I think it depends on who……both flashlight company and reviewer. Real users like here on BLF, generally you get an initial review and then if there are problems those shake out later as more people use them…where positive reviews may change with added notes or general opinion/comments until everyone knows. Then there is the whole “reviewer circuit” thing where everyone is hooked up for free lights. I take those with a grain of salt, mostly because I have heard more than one handful of stories that…well geez, makes you start to distrust everyone and approach lights with more skepticism than you might have otherwise. Really, some of the insider stories are just atrocious - sometimes it’s the companies or just the company reps, sometimes it’s the reviewer themselves. And then as a subset of that circuit-group you have the monetization of youtube. For people that actually make more than a few bucks a month and have become addicted to it or may actually use it as significant income, that just clouds everything.
Short story: negative often gets swept under the rug whether it’s aggressively or quietly and it’s all either to do with “face” or money. I don’t think that’s a problem on BLF but in the big world at large, the flashlight biz behind the scenes is ultra competitive dog-eat-dog and there have been an awful lot of people that got hurt, angry, or disenfranchised in one way or another all because of the Truth…negatives (when they are present).
Most recent shining example that comes to mind was the blowup on Flashaholic’s Lumintop FWAA review. He wasn’t exactly scathing in the video but brought up a lot of negatives (partially based on a light that wasn’t assembled well and partially maybe because he didn’t understand what was going on with it). Lumintop was quickly scathing behind the scenes, apparently, demanding that he remove the review, etc, etc. He rightfully took issue with this, although to their credit, sorta, he apparently didn’t contact them before recording and publishing the review, to give them a chance to explain or replace the light if it was indeed a dud. Looks like he changed the description and some comments are gone from the stream, but it was initially a dogpile that I’m sure made Lumintop’s skin crawl with embarrassment (and for the Chinese that is a whole ball of yarn…).
I have one friend who had a small review channel and blog, hooked up with Olight and a couple others. My gosh the things he had to share….really unfortunate and really ugly, depending on which company. He threw in the towel and it was sad for him because he really loved lights but one honest review about a light with problems and a couple of less-than-glowing comments on other light reviews and he caught a lot of flak, got nixed from the circuit and I guess “they” all talk and possibly even have some sort of blacklist. He gave up on lights altogether and doesn’t even want to talk about them or look at new ones now. But he didn’t want to get caught up in a circle of deception, either, so he’s happier for that aspect.
Personally, I like critical reviews and I can weed out the nitpicks from the legitimate issues since I know about lights, right? But to the general public and especially the manufacturers, any negativity just has great potential to collapse the house of cards in the blink of an eye. Sometimes I think I see some of the communist ethos coming through in vendors’ behavior these days, trying to control what people see/hear. I don’t like it. So long live the hard ass reviewers who point out all of the points, good and bad. And companies who get aggressive or deceptive can just take a hike…in the dark, without a good light. 
