Comment by geerlingguy

Just to be clear, I've never taken a dime from Qualcomm, Apple, Raspberry Pi, etc—when I do take a sponsorship from any company I'm clear about it.

I always mark videos as sponsored if anything was provided (eg review samples) and not purchased. That never includes payments or editorial oversight, and equipment is either returned or shelved afterwards for future comparisons.

The only thing I accept money for is clearly demarcated ad integrations, like for Micro Center or Surfshark. See https://github.com/geerlingguy/youtube#sponsorships for details.

If I wanted to hype views I would not be sinking a few thousand hours into planning an event ;)