Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[CYJAN3K]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

You have 7 posts here, you joined to promote drama.

Getting desperate huh? I wrote the reason for my account there - Linus doesnt want to acknowledge this video in more fitting place (its about his videos on youtube, in response to another video on youtube and yet we are on this old forum that doesnt fit the problem at all). Simply the fact that only one comment can be highlighted and there are "no threads" is terrible for everyone but Linus (because his comment is highlighted).

 

I could have 1 post and it doesnt change anything, as we can see - you have many posts and yet you are just lying about content of GN video and news outlets approach to different type of content.

[LinusAuctionTips]

Just now, CYJAN3K said:

Getting desperate huh? I wrote the reason for my account there - Linus doesnt want to acknowledge this video in more fitting place (its about his videos on youtube, in response to another video on youtube and yet we are on this old forum that doesnt fit the problem at all). Simply the fact that only one comment can be highlighted and there are "no threads" is terrible for everyone but Linus (because his comment is highlighted).

 

I could have 1 post and it doesnt change anything, as we can see - you have many posts and yet you are just lying about content of GN video and news outlets approach to different type of content.

desperate is an understatement it would seem.

[atxcyclist]

8 minutes ago, the9thdude said:

That's neat that you took journalism classes.

 

Too bad everyone in the tech space except for like, four people, are self-taught journalists who came from a variety of backgrounds such as lab tech, academia, or even tech retail. Yes, there are journalistic standards, but isn't making sure that the data you provide the most accurate it can possibly be instead of just going "close enough"? As far as I'm concerned, everyone right now is operating in the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law when it comes to journalistic standards. If this were the AP or BBC, I'd be inclined to agree with your statements, but that's not who we're talking about. We're talking about a college dropout who runs a multimillion dollar media company versus a lab tech who just really likes to run benchmarks.

 

So please, spare me the "b-but journalistic integrity makes this entire argument pointless!" Right now, LMG has a problem on their hands, and if they ignore it, it's going to get worse, not better.

I never said criticism Steve has made isn’t without merit, I said there is a process to making a news segment. Steve claims to be a tech watchdog, if he’s going to make that claim then he should be putting-out videos and articles centered around that process; Not taking clips, damning making contact with the entity in question, and rolling something out.

[jebus321]

2 hours ago, bizzehdee said:

 

contacting linus personally, and resolving it quietly. is the exact opposite of "proper journalistic practices", what an absolute narcasistic arrogant buffoon

Reaching out privately for comment is always best practice. Regardless of what you post after the fact and if you include a quote or not. Actually reaching out for comment seems to be the concern here. 

 

There's no way to confirm if this did or didn't happen. But just food for thought. 

[KALSTER]

@LinusTech We all love you man, but some of this really hit home. 

I don't know if you realize, but a lot of your subscribers have been noticing "sloppiness" that has been getting worse. Don't get me wrong, I watch a lot of your content, but 95% only for entertainment purposes and news nowadays. When it comes to reviews etc, you guys are just not in the same league as people like GN and HU. And you guys can be and I know you guys want to be, BUT please also listen to some of the points made by Steve, don't just focus on how you were wronged. You DO pump out an insane number of vids and your schedule is affecting the quality. Slow down a bit. Take your time more. Listen to your own employees' wishes when it comes to this specific issue. You hired them for a reason. They all want to do well. Give them the chance. 

I know you have explained the Billet labs thing, but man, that is a bad one. I know they quoted you for it. Surely you can't imagine paying them is enough? Public apology man. It's more than just a documentation mistake or whatever. In what universe could anyone think it is ok to trash a startup's only prototype, think about that, Prototype and then auction it off? How? Paying them is not enough. Who made that call? 

[AbsoluteRunner]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

Instead of posting something to simply make us feel sorry for you, why don't you actually tell us the details of what happen? This response and the tone it projects just confirms what Gamer's Nexus said is accurate.

 

And yes, I made this account to comment on this.

[hiyoseh]

I may have signed up to write this post, but hey hopefully I like the forums and stick around :')
Mainly I hope that this comment and many others are taken on board, because I've liked the show for years and hope to see it continuie to improve and for LTT to just get better at things it should be getting right.
Hopefully, finally, the criticism over rushed content to heart after not just hearing it from LTT employees and viewers, but now also peers in the Youtube space. Spend that extra day to fact check. To add extra production value. To let your creators put out something they actually feel proud of. If Linus or anyone else higher up in LTT just hit back with a tantrumy "trust me bro" it's going to be a very bad look. I've read the response in the thread and I hope that isn't going to be the final word, because I don't find it addresses any of the actual concerns that were raised here.

Also how the Billet situation was handled is frankly unacceptable. For LTT to tout themselves as serious professionals and then handle that situation in the way they did is just poor form. Serious inflection is needed. I doubt Linus will do it, especially after the initial response here, but I hope he will.

[Lance A Boyle]

I've always considered that an effective corporate or business apology contains these elements:

1. Acknowledgement of responsibility
2. Explanation (with caution)
3. Expression of regret
4. Commitment to change
5. Restitution

Sincere and unqualified apologies are important, because excuses, "doubling down", and deflections will usually reduce effectiveness. 

"We are sorry" is usually stronger than "we are sorry, however".

There is a communication framework called Image Repair Theory that goes into how individuals and businesses can respond to threats to image or reputation, and can help them navigate through a crisis or scandal that can impact clients, vendors, partners, other stakeholders, or the public.

 

Here's some "light reading":

• "Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies: Image Repair Theory and Research" by William L. Benoit
• "Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach" by Kathleen Fearn-Banks, which explores crisis communication strategies in public relations, including the role of apologies.
• "The Five Languages of Apology" by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas, which delves into different ways people apologize and what makes an apology effective.
• "Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology" by Edwin L. Battistella gives insights into public apologies and what constitutes a meaningful apology.

 

[Vanislesteve]

1 hour ago, LinusTech said:

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

 

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

 

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

 

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

 

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

 

Thanks for reading this.

I remember watching the billet labs video initially and your comments and general attitude towards the product felt harsh and dismissive.  And if I may say so a bit ironic given the money you spent making a gold controller and now more recently and $100k desk computer.  You've made plenty of videos enthusiastically portraying gear while still making it clear that there's no cost justification to the average consumer.  With a name like Billet Labs it's obvious that they're aiming for more bespoke products geared towards people who would have no problem dropping $1000 on bling.  But you portrayed the product as not only expensive but also ineffective.  To me it wasn't simply a matter of not reading the room right, you made your opinion because you didn't connect with it on an aesthetic level so you dismissed it completely.  Or at least that's how it came across to me.

I think fair compensation to Billet Labs would be to invite them on set and allow them to showcase their product the way it was intended.  And in keeping with your values, you can compare it with a table of data to the products that do offer a good cooling performance/value ratio.

My thoughts.
Thanks.

P.S.  As far as the errors go, perhaps you already have something in place or in the works, but Steve's video is basicly an instruction manual for the teqniques a quality control department can use to improve accuracy.

[DestructiveLlama]

52 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster

 

A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices. 

At the very least, we've confirmed that the community is not enabling you like XQC (Referencing your comments from WAN show). Take the opportunity to improve and it will probably be fine long term.

Definitely address the concerns, though. We're clearly not letting you off the hook.

[blunderdome85]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

...You need to slow down and think.... 

Deliciously ironic coming from someone being accused of rushing content and making basic errors in the process.

[Middcore]

Just now, blunderdome85 said:

Deliciously ironic coming from someone being accused of rushing content 

...by his own staff. 

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

LMG literally used the wrong GPU on the waterblock that Billet sent you. I'm not sure how this could be anything other than an accuracy issue.

 

The waterblock was specifically for a 3090Ti. Waterblocks are not interchangeable across different GPUs much less even different board partner models of the same GPU.

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

It does to the people with 3090Ti cards who would have benefitted from watching an accurate and objective video about a GPU block designed for 3090Ti cards.

 

Instead it has caused untold reputational damage to the company and has likely cost them future sales as a result of the harm your video has done.

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

Even if it performed as they advertised at around 20C lower than your temps?

 

If you can't allow your conclusion to change based on the performance of the product then you're not honestly being objective or helping the community.

 

A wise man once said words to the effect of: A delayed game is sometimes bad, a rushed game is always bad.

 

The same applies to videos and other content where integrity matters. The rushed videos LMG has put out riddled with pre-upload and post upload corrections are signs that there is a serious lack of quality control at LMG.

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it.

 

 

I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

I'm not sure you even believe that but if you do then you give GN and other reviewers in the space far less credit than they give you.

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach?

 

Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

For a scrappy startup with 12 employees these seemingly endless amounts of mistakes may be tolerable if not still extremely disappointing. For a reasonably large company with 120 employees this is simply not acceptable.

 

Making basic mistakes in seemingly every video and mass producing videos like it's chocolate isn't helping anybody except your bottom line. If that's the goal then great, scream it from the roof tops but if it is you shouldn't claim to care about the community or to be doing this for consumers. Furthermore, if you can't handle criticism about the company you partially own then frankly you should not own any part of a business.

[TheBeast2211]

4 hours ago, Skiiwee29 said:

He does

But the organisation doesn't - so when a laptop is reviewed on Short Circuit by Alex for example, (even though its not meant to be a review, a whole other issue), he doesn't disclose the owner of LMG has an investment that causes a conflict of interest. Personally I don't find the Framework investment to be much of an issue, but it is without question still a conflict of interest. It's just a fact

[Middcore]

2 minutes ago, Vanislesteve said:

I remember watching the billet labs video initially and your comments and general attitude towards the product felt harsh and dismissive.  And if I may say so a bit ironic given the money you spent making a gold controller 

Ah yes, how can we forget Linus's "otherworldly achievement"? 

[ForboJack]

8 minutes ago, MiltownClowns said:

I was referring to his statements in this thread. A proper PR response would could have steered this event to more productive waters. Instead he was defensive, dismissive, and generally made things worse. The health of LMG is directly tied to the perception of Linus, and he isn't taking that responsibility with the weight it demands.

 

Funny. To me the statement felt the most corperate PR statement from Linus I've ever seen.

[costafilh0]

So... LTT is getting bigger and they are facing bigger companies problems and scrutiny?

Ok.

What's new?

[VicBar]

One of the harshest things is that just last Friday Linus was talking about what he termed "Toxic Friendships", echo-chambers where nothing you are doing is wrong and you are just enabled by your "un-challenging" yes-men. Linus says WE, the viewer the consumer, are his boss and WE are the most important part of this.

 

Well the majority of WE is that echo-chamber fanboism... Like I don't think he listens to his "hard-core" audience as much as he thinks when at the end of the day he's all completely numbers driven. It's been analytics for years that have beat out his WAN show viewers when we complained about shitty thumbnails (I've shelved the discussion but it's an example), or complained about some other changes. At the end of the day what he would listen to was NUMBER GO UP, and it obv wasn't this hard-core minority making that happen. It was the voice-less echo-chamber (see what I did there).

 

I'd say GN doing this is exactly being a Good Friend and calling out smth they've been worried about for some time now. THIS is a non-toxic friendship right here. And it hurts.

[Rimson]

9 minutes ago, esponrru said:

@LinusTech Along with you and the rest of the team Ive seen myself grow, and learn about the things I love. You have been a great help in moments of struggle, I see you as a role model as someone I wish to be like. In every WAN show I listen to your takes and I understand the place where you come from. I could say Im one of your greatest admirers and watch most if not all of the context of this various issues. I hear your point but where I see the issue is in perception, if LMG wishes to be the hub for all tech knowledge with the immense LABS database that you envision. The normal joe has to believe that you and your company have integrity. I know that  the framework investment doesn’t cause conflict of interest, that your relationship with noctua doesn’t cloud your judgement and that you have shown that if a sponsor misbehaves (like anker) you will drop them, LTX or not. But the average watcher, the one time review person, can see the common errors, the controversy around you the investments and relationships and discard LMG as biased or unreliable. I know thats not the case, but many people could. A world without LMG would be a worse world to live in

My boy... please... do not aspire to be Linus or anyone else, be yourself and be fucking proud of it !! ffs!

[charliebros]

6 minutes ago, CradleGames said:

Tell me, are you really that out of touch?

Nothing you listed will make "better content". Giving your staff time to make better content will make better content.
Honestly nobody gives a shit about your theater room or acoustic chamber if you still produce half-baked rushed content.

When you make a mistake, you OWN it. You must be proactive. Don't release garbage because of "deadlines".
When there's a mistake in a video, you take it down, and you apologize publicly. You don't blame other people.
Don't punch down. Ever.

While I don't agree with the tone, the last part is true, even JayZTwoCents, an incredibly arrogant person, has been winding down, takes more time now to make his video, when he done goofed with the 4060, instead of having a bunch of annotations and asterisks, he took down the video and said "Well, woops, I fucked up, sorry". That's what you do.

 

I know LTT is a business, they need to make money, they aren't able to just slow down because slowing down is less videos, less videos means less viewer engagement, less engagement means that sponsors are less likely to get in, you get the idea, but with sooo many people there, I would expect more tidyness, unless administration is being inneficient

[JoostinOnline]

15 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Regardless of your take on it, Steve is just making drama by not contacting an entity they are reporting on.

If post count is all that matter (it doesn't), then I've got you beat.  This isn't just "making drama", it's constructive criticism.  LTT used to have a much higher standard.  Those days are gone, but that doesn't mean they can't return.

 

Plenty of people are definitely joining just to leave angry, non-constructive comments, and that sucks.  But that doesn't mean that GN isn't right in his criticism.  It was a very uncomfortable video for them to make (which was also completely demonetized, as a show of good faith that it's not meant to cause drama for profit), as Steve and Linus are friends.  But LMG is a corporation, and they need to be treated as such.  

 

As for contacting people before reporting, I don't believe that's necessary or even necessarily standard, but hey, we all have different ideas of journalistic standards).  Let's say you're right.  It doesn't change anything.  The criticism against LMG's actions, especially when there's an easy solution to fix it, are still valid.  Maybe some criticism is warranted towards GN for not reaching out, and if so, that should also 100% be brought forward.  But two poor choices don't cancel each other out.   We as the consumer shouldn't be happy just ignoring consistent problems.

[jebus321]

The amount of people here refusing to actually interact with the core premise of this post is truly something special. 

[Middcore]

6 minutes ago, AlTech said:

The waterblock was specifically for a 3090Ti. Waterblocks are not interchangeable across different GPUs much less even different board partner models of the same GPU.

 

Oh, he knows. He's been running custom water-cooled builds for years. It would be one thing if he actually didn't know that water blocks aren't universal to all GPU's (although he's in no position to be reviewing blocks then), he knew and just didn't care because he admits he had pre-determined the review would be negative due to cost - which is more than a little amusing considering how much content hay LTT has made out of "dream builds" far out of the reach of most of their audience and how out of touch his responses become when people express concern that spiralling cost is going to drive a lot of people out of the PC gaming hobby. 

[the9thdude]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

I never said criticism Steve has made isn’t without merit, I said there is a process to making a news segment. Steve claims to be a tech watchdog, if he’s going to make that claim then he should be putting-out videos and articles centered around that process; Not just taking a few clips, damning making contact with the entity in question, and just rolling something out.

OK...

 

If Steve was trying to do something with this video, such as actually trying to get LMG to implement some actual changes rather than a "it'll get better, trust me bro" statement, wouldn't this be the best way to do it? We've seen from controversies in the past, such as the backpack, those kinds of statements aren't cutting it anymore. GN let LMG get away from it once, and they seemingly haven't improved.

 

Whether you agree with GN's methods or not, you are here, on the LTT forum, discussing his video, adding fuel to the fire and drawing attention to this issue. GN is getting what they wanted out of the video.

[Drazil100]

6 minutes ago, jebus321 said:

Reaching out privately for comment is always best practice. Regardless of what you post after the fact and if you include a quote or not. Actually reaching out for comment seems to be the concern here. 

 

There's no way to confirm if this did or didn't happen. But just food for thought. 

I agree that reaching out is best practice, brushing something like this under the rug isn't. Steve should have reached out and then made the same video with the same level of harshness but with more information.

That said Linus should NOT have dissed Steve's journalistic approach in not reaching out. Just cause it is best practice doesn't mean he has to do it and getting mad that he didn't is a bad look. Given how poorly Linus has taken this, surprising him with this video was probably the best approach. It is the least friendly way to go about it but Steve isn't trying to be friendly here and the surprise of this coverage gives us the viewers additional insight as to how Linus handles controversy, rather than giving him time to brace himself for it and come out with a statement ahead of time.