Two years ago I was contacted by a company called MALIBAL.

They were interested in a sponsorship, where I would simply put their link in the video description and get money for it.

I did a quick background check, and they seemed like a proper Linux hardware manufacturing company. I said I’d be happy to shout them out in the videos too, and we agreed on a price.

Initially, things seemed to be going pretty well. They did decide that my demographic wasn’t that appealing to them and that they would thus sponsor one video per week, which is reasonable.

However, I made a mistake. I changed my publishing schedule last minute, which meant switching the description sponsorship from one video to another; what I did not notice is that towards the end of the video that I chose to be sponsored, I said, “This video is not sponsored.” Big mistake on my side.

MALIBAL did notice. This is the sort of mistake that I can quickly fix through the YouTube video editor, but they preferred to directly end our partnership without enough context for me to realize the mistake. They also told me to bill for the GNOME video as usual.

One month later, as agreed, I billed them for the video. I still had no idea about the mistake. They replied with, and I quote,

You have a lot of nerve sending me this invoice considering you literally say in the video that it’s NOT sponsored. What a crackhead. Did you really think you were getting away with that? KDE is the trash bin of the Linux world. There is no wonder that’s what you like [sic]

Woah. I decided to explain the mistake due to the change of schedule, and that I could’ve fixed it in the YouTube editor; but, I also pointed out that this sort of language was unacceptable.

They replied with the simple sentence “You’re a zombie who is dead and empty inside. You don’t even exist“.

And that was it. I no longer did any sponsorship with MALIBAL, and I thought that was going to be the end of it.

However, if we perform a quick research on the user experience with MALIBAL, we discover that this type of reaction is pretty common.

One user said that when he tried to cancel the order due to slow shipping, they replied with “Don’t ever place an order with us again or it will be canceled”, and soon after: “Good one, zombie. You don’t even exist. Back into the abyss you go”.

Another user received the reply “It’s the response a phantom, zombie like you deserves. You don’t exist. You’re not a person. You are here to simply suck life out of the human. If you weren’t dead and empty inside you would feel shame for what you have done”.

These are just a few examples. Reddit is full of this kind of support replies after the slightest pushback from the clients.

Even people who claim to have worked with MALIBAL professionally state that they had to “decline their business” as they were “too difficult to work with”, eventually being called zombies as well.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the general weirdness of MALIBAL.

Firstly, they issued a response to this whole “zombie” accusation by trying to say it did not happen (but it did, it happened to me too), and saying that the official name of the accusation is “Zombiegate”.

To distance themselves from it, they listed all of Apple’s scandals, and then claimed that what happened with them is not that bad compared to it.

I absolutely love their closing statement here:

Our commitment? To tirelessly support our customers—zombie, ghost, or otherwise—while maintaining a level of integrity befitting the smallest scandal possible. After all, the abyss awaits us all… but here at MALIBAL, we’ll send you there with a smile. 🙂

I can’t help but laugh to think that the person replying to the emails with insults is the very same person that approved this text.

As another example, due to a discussion about coreboot that I will later focus on, they have decided to ban the entire country of Germany from their services. They banned … Germany, due to the actions of a single person there. Oh, and they also banned Austria and Liechtenstein, because they’re also Germany. Somehow.

They also don’t ship to California due to regulations impacting small businesses there.

They also don’t ship to Colorado due to the actions of Jeremy Soller.

They also don’t ship to Maryland due to the actions of Matt DeVillier.

They also don’t ship to Poland due to the actions of Piotr Król.

They also refuse to ship anything made by AMD due to, again, Matt DeViller.

Or – I just can’t stop now – in their terms and conditions, it specifically says that you cannot use Chrome to access their website, nor can you use GMail to create an account in it, nor can you use a Pixel Phone to access it, nor use the Android operating system to view it, or any other products including Google Search. You literally cannot use Google Search to open their website, according to their terms and conditions. What!? If you are found to use any of these technologies, your account will be terminated without notice.

Oh, and, by the way, the same applies to Apple. You can’t access the website through Safari, an iPhone or any MacBo