163
votes
Failures in accuracy, ethics and responsibility with Linus Tech Tips and LMG as a whole
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- Title
- The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
- Authors
- Gamers Nexus
- Duration
- 44:15
- Published
- Aug 14 2023
Was totally unaware of this since I only really dip into this stuff when i'm doing research on a product, but i'm sad to hear it. LTT has never been great, but it at least had the vibe of better than average and kinda meaning well (i'm always jaded about these things so trying to control for that).
GN however is well aware they've built a brand on their well documented accuracy and honesty, so there's not much to say other than "hope LTT gets their act together".
Sadly I don't really expect that? It's gotten to the size where I doubt they'll focus on that. There is probably some discussion of "ok we could slow down, but that's less money, so where are we cutting" that's uncomfortably hanging in the background to be charitable, but I don't doubt there's just some of the usual misaligned incentives between business and quality.
It really doesn't help that youtube being the platform for distribution just vastly encourages scummy behavior, so even well meaning actors are going to average towards worse practices or die out.
Yes, and also I feel like some people end up starting a company without having much knowledge about how to run a company to avoid terrible practices, and it all slips out from under them and then we end up with dumpster fires like rooster teeth or etc etc.
As someone who's helped dozens of new business owners, everyone who starts a company for the first time does so without knowing how to run a business. Most businesses fail in the first five years, we just never really see the ones that fail to thrive.
I'll pile on to this comment, as someone who's advised 100s of early-stage business operators. If you commit to building a huge company, then you'll become nearly obligated to operate in the maximise-revenue mode. Taking outside money (Angel, VC) is one step that puts you on this path. If however, you start with a plan to build a "tidy" business -- not a household name, not an IPO -- then chances of being able to learn to operate the business, and grow (at reasonable rates) and operate a small but profitable business -- those smaller operations are able to continue to operate in-line with the original dreams and ethics that were in play when the company was founded. Assuming the business makes it that far (starting a business is roughly a 95% fail rate).
Many, many, folks I've worked with over the years have expressed regret at taking the outside-money; or bringing the high-growth CEO to replace the founders (with the assumption the founders can focus on the core-value and the CEO will just "manage"). I've never seen it work a different way (n>2000). Once you join the "rat-race" you have to keep running.
I'm not saying don't ever take outside money -- I'm saying one needs to put very diligent guards in place -- perhaps even putting folks in adversarial roles -- to keep the true "heart" of the business.
I found your comment extremely interesting to read, especially this part. I’ve worked at one company that decided against growth to avoid outside pressure and I just left a company that did sell. The owners of the latter did it exactly for the reason you’re naming: to have more time to spend on the core value of the company. And also like you said: they’ve regretted that decision and left a year ago. Although that new CEO seemed to be on their side early on, it quickly evolved in pressure to improve revenue which made it impossible to do anything long term.
The company that decided to remain small, ended up in a better place. Although they had their own issues, mainly never getting out of the start-up mindset, they did stay true to their core beliefs. The company had a great family feel with employees that stayed 10+ years, and customers that enjoyed dealing with them.
It’s great to read the view of somebody that’s seen this more than just two times.
That's been my outsider impression, so it's helpful, if disheartening to hear it confirmed from someone with experience.
Do you have any advice for someone who will be launching a software business in the next few years? I've run a few small businesses before, only one of which was enough to pay for its own expenses, but this is a big step up in scale. Eventually, my partner and I know we will need to hire more staff, including management, but we both find the development more rewarding than the management aspect. We aren't looking to sell out, the product fills a gap in the market where there is an absence of solutions made with care and thought, and we have been compelled to try to make our best solution in this space. But I know we won't want to be doing business management for the rest of our lives. Have you seen any small businesses find ways to retain creator control and original values while still stepping back from (non-customer facing) larger management roles?
I will be meeting with chamber of commerce and advisors once we get closer to final viable software for launch, just curious if you've seen any successes along these lines!
Once you're not the CEO anymore, the traditional way to retain control of your business is to be on and retain majority control of the board of directors. This lets you get regular updates from the C suite and provide them guidance, even as your day to day position isn't formally at the top of the heap.
Edit: I will say, I hope you're really close to and in alignment with your partner. Co-ownership of a business is as potentially significant a relationship as a marriage, and as likely to end in divorce. Think about having couples counseling before you think you need it.
I can't give RT too much flack for not having 20/20 hindsight. It started as 5 people voicing over Halo footage and turned into one of the first "New media" conglomerates out there, a medium that twisted and turned every other month. And one that still radically shifts every year, 20 years later.
The work environment that Rooster Teeth fostered, I would say goes way past 20/20 hindsight.
It's a company that has been called out for:
It started as just the Red vs Blue project with a couple of friends, but it is now a 400+ person company with multiple divisions. There are major issues with the core of the company's culture, going far beyond what Linus is accused of. They have shown multiple times to have poor judgement in the people they hire (https://www.kxan.com/news/rooster-teeth-vp-arrested-after-wife-alleges-brutal-abuse-strangulation/ , Adam Kovic, Ryan Haywood), an HR department that has failed to protect its employees, and an aggressive workplace environment.
I respect Steve for making this. Yes, it gave him a boost (albeit temporary) in views/subs/donations, but there is no way there won't be backlash from sponsors who invested heavily on LTT's popularity (which also boosts YouTube's revenue too). I'm pretty sure he wasn't entirely set out to do this in the first place, mostly because of the influence behind LMG that he mentioned for a couple minutes, but I'm glad he did it.
There was also talk that he over-reacted to some of the comments LMG made, but I don't think so -- for a large business like LMG, smearing Steve's lesser-known channel can cause a lot of damage. So, (IMO) Steve deserves props for making this video and having everything laid out and detailed.
Also, the Billet Labs part was sad and infuriating to hear about -- screwing over a small business/start-up like that, even supposing it was accidental, warrants harsh criticism.
honestly I was less worried about this than about the die-hard fans of LTT harassing Steve and the other people at GN. I enjoy watching both channels but there's definitely a subset of weirdly intense Linus fans who would absolutely stoop to that behavior.
I don't know as much about the situation with sponsors though, so maybe the potential backlasb there is more intense than I was aware of.
I only mentioned the sponsors because I felt that Steve genuinely seemed worried about those connections in the 7:00-9:00 segment of the video. Money is king in this sphere, GN has employees that need to be paid, and usually sponsors are the way to go for funding. I'm not experienced with marketing/PR, but I don't think they'll be happy if one of their lesser successful channels critiques their more successful channel, causing a potential drop in revenue. I hope I'm wrong, of course, and GN's sponsors respect their decision.
Yes, I agree that LTT diehard fans are a problem, but it's to be expected because Linus is mostly a tech channel for a younger audience (and they reign supreme in monetization + numbers). I don't expect GN to lose a substantial quantity of subs over this because of the core differences between target audiences for both channels.
I was also disappointed with Linus' response that zptc linked. It seems he was expecting a heads up so that they can prepare a response to the material on the video, but that wouldn't solve the core issues that cause these failures in the first place. Edit: Also, Linus deflecting the B Labs thing by mentioning it being charity was hilarious.
It's very unlikely sponsors are going to do much of anything. Perhaps Corsair and Noctua since GN mildly implicated that they paid for LTTs loyalty, even then I doubt it though. There's no reason for sponsors to go to bat for any media. Sponsors leverage media for advertising but they aren't going to try and save media from their own PR issues. That's just begging the PR issues to come back onto the sponsors directly.
I wouldn't even say that GN mildly implicated that Noctua paid for LTT's loyalty honestly, the closest he got was mentioning a slightly bodgy conclusion in the NH-D15 review but even then he went out of his way to make the implication that it's more of an subconscious bias in LTT's staff for Noctua's products and that the screwdriver collaboration is a very public representation of that subconscious bias rather than implying it was a simple "scratch your back if you scratch mine" deal between LMG and Noctua.
Basically, it's come across more as Steve showing concern that the relevant people in both companies aren't aware of the potential pitfalls of the collaboration rather than Steve trying to imply there's actual shady behavior here.
I'm only 9 min into the GN video and pausing to write this so maybe I'm speaking too soon, but Steve cut out the part where LMG was told the water block should work on both cards and Linus was clear in the video about that situation and I felt that was it was clear to me, the viewer, that it was kind of botched and not really a valid test.
A lot of what I watch on YouTube is much more well thought out with creators spending a long time and effort on videos. Its very clear to me that LTT is the child of Linus and its like him... its an ADHD machine jumping from topic to topic rarely deep diving into things and just living in the chaos that this creates.
I guess I've just been holding them to a lower standard the whole time so I'm not surprised by any of this.
I watched the whole thing and LMG was NOT told the water block would work. Billet said they could try it but that it was designed for the 3090TI. It starts at about 29 minutes in.
To quote Rossman, this is unfortunate.
I do hope the new LMG CEO straightens things out internally. I don't really like Linus (even though I watch his channel) but I feel like he's not a terrible person.
I started writing an essay about this in the youtube comments, but nothing good happens there so here I am. This topic makes me angry. Not becuase I think Gamers Nexus did anything wrong, but because it's confirmation about my feelings about LTT. I used to be a frequent LTT watcher back in the garage days, and my google history says this was I think the video that caused me to watch them daily.
I remember when they were growing as a channel and began hiring a lot more people and doing entertainment content, linus looked exasperatedly into the camera and said something like "guys, do you have any idea how easy it is to do a power supply review?". "THEN DO A POWER SUPPLY REVIEW, I remember thinking.
And when they were saying things like "why aren't we happy where we are? If we're not growing faster than youtube we're going to be left behind". "THEN GET LEFT BEHIND". To me, Linus has forgotten why he started the business. This, to me, seems to be a more and more common trend in businesses: nobody wants to let anything go. You don't have to be the #1 viewed channel on youtube, and you shouldn't want to be.
Another point that gets me is the feeling that the love for budget viewers has been lost. Maybe that part of the industry has been gone, but if I had his platform every review since the GTX750TI should have started with "this performs [well/ok/badly], but you shouldn't buy it because there's no reasonable budget option". Is it self sabotage? Maybe? But someone has to say it.
I know it's insane to care this much about what's sort of youtuber drama, but come on. I'm sad my formerly-favourite media organization has forgotten why they even got into business in the first place.
Definitely agree. I remember watching a clip of Linus explaining why they make those stupid "person doing the :o face" thumbnails and use clickbait titles. And it basically boiled down to "we don't want to do it, but it works, so we do it"... and it's like.. dude, of course it works, we already know that. I'm sure if you bring a bunch of half-naked titty streamers to your twitch channel that would work too. The point is that you should be better than that.
I get it that it's a business, but once you start sacrificing quality to chase higher numbers you start losing credibility. If you are willing to make the thumbs/titles garbage because it brings better numbers, how do I know the info in the video also isn't garbage that's only there because it brings more $$$?
Every since I saw him promoting psuedoscience scams like the $1000 food scanner "from star trek" years ago, I've ignored and avoided him.
From those videos I saw not even a bare minimum of research or integrity and that's enoigh to not watch him ever.
On the budget side, new stock budget is just non-existent. The "entry level" cards are not worth their value nor are they even cheap. Better is to buy used last gen though it's got it's risks. LTT has done a few videos on the subject lately, but there's only so much that can be said about "check ebay". Budget buys aren't coming back either with Nvidia and probably AMD soon focusing HARD on AI ASICs instead of gaming GPUs.
The budget market changes often enough (thanks to the used market) that I'd wager LTT could do a video every few months covering what PC you could get for specific budgets and highlighting good upgrade paths for specific popular but aging parts going by the Steam Hardware Survey.
I don't mean a semi-regular Scrapyard Wars either, I'm meaning something a bit drier than that and more akin to just a 10-15 minute overview of the used (and when it comes back, budget) markets at least in the US and Canada. (I'm Aussie so it'd be pointless for me, but LTT getting more eyes on that segment might also lead to other reviewers including local ones doing similar coverage.)
Yeah, I feel this. Ever since they started reviewing cars I’ve been feeling left behind with them. I liked that they were reviewing EVs, but it quickly became clear that they were only interested in the sporty expensive models, which is fine I guess, but it’s definitely alienating if you can’t afford to buy them, which seems like it would be a large portion of their viewership. And then recently they did a review of a gas-powered car and I don’t even know why they are doing it anymore.
The impression I have had of Linus f9r a long time is that he takes pride in being able to employ people and help them make a living doing this, and he's willing to sacrifice the quality of his channel's videos in order to do that.
GN follow-up (just the first section)
As others have said here and other platforms, I find it strange that Linus OS not afraid to call out manufacturers when sketchy stuff happens, but when things like this happen it’s always deflection and doubling down.
I remember reading Linus’s first statement that said that they didn’t sell the cooler, they auctioned it off, as if that made any better somehow, and despite the fact that GN never even said that they sold it ( it was commenters using the wrong verbiage). The fact that he said that this happened once in ten years of existing meant that no internal processes needed to be updated was a major red flag to me too. In ANY industry when something goes bad there are post mortem meetings that outline what went wrong and how things can get better. Additionally, using the excuse that they’ve existed for 10 years and this is the first problem is irrelevant when the argument is that they’ve expanded too fast and quality has gone down, meaning the crux of the issues have to do within the last year.
This really sucks for me, I just bought LTT merch because I liked the channel, and I thought the company had some ethics behind it, but now I’m reading into more and more problems. I regret supporting a company that quite frankly doesn’t give a damn or has any introspection.
That misleading Billet timeline is really damning, especially when paired with their rebuttal of Linus's "should have reached out" complaint.
Wow that’s some real anger. I hope someone at LMG with some power is able to take the criticism seriously but like Steve mentioned in this follow-up, it’ll be harder to believe a commitment to change at this point.
Linus' response
"I'm not going to amplify this by responding on a platform where my audience doesn't already know about the criticism. But I will select the one example where I think I can best justify our actions and go into detail there while feigning that we have the high road by not responding about anything else. Just trust me bro."
Honestly surprising how he's starting to align to the Trump playbook. Both very much run on a cult of personality. This is the equivalence of making a Truth Social post.Edit: Might have gotten to emotional here. Please ignore
I don't think it's the Trump playbook.
To me this is just someone that's had crisis management PR training.
Yeah, not enough all caps and death threats for the Trump playbook. Shame that good old fashioned corporate PR speak is getting lumped in the 'Trump playbook' these days.
Not even close. The Trump playbook is to defame and mudsling back twice as hard. Here Linus is just deflecting. The only slinging he did was his comment about not getting a chance to respond to the complaints being raised in the video.
Don't water down Trump's bullshit by equating it with anything mildly controversial.
Was this removed from Linus' response?
No, it's not a literal quote, it's a cynical reinterpretation of his words.
Just to breakdown some thoughts on this-
While there's maybe some accuracy to this, I think it's deflecting poorly. GN sure doesn't come off as just trolling for drama and clicks but sincerely concerned about repeated and constant issues. At some point they're doing the consumer a favor by pointing out "here's why you cannot trust this content". Perhaps more contact should've been done between Linus and them, but this rubs me the wrong way.
This at least some ownership of the issue, which is good.
This is problematic to me. Does it matter if the cache is wrong if your conclusions are based on testing? Well if that's the ONLY thing wrong, no, but the whole issue GN is highlighting is a pattern of consistent mistakes, and the way they mislead the consumer and even cause issues for the products. I can't comment on the improvements, but I do hope that GN does as I think they should cover this response.
I'm sorry, but no. There's some fine points in this that I can understand, but you screwed up the review of their product AND somehow accidentally stole and sold their prototype (and yes even if accidental, it's theft). Either one would be bad, that you somehow did both to the same group is just atrocious and anything less than "here's our explanation but we know this was unacceptable and are taking steps to fix it" is unprofessional/scummy. "Pitchforks" are pretty damn minor given just how egregiously fucked up this is. I know that communication gets crossed and giving the benefit of the doubt to Linus here, maybe someone did imply they could auction the item or some other similar screw up occurred, but you "hey wtf" is very very justified even if that's the case. If there's any proof this is 100% on LMG and there wasn't some unclear email from billet on the subject, I would be damn sure consider legal action and want several times the value of the prototype and a published public apology. Like fucking hell you sold their prototype at a charity auction. This is not an "oopsy". It may even be a violation of the charity auction (you can't just put stolen goods on a charity auction for fucks sake).
Running a business is hard. Billet labs has real people. GN has real people. The various tech companies that LMG supports and reviews have real people. There's a lot that's NOT addressed in this except under a vague 'we'll do better' vibe which is very disappointing to see. GN gave you an itemized list breakdown and while I don't think Linus owes anything to that, it sure wouldn't be hard to at least mention which items you're addressing in which parts. I get that having to "cut back" can mean firing good people and that's tough, but if you've set an unreasonable goal, it's up to you to recognize that, or just become like every other video farm and at least personally admit you've sold your brand and reputation. I won't judge people based on that, but this just reads too much like "gee why are you picking on me" when the answer is "this is legit criticism and if you don't like it maybe you shouldn't be doing this".
I will, to be fair, point out that I've seen a lot of discussion about "well LMG should be better than that and just do x or y", but sometimes taking the high ground means dying out. As much as I'd like to see more companies draw a line in the sand, GN is one of the first to say it is NOT easy and has cost them a ton. There is a murky as hell middle ground between perfection and selling out, and I respect that Linus and team are likely trying to toe that line sincerely. Unfortunately not only is it not easy, but any flaws a person has on approaching issues is magnified 100x when they start making large decisions. I do think Linus has been so much better than the average when it comes to this (average being an extremely low bar to be clear), and i'm hoping this response is just a weak point of his and we see their quality improve in their actions..
EDIT:
The billet labs response-
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rxni4/our_public_statement_regarding_ltt/
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So i'll be the jaded person I am and say "we don't know if billet is telling the truth here".
That said, if they are, it should be pretty verifiable. If it is, LTT is insanely out of line. You stole their product and sold it. If i loan you my car to review it, contract and all, and you SELL IT, that is not ok. You cannot keep that money. You cannot use that money for charity. You sure as shit can't say "well gee you guys are being unfair about this" if you only even responded to it after another 3rd party raised the flag on this, and that's AFTER DOING A FAULTY REVIEW OF THE PRODUCT.
Let me be clear, Linus himself would be livid if anything he was passionate about was treated this way. I wouldn't be totally shocked if there's more to this than we know (the internet loves to pick a good guy and believe no one lies, and billet's behavior could just be a small business doing what they do, or could be odd considering the circumstance and indicative of their story being shakey), but these are pretty serious accusations.
God knows it won't affect LTT overall for product reviews, but it sure looks like an attitude of "we'll do what we want with your product, fuck up if we want to, do the bare minimum to handle that only after getting called out, and then offer no real apology or retraction".
Like....even if billet is mostly full of shit here...you reviewed their product wrong and sold it. You kicked them in the teeth twice and "you're surprised about pitchforks". Jesus.
I feel like most of the criticisms are really minor.
Linus admits fault multiple times, claims he'll assume financial liability, and lays out a few things they're doing to do better in the future. This is better than most corporate responses that try to avoid liability at all costs. The worst part was mixing in some self-pity, which I understand, but shouldn't be in official communication like this.
People do make mistakes like miscategorizing items in a warehouse full of stuff. If the prototype was really that important and secret, Billet should have supervised it better or set better restrictions on its handling (return in x number of days, penalty for loss explicitly spelled out, etc.). The Framework teaser videos show what you should do if you have things that are actually secret involved. Auctioning the prototype was clearly a mistake, so characterizing this as theft is a stretch to me, especially if LMG was upfront about losing the prototype and ends up paying for it.
The timeline for this seems kind of crazy to be mad about too. LMG informs Billet of a mistake on a Thursday, Billet responds with a dollar amount on damages on the same day, and then LMG responds the next Monday? Two business days is really fast for business communication involving liability and damages. People seem to want to characterize events as before or after some response video, but we're talking about companies and people at work, not individual hobbyists, at this point. Expecting an immediate response or for people to work through the weekend is unreasonable.
Yeah they probably should have, but you're literally asking me to give slack to the multimillion dollar well established done this 100x before reviewer company, and then holding the "just started up, run by a handful of people" company to a higher standard?
And again, they ALSO fucked up reviewing the product and just ran with it. That alone would be poor form, but then selling their prototype on top of it? I feel like maybe LMG should have supervised that better or set better restrictions.
If i accidentally sold another vendor's prototype it would be 100% expected I work through the weekend, and I have demanded similar behavior from much larger companies for far far less (although still major) infractions. Or rather the people working to fix my fuckup after I was termed on the spot would.
This is a monumental screwup if there's not some evidence of miscommunication.
Seems like people just want to be mad at something even though Linus has admitted the mistake and seems to be trying to fix things. Sure, some anger is warranted due to the mistake, but he hit all the points I would have wanted to hear (along with a few I didn't care to hear) in his forum post. So what else can he do besides less awkward communication with the public? I think it's good to hold companies accountable, I just feel that the anger is out of control and most of the drama is nonsensical at this point. It was a bad mistake, but it is abundantly clear to me that it's not theft, so what's with the hyperbole?
You said:
It seems clear to me that he's not trying to financially benefit from the auctioning of the prototype, and that he's willing to compensate Billet for the loss. We'll have to see if he follows through, but why do you talk as if he's acting maliciously? I just don't see any case for calling this stealing unless he doesn't end up paying.
Point taken that the severity should result in some extra urgency. However, we don't have all the details. How do we know that any kind of useful response could have been had any sooner? Maybe they had to consult with a lawyer or contact people that couldn't be reached immediately. There's probably some significant number of necessary steps to resolving this, and a few business days is a reasonable turnaround time. It's not like it was a service outage that some overtime work could have restored sooner.
Edit: After watching GN's video from today, it seems like both Billet and LTT are trying to react too quickly. Billet sent over a dollar value to LTT, LTT thinks it's a quote for the cost of losing the block, then Billet says to a third party (not LTT) that it's not a quote, just a dollar value sent out of frustration. No one is communicating well here. It kind of seems like they just need to take some time to work things out rather than publicly post random bits of information that might not even be accurate. I don't doubt the information from GN, but I'm pretty sure Steve is just purposely fomenting rage against their competitor by posting these videos. It's not news, it's just drama. Like Real Housewives reality TV kind of drama.
please don't bring this style of argumentation to Tildes.
if people are critical of something, and you disagree with that criticism, by all means, disagree with it. address the criticism.
but don't dismiss them as "just wanting to be mad at something". don't assume you know what their intentions are. don't imply that their motives are suspect, or that they're governed by emotions rather than rational thinking.
apply the principle of charity.
Sorry, I see how that can be interpreted as attacking a person or group of people, and that's my fault for phrasing it that way. I just meant that the general discourse seems pretty angry, to the point where I feel many statements I've read about this are not fair to say. Hopefully my other words explain which parts I feel are fair to be angry about and which are not fair things to say in my opinion.
Part of the problem is that if this was coming out about any other tech company, Linus would be publicly railing that company on Twitter and WAN show. He has set this standard. Linus parades his company as exceptional (see: "trust me bro" warranty) and to turn around and behave with this level of recklessness is not acceptable. Also, do you need to consult a lawyer to quickly respond to someone asking if you'll compensate them for the prototype you lost? A simple "we will get back to you ASAP" seems appropriate. And that's the kind of email you respond to the next business day at latest. But two hours after the GN video? Sorry, I don't buy the coincidence. Especially with how slow they were being about returning their property. It's unprofessional. I'm not going to say them auctioning the cooler was malicious, it was obviously a large mistake. But his response just doubled down on "our review doesn't need to be accurate" and "Steve should've reached out" and "don't forget I'm a person too". I don't think he actually apologized for anything meaningful. The only thing he apologized for was "reading the room wrong for the review." Linus can't take criticism and doesn't understand that he is running a company that deserves to be treated like a company. He's not just a guy making goofy videos with his buddies anymore. His company was valued at $100M. I have awesome memories of watching his videos. I'm not looking for anything to be mad at. I'm looking at the facts.
Based on GN's most recent video, the dollar amount Billet mentioned was not a quote and not the dollar amount that would make this situation go away, but an amount mentioned in frustration to show the severity. So even if Linus cut a check for that amount on the spot, we don't know if the situation is resolved. Depending on the original agreement, Billet could still sue. I don't think enough details are public to know for sure. So yes, I think it makes sense to consult a lawyer on this.
I don't think any posts are a coincidence, and I don't understand this kind of framing. He's responding to stuff out of necessity. Based on the quality of his response, maybe he should have taken more time to think before responding, but I guess he felt like he had to try to stop the speculation. Clearly didn't work out though. I'm not sure what people want him to say at this point though. He said that it was auctioned for charity, not sold, and is being panned for it. If he hadn't said that, someone would have eventually discovered that it was auctioned at LTX, and he would have been panned for not being transparent enough.
I honestly do think that Steve should have reached out. He claims to be reporting objective facts, but his facts are based on one side's statements. Everyone knows there's three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. It's not good journalism to not even attempt get a statement from the other side, especially when you have their personal phone number.
Ultimately, I'm not even the biggest LTT fan, I kind of just wanted to make a short comment about the outrage machine and how I feel like characterizing this as theft is a bridge too far. I just tend to get sucked into trying so hard to explain my one point that it branches off too much as I try to explain all the sides. At this point I kind of just wish I could focus my statement better. Now that I'm reading this, more words is probably often not better, so maybe I'll try to edit down more next time. Maybe Linus should have said fewer words in response as well. The more you say the more there is to distract from a single focused point.
Then they should've consulted a lawyer before they notified them it was auctioned off. That should've been sounding alarms everywhere, and it either did and they were still being slow to respond, or it didn't and they should be criticized for being a large company and not having the wherewithal to handle massive screw ups like this.
The coincidence I'm referring to is the assertion that Linus got the green light to respond to Billet Labs an hour or two after the GN video, but independently of the video's release. It seems you made the point earlier that there were reasonable explanations for this timeline that would allow for those two events to be disconnected, but I disagree. Perhaps I misread your comment and this was not your argument.
We wanted him to own up to the concerns the video brought forth. He did not do that. He was defensive, shifted blame, and victimized himself. He only apologized for "reading the room wrong." Which is not really an apology, that's just blaming the audience for having the wrong opinion.
Because this is a semantic argument that holds no value, and not even the point. The point is that somehow and some way, someone's prototype was not shipped back when it was supposed to be, and ended up being given to someone at a convention. Linus does not address any of this, but tries to win points on a semantic argument.
If your point is that Linus can't win in this situation, I would agree with you. He shouldn't be able to win in this situation because getting to this point means he's already lost. He shouldn't even be trying to win and that's what's so frustrating. He's still being defensive, he needs to just own the screw ups but he won't and can't do that because he has an ego problem.
This is not true. Linus has made public statements about most of what was talked about in the video. There is no need for Steve to reach him for comment when those comments are already public. As far as the Billet Labs situation goes, I suppose we don't know if the timeline is true? Linus certainly didn't deny them in his response. I don't know why they would lie about that, because if they did, it would be super easy for LMG to disprove. I also agree with Steve's sentiment that to criticize a company, you don't need to get their permission, or ask for their comment. That could just be a point of disagreement between us though, I don't know if there's a real right or wrong here.
I agree with you 100% here. To call the Billet Labs situation theft implies intent, and I think it's unreasonable to make that claim. I've noticed on Reddit and the forums that the theft claim is made quite a lot and I think that those people need to slow down and think about what that would mean. It also doesn't really make any sense why they would do that intentionally.
I would also like to say, I know that this response is quite lengthy, but I'm not here to "bring the heat" or anything. Your original claim was that it seems like people are looking for things to be mad at. I'm just demonstrating the ways in which I believe it's right for us to be mad. This is my perspective and much of the community that is upset right now shares that perspective. It seems you do not, and that's okay.
Edit: I posted this before seeing Madison's tweets and the recently posted LTT video. Neither of which informed my post here, and I have yet to actually read/watch those.
Yeah, I think the problem with long walls of text is that some stuff gets hidden or forgotten by the time you're done reading. I did say that it's fine and good to be angry at the mishandling of the item and situation, just that I feel that some specific statements that have been made in this thread and other channels are going too far outside reasonable interpretation, mostly the statements about theft and hyperfocus on timing of statements. I guess one thing I'm trying to get better at by writing these comments is how to say "I agree with some of what you think, but that's too far" without giving the impression that I'm saying "I disagree completely."
I was not saying that any timing of statements are likely a coincidence, just that perhaps it's reasonable LTT was taking some time to respond to Billet. Being called out publicly might have caused him rush to put out a statement. I guess I wasn't clear, but I'm not talking at all about the exact timing of public statements of who said what at what time, I'm just saying that taking a bit more time to respond to business communications of this type probably makes sense.
GN doesn't have to contact both sides to criticize someone; he doesn't have to do anything, but he also can't ethically claim that it's just stating the facts either. With 2M subscribers, his reach is huge, bigger than most newspapers, so he's not just a small-niche guy anymore. Although he's claiming to be an objective observer, he's not following the basic ethics of journalism. Well, he doesn't have to do that either, but to me that means that he's an instigator, not a reporter here.
From my perspective you are doing a good job of that. I'm not here to try and misrepresent you or intentionally misunderstand you, and I apologize if I've done that in this thread. Like I said before I'm not trying to fight or anything, so I additionally hope I've not come off as combative.
Then that was my bad for misinterpreting your previous statements. I think I would generally agree with your assessment that business communications take time. I just think that goes to demonstrate that LMG is a larger business, and Linus tends to try and play both sides of the large business and "I'm just your friendly tech youtuber" coin. If you can't tell, that's a large part of my grievances.
This is probably just going to be a point of disagreement between us. I would like to point out that Linus himself would disagree with your point here if he was at all consistent (see: PC Secret Shopper). LMG have historically published criticisms of companies without reaching out for comment prior. I feel like I have to reiterate that I'm holding LMG to the standard that they are setting. If Linus didn't have a moral superiority complex I would feel less strongly about these situations than I currently do, and I might actually agree with you almost entirely.
I'm also seeing a lot of people (not just you) saying "basic ethics of journalism" and to me that sounds like an armchair expert thing to say. I don't believe that 99% of people saying this know anything about journalism, they're just repeating things they've heard from other not-journalists. A cursory google search does not include anything specifically about reaching out for comment (Standford Journalistic Ethics). At worst, you would have to prove he intentionally distorted information, or didn't fact-check something, which to my knowledge, he never did. I wouldn't say reaching out for comment is "basic journalistic ethics" it's just something people do as a courtesy. Courtesies are not owed, and I don't think he behaved unethically at all. But that's just my opinion! You are entitled to your own.
I think we've probably run the course of this conversation, so I'll probably stop replying. Feel free to include another response if you'd like. And thank you for having a civil discussion with me about it!
I think that a "secret shopper" situation is a little different from this one. Also, I don't think it's appropriate to "fight fire with fire" here. LTT and GN can both be wrong for not giving companies a fair chance to respond. I hold GN to a slightly higher standard in this comparison, because the most recent video literally has "news" in the title and he explicitly says that he's reporting facts.
I came across the same article when I mentioned journalism ethics, because I'm not an expert either. I think trying to contact both parties involved would fall under numbers 2 and 5 (leaving no doubt about validity or accuracy, and presenting diverse points of view without partiality). Aside from that, my laymen's interpretation is that I see that reputable news organizations will almost always have some comment from all involved parties, even if it's that they didn't respond.
Thanks for the civil conversation as well.
So many other companies have trusted ltt to stand by their word and contract and keep things from going missing and being broken. This type of thinking is for fan boys, he hasn't actually apologized.
I'm not aware of other examples. Could you please name a few or point me in the right direction to find them?
Also, it's fine to tell me that I'm wrong, but name-calling isn't nice.
What you should take into account, even if there were no malice, back door deals, whatever, charity auctions raise your brand, its awareness and generally you gain good will from it which all have real value. That's even if there was no monetary gain, like paying for yourself for setting it up etc.
So of course they stand to benefit (indirectly financially*) from auctioning one-of-a-kind item.
*Maybe not after this debacle.
Sure, but I just don't see any significant benefit from auctioning this particular piece. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff in storage they could have auctioned instead. So the most reasonable explanation was that this particular item was mislabeled. This seems like the clearest cut application of Hanlon's Razor there can be (Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity). The benefit to the auction or whatever goodwill this single item added is almost nothing, and the cost of being caught auctioning off an item that was supposed to be returned is enormous in terms of damage to the brand (as we see here). So it's a very bad mistake, but I just can't conceive of any way that this was on purpose.
Yeah, I don't think it would be fair to assume it was an intentional mistake. They're a big company after all but I'm just saying it would've benefitted them it this thing didn't blow up in their faces.
I agree that the behaviour was despicable, but since the theft word is coming up in a few replies I felt it's useful to clarify that theft requires dishonest appropriation with the intent to permanently deprive the owner.
Doing something accidentally probably can't be theft because it lacks the intent element.
And we don't need to call it theft - "arrogant incompetence" is good enough.
Well at least they are going to compensate Billet Labs for the lost prototype. The only argument I agree with with Linus is that GN should've given him a chance to respond. It's standard journalistic practice, and if GN wants to hold themselves to a high journalistic standard, they should've reached out.
The rest just seems wishy washy "labs is going to be great when it's done guys" type stuff. And the complaint about the GPUs gets ignored completely. Also the fact that this won't be a WAN show piece to amplify the story further tells me that there are some PR people at work.
Good chance Linus will talk about it anyway though.
Yeah, that labs comment was pretty dumb. The fact of the matter is that labs has been around for a while now and it will likely never be “done.” There will always be improvements they will need to work on. Technology doesn’t stand still, nor does the market.
It'll be a big mistake if it's not in the WAN show. I think to get out in front of it it would be good to have Steve on live to talk about it, as someone suggested on the fourm.
The website is down, I found a mirror here: https://i.imgur.com/TeStB1F.png
I think I didn't realize the severity or sheer quantity of errors, conflicts, and defensiveness LMG/LTT have had over the past year or two. In hindsight it's obvious, though. Every now and then I'd catch something myself and be frustrated. But even when it comes to their "entertainment" content about water-cooling a server with water circulated around a pool, even then there were multiple times in the video of "oh we bought the wrong thing again", etc. - it just seems no matter the content, whether stuff presenting itself as accurate labs-tested content, or entertainment- there's just no attention to detail.
I think despite knowing some of the small errors, I was still caught up in a bubble of enjoying their content, and given things like that prototype cooler situation, I now feel almost manipulated. I really have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to them now.
Steve/GN brought receipts. I don't think he was overly harsh or overreacting. I think his criticisms were clear-cut and not edited to paint LTT in a worse light purposely as some people might theorize, he gains nothing from that. I think he's laid facts out on the table and I'm very worried that LMG/LTT will not be able to respond appropriately because their ego will get in the way.
Yet again I find myself very frustrated with a company whose products/content I often enjoy, and I feel for the workers, because it's clear from the interviews that the workforce, overall, knows they have problems, and yet aren't given the power or time to address them. It makes me not want to watch their content anymore, though it sucks for many of their workers that do care that this has to reflect on or potentially affect them job-wise...
LMG has always been a bit frustrating and childish in certain ways, and enjoyable in others, and I feel like a bit of a veil is lifted when someone with expertise like GN lays it out this plainly. They have massive problems they need to solve and admit to, and now
Yeah the half-assedness with which they do a lot of their projects completely baffles me. I enjoy it, because it's hilarious and janky, but this video kind of has me realizing it probably extends beyond the internal or home projects they do. If you can't be bothered to drive to the hardware store to buy a few cheap PVC adapters, why wouldn't you lazily crank out a video with incorrect data, misleading info, etc.?
Your enjoyment is the reason why it's still this way. LTT grew up on the broken ass solutions cobbled from scrap. They were never the professional and clean way of doing things. The issue now is that they're trying to gain legitimacy in doing things the correct way with the labs and all that, but they haven't altered the company goals to align with that. So now we've got whiplash as videos jerk around between semi-professional and complete jackassery.
Hoping that Tarren will be able to right the ship when he's fully onboard in a few months.
Honestly I don't care if it stays that way for the internal/personal projects, so long as they change that approach for stuff that actually matters (reviews, etc.). Watching them come up with hacky solutions to problems is fun because it's kind of crap I do when I'm working on personal projects at home. But I definitely avoid the hacky stuff when working on other people's stuff. I think I had just assumed they approached things the same way...hacky for the internal/personal stuff, diligent for the professional review stuff. But the video has me realizing that no...they cut corners everywhere.
Personally I've felt the quality of LTT slipping over the last year. I don't pay super close attention to their numbers and don't look at any of the stupid reddit drama so I wasn't aware of this. Now I'm reconsidering if I should even be giving LTT any attention.
What I can say is that by watching the WAN show it's clear Linus has ego issues (not that he hasn't earned the right to be a bit cocky). I think because LMG is the biggest game in town he's gotten away with being reckless and burning bridges. That won't last forever. Eventually it'll all catch up to him. The company does good marketing of itself but really I don't think at this point it's any better than your average employer.
I previously worked for a small-ish business (greater than 40 employees but fewer than 50) that even when I was working for them, I recognized a lot of similarities between Linus and the owner of the business that I worked for, as well as various things shown in LTT videos and how the business I worked for operated even though they weren't the same industry. We weren't making videos to publish online and gain a following, but the basic elements of human behavior that lead to the different decisions between different industries are still commonalities between them. Even the physical appearance of Linus to the owner of the business I was working for was oddly similar.
One thing of note towards the end of my time at that business was a management meeting where a particular topic they wanted to talk about and there was a video they wanted to use to drive this forward. It was something about completing things 70% of the way, and then moving on. The point of the video was basically against perfectionism. I never thought perfect was an achievable goal and I also realize perfect can be the enemy of good as the saying goes. But effectively that topic came up in that meeting likely because I had pressured them to improve the quality of our work. The snippets in this video where Steve highlights the LMG employee interviews where many of them had said they wish they focused more on quality rather than quantity was a thing I commonly heard from employees where I worked, especially the higher performing employees. So I had mentioned in this 70% discussion that I don't think most were seeking perfection, certainly at least not all the time, but when you aren't given enough time, you are basically intentionally being doomed to failure, which just doesn't feel good. Steve mentions this in the video about how mistakes aren't really mistakes if you know you're going to be making mistakes by choosing to speed up the pace to a point where you're basically guaranteeing mistakes to occur. Another thing I had brought up about the 70% is that everyone's 70% is different. If you take a task, and give it to two different people with two different experience levels but ask them to put about 70% into it, you will likely get two different results.
I'm sure it's common across many industries, and of course different industries in different regions have different competitive pressures, and I understand why the mentality works. It helps you get ahead, especially early on. Some of the work that was done before I got there when the company was smaller, brought in the money that helped them to grow, but they really had no business doing those jobs if the expectation of higher quality would have been there. There's a level where most consumers/customers/clients etc. don't necessarily recognize the differences, at least not early on or not consciously, and then there's also a point where once they've already committed to something, "good enough" works because going back or redoing it is more effort and cost than it's worth. Effectively I think that's why that mentality works so well in starting businesses early on especially, once you realize what you can get away with you have a leg up on everyone else that doesn't. Once you start competing on a bigger stage however, then you are scrutinized more and your clients or customers or viewers etc. become a little more knowledgeable as well and those stupid mistakes aren't just easily swept under the rug anymore, they actually matter.
It's just startup mentality. Startups are nimble and can change the entire face of the company on a dime. So the startup bosses get used to the half solution that's in the right direction being better than the full solution in the wrong direction. The ability to ride that chaos is what defines startups.
The problem is that they never know when to quit acting like a startup. So they keep doing half measures even as it becomes more and more frustrating. They start getting mad that not everyone is able to just keep up with the ever changing requirements. Then eventually they either crash the company or tire out and hire a CEO that doesn't carry that baggage.
Linus has hit his breaking point already hence the new CEO hire. Now they just need to hold on long enough for him to clean up the mess.
I don't know, I feel like some of you have your pitchforks raised, but this GN review of LMG seems like a good thing and that LTT will wind up being better in the future. I think this is a solid jab to the face that LTG will take on the chin and will probably wind up being better for it. I think it's a good. GN put it out and I think it's good to call out bullshit where you see it and that LTG is probably going to take it seriously.
Seems to be just drama that has got everybody all riled up for no reason. Fair amount of pearl clutching like "can we ever trust Linus again?" "Should we ever have?" Nothing strikes me as purposely deceitful. If anything these things should happen every now and again to keep people accountable. The drama just comes off as way over blown
But I feel like the drama is to be expected? Also, the dramatic reaction to the video is exactly what leads to LMG changing. LMG is already aware that they're putting out low quality/misleading content, but they're only concerned about their bottom line. The only way they change as a result of this video is that people react negatively towards LTT/LMG in a way that affects that bottom line.
I hear you. I don't think that he believes he's putting out low quality/misleading content though. I think that, from his perspective, he put in enough due diligence to get to the root of the product. (At least for the example given) His point being that the cooler was a wildly overpriced solution, not worthy of it's price tag. He used flawed data to come to that decision. His response to that is, I agree, a meely mouthed
"Well that doesn't change our opinion" which is pretty a dog shit rationalization.
So I ask myself, do I judged him based on his response to this incident or on his catalog of helpful content. From the things I have watched of his he has usually been a consumer focused review guy looking to help sift through all the computer marketing wank bullshit. His verdict on that cooler is pretty inline with this, and I appreciate him for doing this. For as long as I have watched him one of his main focuses has been "is this worth your money" I don't believe this situation casts any doubt on that overall mission.
That's fair. I don't watch him often and really can't fairly judge either way, but what you say sounds reasonable enough. Based on my reading of this incident, I think he could take a little more responsibility for the issues called out in GNs video (especially with the auctioning of the prototype), but it doesn't seem like he's a malicious person.
Well that's the hope, right?
If it works, great. LTT improves processes, has a better product, and we're all better off, as consumers seeking information, for it.
But the fact that LTT seems to double down or make silly excuses for mistakes and misrepresentations over and over again, as seen in this video, makes people rightly wonder if LTT is trustworthy or not. And if LTT won't just do the same thing again.
I don't have any skin in this game. I don't watch a lot of these videos, whether LTT, GN, or whoever, unless I'm looking specifically for information. I probably have watched more GN than LTT, though. But I'm no fanboi of either, FWIW.
Really, LMG hasn't had the chance to absorb the feedback yet. Yeah Linus has already popped off but he's not LMG. His wife and his C-suite will have their own opinions on the matter and I'm sure there will be meetings put on the calendar this week. What happens in the next couple few weeks is more interesting than what happened today.
Yeah, it almost seems like it's a pissing match to see who "the most trustworthy reviewer" is. Personally, I like that these guys are keeping each other in check.
I think the relevant stuff was already addressed in the GN follow-up but for the sake of completeness: Billet Labs' statement
So an ex-LMG employee is now sharing her experience on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/suuuoppp/status/1691693769903796331
https://twitter.com/suuuoppp/status/1691704036146524549
https://twitter.com/suuuoppp/status/1691707172215046446
Edit:
https://twitter.com/suuuoppp/status/1691719230901846399
I had hoped, foolishly, that the obvious "boys club" attitude in the videos was a shtick for the camera. But apparently it's as bad as it gets.
Yeah Madison's story basically tells us that the problems at LTT are coming from the top down and the culture inside the company is incredibly toxic. Linus' response thus far indicates that there is no intent on actually changing anything.
If your culture is all about going as fast as possible, quality be damned, then you either have to commit to changing the culture or own it. Linus isn't doing either which indicates to me that as far as he is concerned, everything is still business as usual.
Fuck LTT.
Wow. That's all I got to say. How terrible.
Two things I want to say:
I'm not a regular viewer (and never even heard of Gamers Nexus before) but I remember watching a video of LTT's, looking for an objective blind test, and seeing some methodological flaws.
I wrote this in 2019 to a friend:¹ The reason I call this out, and my friend will know this, is that a card reaching allegedly 80 fps is not going to maintain that stably. You'll have moments of 110 and moments of 50 fps, not making the monitor refresh deadline at 60 fps on occasion. I've only ever played with low frame rates so idk what high fps is even like, but I know that performance drops are the worst. Better play a shooter at 30 fps stable than a variable 45-55 for example.
Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA
I'm going into this not really knowing either side besides an impression of LTT being fast and loose with a self-proclaimed "final answer".
I've paused at many of the claims Nexus makes and considered whether Linus' actions or data can be interpreted differently based on the shown evidence, and whether Nexus' claim is correct in general. In the original video, I agreed with Nexus on almost everything. To be fair, I also only watched Nexus' side of the story here. I didn't open the original videos.
But the response from Nexus has some wilful misreading. They laugh at Linus differentiating between selling and auctioning off. I laughed, too. Later in the video, they show the original comment and it actually says "we auctioned it for charity". Which Nexus then says is extra bad because it makes the charity potentially look bad. Disagree. The charity obviously isn't involved in a scheme to get money from a cooler manufacturer by stealing their prototype. Nobody is going to think that. More on point, Nexus cut out of context the statement "we didn't sell, we auctioned" when the full statement includes "for charity". I don't believe Linus was nitpicking as Nexus claims (duplicate writing is boring to read; probably "sold" was changed, rather than redundated, out of habit). Instead, I believe Linus was pointing out that his business didn't benefit from it, which does change the matter slightly because that means there was no motive and it corroborates that it was really just a mistake. On top of the mistake, even weirder is to imply that you've already agreed to pay the manufacturer when you, instead, sent a one-sided general offer simultaneously with the public statement. So Linus appears solidly in the wrong, but Nexus is doing wilful misreading also to stoke the fire some more.
There were also things which Nexus claimed Linus ignored when they actually addressed it in the post shown on screen just seconds before, but that's like one of five items mentioned iirc so by and large it doesn't change much. I'm just a bit disappointed nobody called any of this out in the comments of the video. Nexus clearly has a fanbase of their own to count on which will post comments and upvote what they agree with. I wonder if that's why they dared make the video, because otherwise they'd risk a lot of brigading.
At any rate, interesting stuff. I did consider LTT a solid brand name and would probably have trusted it for reviews or benchmarks.
I am a long time GN viewer, but I found the channel after at least a few years of watching LTT.
My best read on the situation, which could be entirely wrong, is that Steve at GN has been disappointed with LTTs coverage for a while now and the Billet labs issue was the straw that broke the camels back. I've read almost all GNs methodology writeups, and they really do put a ton of man hours and money behind their reviews to give the best, most accurate info on PC parts they can. Lately, they've also gotten more into journalism expose pieces, cause I think they, like us consumers have gotten frustrated with a lot of the industry, and realized they have enough sway to at least try to change things.
I think that's what this is. An attempt to call out LTT on enough bullshit to effect change. Shake the hornets nest. I do think they should have gotten at least a bit of LTTs side, but if they had let on about this video, LTT and their lawyers would have gone full damage control before it launched. Steve doesn't really ever pull punches on stuff like this, I think he believes he has a duty to tell at least everything he knows.
That's my read on it anyways.
I agree with your read; the look and tone of Steve in this video just screamed "I've had ENOUGH" to me. This video may have very well been a long time coming.
Steve also fired what can only be considered a warning shot in retrospect a while back in the aftermath of the backpack warranty controversy where he basically said (paraphrased) "No more friendly treatment to the rest of tech youtube when they fuck up, especially LMG which is bigger than many of the hardware companies they review products of, personal friendships or professional relationships be damned".
Yeah I expect the same there. Even without potential lawyers, I understand both sides:
Neither side had an incentive to say something other than what they did, afaict
Lawyers for defamation or libel is a risk for Nexus regardless, not sure that really changed due to the non-notice. Rule enforcement through legal or illegal means always becomes a higher risk if you pissed someone off.
I don't think GN was being unfair here. Everything they pointed out was of real concern and consequence, and I don't think they falsely portrayed anything.
Guilt by association is definitely a real concept that is frequently applied on the internet. There is so much slightly to moderately wrong information that gets settled as given fact over time in current (internet) society. Point in fact, the way I've seen people referring to LTT's crypto-mining video has been falsely portrayed in a number of different ways since this has broken out.
If anything, the default assumption should be to worry about optics because that gets remembered more than actual fact. It would be folly to assume that people will simply always know the differences with such fine discrepancies in messy situations.
This note is also consistent with what they described in the original video regarding the Noctua sponsorships and what implications improper testing videos with partners' products carry. Either way this wasn't a major point, it was also something of an addendum point to cap why "it was for charity" isn't the best defense as it also implicates the charity when they had no say in the matter.
That's not really relevant to the actual problem raised: they should not have been getting rid of a company's prototype without their explicit consent and a signed agreement. Whether or not they profited from it doesn't really matter because the only proper thing to do was return the prototype as previously agreed. In the world of fabrication, prototypes have a lot of value beyond just the material cost. The concern that GN raised was about competitors potentially getting their hands on it thanks to LTT's improper methods of handling a prototype.
I'm not sure what this is referring to. What's the wilful misreading?
I can imagine LTT receives a constant stream of products for testing. When the default is that you get to keep it, I can understand why someone unrelated to the story (who doesn't know it's a one of a kind prototype) threw it in with the rest of the "we don't need this anymore" hardware pile for raising money for charity. But anyway that's a lot of "can imagine"s, I don't know how this happened. It's just not inconceivable to me to make this mistake as a business in this position of churning through expensive hardware in general.
The main example is cutting out part of a sentence to make it appear as though Linus is splitting hair about "we didn't sell it, we auctioned it". And then bring that up on multiple separate occasions in the video, making it the most memorable line, at least to me.
If LMG had straight-up sold the prototype and donated the money to charity, versus an auction, the semantics of that difference is immaterial to the actual problem. Auctions are a subset of the concept of "sell" anyway. It's not inaccurate, it's just less precise than Linus apparently wanted.
Additionally, I don't think the complaints about it being referred to as a "sale" were specifically directed at GN, but at the general response to the video by the community. GN, in their response to Linus's response, show a clip of their original video where they specifically call it an auction.
That seems to be exactly what happened to the prototype but that really just speaks to their internal processes needing to be brought in line between departments, as it was a total breakdown in communication and inventory management that led to them auctioning off the prototype. This was confirmed in their video from this morning by Colton, who was in charge of identifying what should be auctioned off for charity. Ultimately, everyone agrees that that should not have happened and it was a problem that it did.
In regards to the misleading line, I don't really think that meets the criteria since the charity bit isn't really the main issue, it's that they were getting rid of a prototype at all. Prototypes should be treated differently from a finalized consumer product in nearly every way, and the fact that it wasn't is the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY
Latest by LTT. It's an apology video. My first impression is that it's rather corporate-smooth. I'll need some time to figure out what I think about this. It all just feels a bit after the fact.
The apology is a good start but it also seems quite a bit out of touch with the various jokes and LTTstore plugs. It's also currently monitized, though that could be an oversight.
Remains to be seen how much may change but given the above mentioned in their apology video plus the recent post from Madison Reeve about her time working there is just not looking good.
I think this person missed the part where Nexus said that it's about (accidentally) misleading millions of consumers, not to "satisfy" (shut up) some nitpickers that are posting these pesky comments.
Anyway that's just my nitpick on the video, most of it does seem to show they're taking this seriously. I've seen before how it just works for a corporation to sweep things under the rug and continue business as usual. Many customers/viewers never learn of it, and most of the others aren't personally affected or bothered enough. Even if sweeping it under the rug means losing 5% of viewers, now they're risking a lot more by putting a lot of focus on the issues. I have to see that as positive, even if the proof will be in the results that come out of this
It doesn't look like this addresses anything Madison said, even though I am completely certain they were aware of this by the time they posted (not that they could have worked it into the video - they should have delayed it). That was the second plane hitting the towers and it's sad they'd ignore it.
Disclaimer: I still haven't seen the whole GN video.
I was initially going to make up defensive statements for LMG, but watching the GN's video I have to admit, that LMG is lacking quality.
I haepointed out a few errors myself (like using "kW" for EV's battery capacity), but everytime I added the little memo "People can make mistakes and nobody knows everything". Hell, even I make mistakes.
But one thing is to make.kistakes and another one is to learn from doing them. Ad it really.seems that LMG has to stop and watch back and learn from their mistakes. The problem, I believe, is their own pre-set video publishing tempo. As many of employees said, some of them being really longterm by now, they need to slow down and focus on quality. Or atleast on quality control of the videos before publishing them.
Writers should have some capacity by themselves - knowing about the product in the video and technical parameters. Then there are cameramen that actually may not give a shit about it and editors that doesn't need to know either. Sonthe question is - since writer makes the script and the whole thing gets shit and edited, who else lays their eyes on the material to check for errors and mistakes? I think it's the writer once more. But since GN had pretty good points in the first quarter of the video (that I watched already), it seems there should really be somone else looking at it before publishing.
LMG's content is fun many times and I accept it. But when you want to present data you have to be exact and perfect with numbers, graphs and conclusions. If I see battery capacity in "kW" instead of "kWh", I can let it slip. But what if I wanted to see comparison of GPUs or, in the future, tests of PSUs? I can easily bus ome shit because someone rushed the test and nobody had a second look at it. If they want to be perceived as serious, they really should get it together and start being serious.
Between this and how absolutely craven it is to threaten, in writing, to fire employees who discuss compensation, I'm glad I'm no longer consuming anything LMG-related. And yes, that threat is legal in Canada.
What's your Source on that? Former employee?
There was a post on their subreddit a few months ago where an ex-employee posted snippets from their employee handbook that seemed to show how they aren't a great place to work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/115ucm3/ltt_isnt_a_great_employer_has_a_lot_of_antilabour/
On top of that, Linus addressed it on a WAN show, and all but confirmed the accuracy of the post, and even defended the practice.
IANAL, but that's very misleading.
Yes, it's legal to have a clause in one's employment contract that someone isn't allowed to discuss compensation with other employees. But just because something is legally allowed — i.e. not explicitly prohibited — doesn't mean it's enforceable. The most common example is a non compete clause: yes, a great many employment contracts include them, but they generally mean jack shit if a company tries to get the courts to enforce it.
If Linus actually fired someone for discussing compensation with their coworkers his own lawyers would quickly have him shitting bricks.
That's largely immaterial to what bothers me about it. The threat is just nasty. That's not how you treat employees you respect.
This is what their employee handbook says:
Are you referring to an additional document?
No. Why would I need to refer to another document? It's a bog-standard employee handbook that not only carries the implication of termination as a disciplinary action for violating these policies, but explicitly says it on page 27.
Handbooks are not happy funtime guides to the workplace, they are CYA documents meant to say, "Well you agreed to this, now we can let you go because you broke the agreement."
Even if you tried to argue that maybe they'd be given lighter disciplinary actions, who the fuck cares? That's still not how you treat employees you respect.
Handbooks have standards for employee behaviour that you can point to them agreeing to. Some of what they contain is legally enforceable, other things are not but still create a feeling of obligation by the fact of agreeing to them when signing it.
Anyway, this is a boilerplate employee handbook. There's nothing "nasty" about it.
Large, soulless corporations use boilerplate handbooks and might be excused for having a clause in there that maybe they didn't know about. But LMG is not huge. It's not a small operation anymore, but it's not huge. And Linus already demonstrated, on the WAN show after this handbook came to light, that he knew exactly what was in this handbook. Boilerplate or not, it's completely endorsed by Linus. He even went on give some bullshit explanation for exactly why this policy is good. It's not.
Whether or not it is "nasty" is definitely subjective - bootlickers who are fine with allowing their employers to dictate policies that are harmful to labor rights probably wouldn't find this especially nasty. So I'm not going to argue over whether or not you find it nasty.
As far as enforceability - You aren't a lawyer and neither am I, but your cited example of non-competes are specifically not enforceable because of other rights guaranteed by law. There is nothing in Canada, nationally anyway, that makes this kind of firing or disciplinary action illegal. There is no superseding right that can make that clause invalid. It might not look good if it ever got out, but that's the worst that LMG would face. And seeing how Linus is handling the PR on this one, they don't give a shit about that.
That's actually super illegal and grounds for a slam dunk lawsuit if anyone gets fired and claims this is why. Just verbally implying that you'll fire someone for that can get a business in trouble, and here Linus was dumb enough to put it in writing.
It's not in Canada. There's a very strong US law, yes, but LMG is based in Canada.
Oh, that sucks. And I'm shocked Canada is actually worse on such a fundamental aspect of workers' rights than the US. You basically can't have a union at all if you can't discuss wages. Hell, you can't even figure out what your baseline should be to try to negotiate individually. It's one of the strongest tools imaginable for suppressing wages.
Linus always did come off as smarmy and fake to me. Just nails on a chalkboard uncanny valley levels of fake enthusiasm, I truly can't stand his videos. So I guess I'm not surprised he's an absolute bastard to work for.
Which he absolutely is if he has a clause like that in his contracts.
I was shocked to learn this too. And while I do think regulation is the needed thing here, cause otherwise every company will have this clause, others in this post have said that he has gone out and defended this clause in particular.
I used to love some LTT videos. Very over the top stupid fun. Like using the air conditioner to cool a PC. But I gotta draw the line at ridiculously unfair labor practices. Oh well, I don't think I'll miss much.
For what it’s worth, BC’s working on fixing it and it’s already protected in Ontario. Hopefully everyone else joins the party soon …