Youtuber smearing lawsuit?

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, Majinhoju said:

Didn't watch the video.  Not going to give it a click.

Maybe the OP should make a clear disclaimer that the video is from Jayz's channel and not the one slandering other YT (ie. it's Jay talking about the situation, not the guy who started it all).

 

Anyway, Paul just made a live Q&A about the issue. Apparently Kyle from HardOCP also had some comments about that. After that and slamming Jay for the thing with Threadripper block it seems like after doing great job on GPP the guy is fighting for relevance.

[2FA]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That tweet made me lose the little respect I might have had left for Barnacules. 

The "I have more subscribers that you" argument is ad hominem and extremely immature. 

It's like telling someone that they are poor and therefore wrong and unimportant. 

 

I don't even care about this YouTube drama. But fuck you Barns. 

 

Edit: hehe, I looked at barns twitter and it's a goldmine for stupid fallacies, hypocrites and projections. 

For what I can tell barns was never mentioned as one of accused people. Yet he is posting a ton about this, and accuses whoever this nobody is from trying to get fame from YouTube drama.

Dude, he is a nobody. Why are you sicking your hundreds of thousands of fans on someone who hasn't even done you anything? 

 

Also, reposting tweets he has since deleted does nothing but keep the drama alive. You're clearly demonstrating that you want this to blow up rather than blow over. 

Barnacules just spends all day shitposting on social media whilst making the occasional one off video. I lost my respect for him a long time ago.

[Majinhoju]

13 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Maybe the OP should make a clear disclaimer that the video is from Jayz's channel and not the one slandering other YT (ie. it's Jay talking about the situation, not the guy who started it all).

 

Anyway, Paul just made a live Q&A about the issue. Apparently Kyle from HardOCP also had some comments about that. After that and slamming Jay for the thing with Threadripper block it seems like after doing great job on GPP the guy is fighting for relevance.

Oh, then I might watch it later.  I've liked Jayz's vids.

[mariushm]

Paul from Paul's Hardware also made a video today, and was live :

 

 

[Professor Dingledore]

42 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Maybe the OP should make a clear disclaimer that the video is from Jayz's channel and not the one slandering other YT (ie. it's Jay talking about the situation, not the guy who started it all).

Good idea. Done.

[willmc]

I just posted this on Jayz video:

I'd like to start this post with the declaration that I believe that none of the people on that list actually demanded money for coverage. Most of these channels have made a video posting about how they do make their money, and I believe in the high level of integrity of these people. Now that being said, I am not an officer of the court and I don't have access to any materials and/or evidence pertaining to a possible defamation case. I have some people say that this isn't important and these guys should just let it go. I disagree with that. By posting this list, Kumar has attempted to hurt these people professionally, and since these people are self employed, that turns into a personal and financial attack. It is true that most of these guys can weather this type of accusation and come out the other side unharmed, but I also don't believe that one should be able to just throw their hands up after such a malicious attack, state "It was just a prank bro", and walk away from this without consequence. This guy has shown that he's willing to hurt people unjustly for gain and will probably do so again unless he's shown that there is punishment as a result. A lawsuit from one or more of the accused can do this. I'm not suggesting that he should be buried financially to the point of no return. I think court costs and $1 punitive should be fine. What this will accomplish is to put on public record that this guy can and will put out false information, and is not to be trusted as a source of information. It will take time and hard work if he wants to rehabilitate any reputation he has, and it should be that way after something like this. And if he attempts to do this again, then you have court evidence of past behavior and inclination. In the end, court action might not only prevent someone that has proven to use this type of attack from doing so again, but hopefully dissuades anyone else that might use these types of tactics for potential growth.

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REPLY

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

LTT and other channels like Jayz2cents have never made it a secret when they had been sponsored to produce a given piece of content

This is not true.

LTT did not use to disclose if they were sponsored or not until late 2015. What happened in late 2015 was that the FCC and FTC went after Machinima for deceptive ad practices (which were sponsored videos that were not properly disclosed). Someone on the forum said that Linus was guilty of the same thing, and threatened to report LTT to the FCC if they did not do proper disclosures. Of course, fanboys defended Linus and Linus even shipped in and gave some bullshit excuses like "those videos doesn't have review in the title, so it's OK for us to not disclose that we are making a video and getting things in exchange". But then a little while later we started getting the "sponsored by" messages in the videos.

Here is the thread by the way.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This is not true.

LTT did not use to disclose if they were sponsored or not until late 2015. What happened in late 2015 was that the FCC and FTC went after Machinima for deceptive ad practices (which were sponsored videos that were not properly disclosed). Someone on the forum said that Linus was guilty of the same thing, and threatened to report LTT to the FCC if they did not do proper disclosures. Of course, fanboys defended Linus and Linus even shipped in and gave some bullshit excuses like "those videos doesn't have review in the title, so it's OK for us to not disclose that we are making a video and getting things in exchange". But then a little while later we started getting the "sponsored by" messages in the videos.

Here is the thread by the way.

Uhm, I didn't remember that. Still, the format has changed and now they disclose it every time - not to mention I don't see a reason for them not to, as I said. They make enough money without having to resort to this sort of thing.

[Guest]

I don't believe a company would really need to pay people to cover a specific booth. The whole accusation is a bit baloney, especially when the tech you-tubers are usually nice guys, and are often transparent anyway. 

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Uhm, I didn't remember that. Still, the format has changed and now they disclose it every time - not to mention I don't see a reason for them not to, as I said. They make enough money without having to resort to this sort of thing.

I think people are speaking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to how much money LTT makes.

Whenever someone complains about a huge amount of sponsored content or shitty clickbait titles/thumbnails the responses are always "they have to do it or else they will starve! They got families to feed!". But now when it comes to integrity it's "Linus makes enough money to not have his opinion swayed from sponsor money!".

 

You can't have it both ways. They can't be starving while also making a ton of money.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Linus was getting paid to visit certain booths and report on certain manufacturers during events like CES. I mean, when Corsair paid for their flights to CES or whatever it was, I am pretty sure they were contractually obligated to visit Corsair's booth. That might be a bit different from what this guy is accusing them of doing though. I don't really know what the accusations are, and I don't really care either.

[Sauron]

12 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think people are speaking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to how much money LTT makes.

Whenever someone complains about a huge amount of sponsored content or shitty clickbait titles/thumbnails the responses are always "they have to do it or else they will starve! They got families to feed!". But now when it comes to integrity it's "Linus makes enough money to not have his opinion swayed from sponsor money!".

 

You can't have it both ways. They can't be starving while also making a ton of money.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Linus was getting paid to visit certain booths and report on certain manufacturers during events like CES. I mean, when Corsair paid for their flights to CES or whatever it was, I am pretty sure they were contractually obligated to visit Corsair's booth. That might be a bit different from what this guy is accusing them of doing though. I don't really know what the accusations are, and I don't really care either.

Let me clarify - they make sponsored content and flashy headlines because that's the bulk of what makes them money. It's like asking, say, Valve why they charge for games on Steam if they make so much money...

 

Once we've established that that is what they do and their chosen monetization method, we can say that it's a good method that makes them a lot of money and that they don't need shady tactics to buff their revenue. Besides, a company that isn't making a steady profit most definitely won't go around hiring people left and right and creating new channels they know will probably not earn a fortune (channel superfun has always operated at a loss or at a very low profit as far as I know and techlinked is a minor channel at best).

[LAwLz]

44 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Let me clarify - they make sponsored content and flashy headlines because that's the bulk of what makes them money. It's like asking, say, Valve why they charge for games on Steam if they make so much money...

 

Once we've established that that is what they do and their chosen monetization method, we can say that it's a good method that makes them a lot of money and that they don't need shady tactics to buff their revenue. Besides, a company that isn't making a steady profit most definitely won't go around hiring people left and right and creating new channels they know will probably not earn a fortune (channel superfun has always operated at a loss or at a very low profit as far as I know and techlinked is a minor channel at best).

You're making a lot of assumptions my friend. 

1) You're assuming that this type of sponsor deals aren't worth a lot of money compared to other sponsor deals. 

2) You're assuming LMG would pass up on easy money/favors. 

3) You're assuming it isn't happening because of 1 and 2.

 

Yoy said it yourself, they make their money mostly from sponsors. So why do you think it is preposterous to assume they also take sponsor deals to cover certain booths at trade shows, when they have no problem taking money and favors to cover them in regular videos? 

[Sauron]

Just now, LAwLz said:

You're making a lot of assumptions my friend. 

1) You're assuming that this type of sponsor deals aren't worth a lot of money compared to other sponsor deals. 

2) You're assuming LMG would pass up on easy money/favors. 

3) You're assuming it isn't happening because of 1 and 2.

 

Yoy said it yourself, they make their money mostly from sponsors. So why do you think it is preposterous to assume they also take sponsor deals to cover certain booths at trade shows, when they have no problem taking money and favors to cover them in regular videos? 

And you're assuming the opposite, I don't see much of a difference. Since it's impossible to know for sure I choose to believe Linus and crew are nice people who wouldn't do this, just like I don't believe they murder baby seals in their backyard every morning. It's possible they are dishonest but I have no reason to believe it.

[Lathlaer]

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So why do you think it is preposterous to assume they also take sponsor deals to cover certain booths at trade shows, when they have no problem taking money and favors to cover them in regular videos? 

This whole thing isn't about whether they accept some other sponsorship deals on the site (besides the ones that allow them to pay for the flight, food and hotel from disclosed sponsors) though I don't believe they do that.

 

This is about whether they flat out refuse to visit your booth at Computex because you didn't pay them. And that thought is preposterous because it's so easy to prove that I don't believe any youtuber claiming they have integrity would ever do that.

 

In other words, whether they accept free money that goes their way is one thing and whether they refuse to make a video about a product because they money did not appear is another.

[arnavvr]

4 hours ago, 2FA said:

Barnacules just spends all day shitposting on social media whilst making the occasional one off video. I lost my respect for him a long time ago.

He still makes content, just not on YouTube anymore. He streams on Twitch @ 9:30PST every day. I lost some of my respect for him after watching one of his streams and he was banning people for very minor things.

[2FA]

6 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

He still makes content, just not on YouTube anymore. He streams on Twitch @ 9:30PST every day. I lost some of my respect for him after watching one of his streams and he was banning people for very minor things.

If you follow him on Twitter, it would be obvious his stream would be similar in his level of banning/blocking.

[nicklmg]

16 hours ago, Professor Dingledore said:

Is LTT also seeking legal action against this Sai Kumar fellow.

Lol no... we'd constantly be up to our noses in lawsuits if we went after everyone that made broad claims about our revenue sources online. If someone has a real claim with "proof" we're happy to publicly refute that, but baseless accusations are pretty standard for us and we don't typically acknowledge them publicly.

 

If a brand were to ever leak REAL invoices or contracts of work with us, we may choose to pursue them legally as we have the specific right to do so (and they would do the same to us if the roles were reversed) - that would be a breach of confidentiality. But until I see some hard evidence of anything that is far out of my mind lol.

11 hours ago, Sauron said:

I also don't see why they would sue, maybe they'll address it in the WAN show just to set the record straight but taking it to court would probably just give it more weight than it deserves. On top of that the guy would get to play the martyr card, claiming he couldn't win a court case because he's not as rich or whatever. In the end, winning a lawsuit wouldn't erase any potential bad press and it would only give this more attention.

I doubt we'll address it on WAN. It's not really our style to address this stuff unless there's new information we can bring that provides context or explains our side - right now it's just "these people were paid to do this and didn't disclose it," if any specific "proof" comes out we'd be happy to refute it with real information.

8 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Think about it, channels that put out video's to make a profit would indeed visit booths for money.

 

Common sense really.

Sure... but intelligent channels don't think about what's going to make them the most money in this specific moment, they think about what's going to serve them well in the long term. It would be incredibly stupid for someone to expect that they can take money for something in this industry and not disclose it, and then never have that information come into the public eye. Taking undisclosed money would be pretty horrible from a viewer perception standpoint, so if your argument is that our only goal is to make a profit and therefore we would take undisclosed money you're taking a very short-sighted look at the situation.

 

Funny that you say "channels that put out videos to make a profit" - you do understand that that is the end goal of every single channel on YouTube, right? Even if that isn't the PRIMARY goal... Everyone has to make a living, they just go about it in different ways.

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think people are speaking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to how much money LTT makes.

Whenever someone complains about a huge amount of sponsored content or shitty clickbait titles/thumbnails the responses are always "they have to do it or else they will starve! They got families to feed!". But now when it comes to integrity it's "Linus makes enough money to not have his opinion swayed from sponsor money!".

 

You can't have it both ways. They can't be starving while also making a ton of money.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Linus was getting paid to visit certain booths and report on certain manufacturers during events like CES. I mean, when Corsair paid for their flights to CES or whatever it was, I am pretty sure they were contractually obligated to visit Corsair's booth. That might be a bit different from what this guy is accusing them of doing though. I don't really know what the accusations are, and I don't really care either.

There's a big difference between being paid to create specific content, and being paid to create specific content and not disclosing that to viewers. That's the issue at hand here.

 

We created content at ASUS, Corsair, Intel, Acme Portable, AMD, Noble Chairs (der8auer watercooler), and MSI booths. The team visited many, many more booths throughout the week. The only one on that list that paid us for ANYTHING at Computex was Corsair, and that was disclosed in every case.

 

The only two brands at Computex 2018 that paid us were Corsair & Lastpass. We disclosed that very clearly in each instance of inclusion.

[Tsuki]

i mentioned in the news thread about this, but i suppose ill mention it here as well.

 

While obviously not everybody on that list are guilty of what they are being a accused of, i have no doubt that at least some of them are(and one i know for sure of).  its a very broad and slanderous accusation that has no proof or basis, but its also not entirely incorrect.

 

Tek Syndicate made a(now deleted) comment on Jays video admitting that they very happily take money from vendors to prioritize visits to their booths.  No they doesnt get money from every booth they visit, and dont tell people they wont go there unless they are paid. But, they do give priority to those that do throw money at them, sponsored or not.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Its very easy to sue people.

Anyone can sue anyone, its pretty simple.

Anyone can sue based on meaningless, baseless accusations.

All you need is a thicc enough wallet to get you into court. Once you're there, you're stuffed if you based it on said meaningless, baseless accusations.

[Misanthrope]

The guy apologized and probably doesn't has enough money to pick up so most lawyers would advise these youtubers to just let it go.

[WayneMakesThings]

I'm curious to know why anyone would take this "Sai" guys word? Why are all these youtubers even responding to this? This is a common misconception from viewers. Everyone who does reviews, in any field, is constantly under scrutiny about paid relationships from those uninformed. Do some reviewers take money for good reviews? Yes. But when you're as big as Linus or Jay, its better financially to keep that audience. And the way you do that is through trust and honest reviews. Ruining that relationship will drastically hurt a reviewer, maybe even kill them. So unless a company was going to give Linus his entire net of what is company is worth, plus that amount for the rest of his life - all for a good review - doesn't make much sense fiscally for Linus or any reviewer, to do so. THINK PEOPLE THINK

[GDRRiley]

lol

[LAwLz]

19 hours ago, nicklmg said:

Sure... but intelligent channels don't think about what's going to make them the most money in this specific moment, they think about what's going to serve them well in the long term. It would be incredibly stupid for someone to expect that they can take money for something in this industry and not disclose it, and then never have that information come into the public eye. Taking undisclosed money would be pretty horrible from a viewer perception standpoint, so if your argument is that our only goal is to make a profit and therefore we would take undisclosed money you're taking a very short-sighted look at the situation.

Well, that's kind of what you did before late 2015, when someone threatened to report you to the FCC.

Before then the disclosures on LTT were either not obvious, or non-existing.

 

 

19 hours ago, nicklmg said:

There's a big difference between being paid to create specific content, and being paid to create specific content and not disclosing that to viewers. That's the issue at hand here.

 

We created content at ASUS, Corsair, Intel, Acme Portable, AMD, Noble Chairs (der8auer watercooler), and MSI booths. The team visited many, many more booths throughout the week. The only one on that list that paid us for ANYTHING at Computex was Corsair, and that was disclosed in every case.

 

The only two brands at Computex 2018 that paid us were Corsair & Lastpass. We disclosed that very clearly in each instance of inclusion.

Thanks for the response!

It's as I expected in that case. You have given booth coverage in exchange for money or other things, but when you did you disclosed it (which I might add, I think you're pretty good at these days, although I don't really watch your videos anymore so I might be completely wrong on that).

[nicklmg]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Well, that's kind of what you did before late 2015, when someone threatened to report you to the FCC.

Before then the disclosures on LTT were either not obvious, or non-existing.

 

 

Thanks for the response!

It's as I expected in that case. You have given booth coverage in exchange for money or other things, but when you did you disclosed it (which I might add, I think you're pretty good at these days, although I don't really watch your videos anymore so I might be completely wrong on that).

That whole "debacle" was over a few specific instances - it's not like before 2015 we were taking money hand over fist and not telling anyone. Even in 2014 (and before) we were disclosing sponsored projects:

 

That was a completely different era of online marketing. There weren't proper/clear guidelines set, and everyone was just kinda learning as we went along. We've learned a whole lot from that situation and others, and these days we try to make everything as clear as possible so there's no room for confusion or any misunderstanding - if something's paid for, we disclose, and if we don't specifically say that something's paid for ("sponsored"), it's not. Keeps it clear and simple.

 

I haven't seen any complaints in the past few years about disclosure (aside from "you guys make too much sponsored content," but that's a whole other conversation lol), so it seems like we're doing a decent job these days.

 

Appreciate you being a contributing member on the forum, even if you don't watch the videos anymore.

[Lathlaer]

17 hours ago, WayneMakesThings said:

Why are all these youtubers even responding to this?

Because they have not been around since yesterday and know very well how easy it is to make people dust off their pitchforks

 

Your mistake is believing that only this Sai guy did this. The story was collaborated by videocardz who claim to have some invoices as a proof and by Kyle from HardOCP who apparently after doing great job on GPP made his mission to crusade against everyone in the vicinity, merit be damned.