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Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

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Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asrock was so annoyed being called out as "the mainboards to avoid", that they stepped up their game quite a lot. Their products are quite decent.

Fun fact: Asrock was a subsidiary* of ASUS, and its purpose was to specifically produce cheap but worse motherboards. (Just a random fun fact, not implying its product quality now) *EDIT: I mean ASUS funded it and owned it by the time. I'm not sure if "subsidiary" is the correct legal term here.

asrock hasn't been a subsidiary of ASUS for 20+ years, but its complicated because they're owned by Pegasus. Pegasus was created in a restructering of AsusTek, so its hard to say whether or not asus still owns them or not but at arms length. They're both companies that were spun off but the corporate structure is complicated.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Asrock was a subsidiary* of ASUS, and its purpose was to specifically produce cheap but worse motherboards. (Just a random fun fact, not implying its product quality now) *EDIT: I mean ASUS funded it and owned it by the time. I'm not sure if "subsidiary" is the correct legal term here.

Do you have a reference for that?

Its sort of in their wikipedia. Pegasus was the production arm of asustek, was spun off into their own company, but asus is still the largest single shareholder but doesn't have a majority ownership. Pegasus owns Asrock.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Linus Tech Tips, the disclaimer was unintentional, they intend to honor the warranty, and they're working on removing the disclaimer.

>working on removing the disclaimer This is a sentence on a website. If they wanted it would be gone in 5 minutes. You don't need to "work on it".

that sentence on a website is an indicator of internal corporate policy -- it's not the policy itself.

things must change internally before you express to the public that the change has occurred.

Just because one can open notepad.exe and delete a line in five minutes doesn't indicate that that's the speed of business.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#55

Asus is currently in a bad spot, as they released a BIOS update as Beta, which should address an issue where their boards would cause a CPU to explode. They did, however, leave the usual "this is beta, install on your own risk, this will void your warranty" disclaimer on, which currently backfires, as it seems as if Asus does not want to take responsibility. It is unknown if the statement was intentional , or just th…

You do understand that this drama is for enabling them to get more views? Dude literally has two side by side mountains of free asus gear and is crying. The white motherboard, he doesn't say he bought it, he says he "requested" it and goes on to cry that his request for free shit wasn't handled properly. I ended up blocking his channel because sensationalist BS on youtube needs to die.

I do understand that there are channels out there doing drama for the sake of drama. I do understand that, after over 6 years of following now, JayzTwoCents and especially GamersNexus are no such channels. Furthermore, I do understand that if you have a business relationship with a sponsor, you request products which you will then show on your channel for the sake of reviewing. You are not getting it for free. Companies do get a review or visibility in return. That's how I do understand "sponsoring" and "marketing". So do you?

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Asrock was a subsidiary* of ASUS, and its purpose was to specifically produce cheap but worse motherboards. (Just a random fun fact, not implying its product quality now) *EDIT: I mean ASUS funded it and owned it by the time. I'm not sure if "subsidiary" is the correct legal term here.

asrock hasn't been a subsidiary of ASUS for 20+ years, but its complicated because they're owned by Pegasus. Pegasus was created in a restructering of AsusTek, so its hard to say whether or not asus still owns them or not but at arms length. They're both companies that were spun off but the corporate structure is complicated.

Yes, you're right. My use of "subsidiary" might not be legally correct here. I meant ASUS founded ASRock and owned it.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#57
So does the entire group of “tech reviews” creators on YouTube. Finding an actual review of a product has become impossible, since most videos are just the guy basically reading the product landing page with some nice angles on camera. Ban this and the entire category disappears from YT.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#58
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamation means lying. You can buy negative reviews of your competition where nobody lies. There are certainly a lot of interesting subtleties and implications here though.

In the US, truthfulness of a statement is an affirmative defense to libel/defamation, but believe it or not, that is not the case everywhere. Specifically, it is not the case in the UK.

Not sure why people believe this so frequently; it’s completely wrong. Truth is an absolute defence under both systems, though there are significant differences around burden of proof and importance of intent.

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#59
post #44

Asus is currently in a bad spot, as they released a BIOS update as Beta, which should address an issue where their boards would cause a CPU to explode. They did, however, leave the usual "this is beta, install on your own risk, this will void your warranty" disclaimer on, which currently backfires, as it seems as if Asus does not want to take responsibility. It is unknown if the statement was intentional , or just th…

According to Linus Tech Tips, the disclaimer was unintentional, they intend to honor the warranty, and they're working on removing the disclaimer.

How does he know the disclaimer was unintentional vs. 'putting it in there to see if we can get away with it?'

Re: Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

#60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Linus Tech Tips, the disclaimer was unintentional, they intend to honor the warranty, and they're working on removing the disclaimer.

>working on removing the disclaimer This is a sentence on a website. If they wanted it would be gone in 5 minutes. You don't need to "work on it".

You clearly never have worked in a large company. Changing a simple word can take weeks before it even goes to the translation team. Changing a disclaimer involves legal so expect a month of committee meetings before anything new is proposed.
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