why you see includes paid promotion at the top left of their video in the first 10 seconds of the video. However, when you scroll down to their description box, there is no indication that the video was sponsored.

However, I think BTOD TV's affiliate disclosure, or lack thereof, is the most egregious of everyone in this video. If you look at their link in the description here, it looks pretty darn affiliaty. However, when you look at their affiliate disclosure, guess who's not there? Liberator Omni. If their link is an affiliate link, then I think what they're doing is worse than just not disclosing anything at all. Because what they're saying is, we affiliate with certain brands, but Liberator Omni is not one of them.

It's possible that this is an honest mistake, but they made seven more videos on the Liberator Omni, and so it's possible that people purchased it thinking that they have no affiliate relationship with Liberator Omni. Also, this is not the first time they've excluded brands from their list of affiliated companies. Here's a video they did with Anthros, but you can see in their affiliate disclosure, Anthros is not mentioned even though that is an affiliate link with Anthros.

And then here's another video where they did with Steelcase and Hayworth as well. They mentioned that they're an affiliate with all these other brands, but guess who's not mentioned? Hayworth and Steelcase. But these links are indeed affiliate links. If a YouTuber has gotten to the point where they need to trick their audience by hiding sponsorships and hiding affiliate links, or if they need to buy a bunch of views because they can't figure out how to make a video entertaining enough to get people to watch, then as my younger friends say, it's time to put the fries in the bag.

Until next time, stay honest.