Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[CradleGames]

15 minutes ago, SplitScream said:

You should have waited 24 hours before posting this as a reply to the situation. Emotions are hot as a result and immediate response allows for emotions to cloud the perception of the situation.

Regarding GN, they should have sent a preview of the video to LTT before posting it similar to how they do so with secret shopper or other reviews to answer questions or discuss directly with the company the content revolves around to alleviate any misunderstandings and get input before posting the final product.

Why? Do LTT send preview videos before trashing a product?

[Sipheren]

1 hour ago, Oilyraincloud said:

@LinusTech For me (I can't speak for everyone), I'm still a fan.  I knew nothing of the Billet incident because I first heard about it on WAN and you had addressed that it wasn't the best product and I largely dismissed it.  Learning about the auction was certainly concerning, though you've now admitted that was a mistake and you're attempting to make Billet whole now.  Good.

 

I also agree with you that maybe Steve should reach out personally before publishing the video he just did, but I also understand he absolutely doesn't have to.  He's always calling out people that are larger than him, and for the most part I appreciate his honesty and how direct he is.  I'm a fan of both you, but for different reasons.

 

I guess all I care about at this point is a brief statement on how LMG will move forward while generating better content.  A lot of it does feel rushed these days.  Some videos abruptly end when I feel certain ideas or concepts hadn't really concluded yet (I went back and watched the Billet video and this had that feeling, as well as the most recent AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade -- seeing the projector get installed would be neat, or maybe just cut out the work that went on in that room so I don't feel teased).  I understand you and everyone else work really hard to create the best content possible, but many at LMG have said they wish they had more time to focus on quality.  Perhaps it's time you took that seriously?  I'm not looking for a long explanation about how difficult content creation is.  I just want some humble acknowledgement of these mistakes and what you'll do better moving forward.  Perhaps that's your new CEO's issue, and I hope he takes all this seriously.  But as an example, look at Mr. Beast.  Dude maybe makes one video per month these days, yet they are extremely high quality and bursting at the seams with content at every second.  I would rather see something like that (i.e. less videos with more quality content per video) than the current environment that seems to focus more on cranking out as many videos as possible.  I'm not a content creator myself so maybe I'm full of shit (and I really have no idea how to create a good video), but I have noticed the quality issues other are mentioning.  I largely only watch WAN show now because I like the commentary and conversation between you and Luke (and sometimes Dan), but other videos have felt empty or lacking.  I may not be a chef, but I can tell when a meal is poorly prepared.  I'll still watch, but hopefully this can be taken as feedback to improve all around rather than as an attack.

This is exactly me, sub to floatplane, have purchased stuff from the store (in Aus too, so not cheap) and have enjoyed watching since the start (not much for needing to comment and ramble on so havent had an account here).

 

The only issue I see is too many videos and not enough quality control, easily fixable but thats for the team to work out. I hardly watch many of the main videos anymore anyway, its just mostly silly stuff and not overly interesting. (interesting for me is the work on your house, building servers, getting in to cool home lab type stuff, making something, useful stuff). WAN is my weekly chill though, Sat morning (and now arvo lol) sit back and listen to the topics, less marketing would be nice, I am sure not everything you guys do needs to be filled with "Buy this, and this is new and buy this, etc", I know you have a store

 

Anyway, I am sure @LinusTech knows whats going on, a big thing to remember is none of us on the outside have any clue of what is actually going on, from what I have seen of Linus, I dont think he is a bad dude, there are probably just pressures that we can't understand, time will tell in the end.

[Thiumpa214]

Linus will take this personally as time and time again shows; he does not take well to criticism. Look at his first response. It tells it all.

 

The company needs to slow down, release less content that has way more quality. You can see this during the video of employee interviews.

 

LISTEN TO YOUR EMPLOYEES MAN! THEY ARE TELLING YOU HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM

[Hallcrash]

I think LMG has done awsome things for the tech review/information segment. I do agree they have gone a bit off the rails in the past few months, and thats probably due to growth. That's why a new CEO was recently named. 

 

But, the first shot was fired by the Labs Tour video. When the creators that were targeted in that video spoke up and were asking why that was said in that way, they were pretty much ignored... 

 

Journalistically, sure GamersNexus should have reached out to LMG for their input on the story they were going to publish in regards to LMG accuracy, becauseit was there accuracy that was questioned first. But, I understand why they were upset too. Maybe they decided to ghost LMG like LMG ghosted them with their gripes in regards to the comments that were made during the Lab Tour video.

 

There are a lot of ears on LMG, and there is no reason to talk down about creators doing a fantastic job with relatively much smaller resources then LMG. This is not typically LMG style.. I liked it when they would collaborate with smaller creators, not talk down about their content.

[charliebros]

26 minutes ago, FadedSpark said:

Jesus this is a bad take and I'm with Steve but Holy wow this is truly delusional.

 

The actual discourse has been fairly reasonable on both sides here.

 

New copypasta????

It has some serious WAKE UP SHEEPLE vibes, definitely a new copy pasta

[terozzz]

And the thing that you tried to sell the prototype and did NOT give it back? 

WHAT THE F@CK?

LINUS YOU ARE A FUCKING HACK. 

Kick me or what the FUCK you want. 

 

Im done with linus group. 

 

FUCK off..  

[FullSpeed]

Yikes, Linus thinks this pathetic post hidden deep on his forum is enough to put it under the carpet. I would expect a full LTT video on him adressing all those issues. Labs building benchmarking tools and those people can't even get their numbers right, truely embarrasing. Imagine taking LTT seriously with any benchmarks after this. Nevermind selling a prototype from a small company he shit on the WAN show. 

[dimforest]

7 minutes ago, HaughtonBothered said:

Hardware unboxed taking shots at LMG under his videos

 

To be fair - it seems more to me that he's defending his own content. You seem to take issue with Hardware Unboxed's response but not the one above it? 

 

Either way, I don't think this snippet is really helpful to this current discussion regarding ethics and integrity. YouTube comment sections are one of the last places I'd check if I were looking for either.

[Legitsu]

I have very little respect for steve these days. hes become a drama factory & finger wager.

 

Honestly I don't even care if hes right about something these days he comes off as a douche bag.

 

this video comes off as cherry picking at best and pure jeliously at worse and I been waiting for a video like this since labs was announced because labs is direct competition with what GN was planing todo and they are clearly salty somebody else beat them to it 

 

 

some of his examples he gives about errors are videos that are pushing a year old and where already addressed via a follow up or anouther video

and linus has already said hes working todo better. as for the prototype thing what? might wanna check for some context there because boy howdy accusing somebody of theft is not something you want to be wrong about. 

 

to reinterate this is poor form and I was diliusional to expect better from GN this seems to be their brand of content now.  whip there audience into a mob and let them loose on somebody you think has `dun wrong` vs accually do reporter stuff 

 

I am not a ltt fanboy I have disagreed with linus more times then I agree with him but this stinks of petty jealiously and half truths being whipped into a storm for the sake of views 

 

its high time somebody sent gn a CnD to remind them that they can't just attack somebody because they don't like what they are doing you are not the police you are not tech jesus you an A "Internet Talking Head" 

 

you can talk all you like but when you cross the line into accual libal there are consequences and that video boy howdy is it tipping the line 

 

 

 

 

[Elizzy]

15 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

His response says they aren't even really doing anything to correct them now.

 

 

If anything, LMG has been talking smack about GN and Hardware Unboxed.

Meanwhile, from the reality where he says exactly that they are trying to improve and that not everything is going to be instantly better: 

1 hour ago, LinusTech said:

We talk constantly about how we intend to move forward and make better content. It's just taking longer than any of us would like. If everything had gone according to plan, we'd have our camera range, theater room, and acoustic chamber done like 6 months ago. Instead our warehouse is torn apart right now because they had to reinforce our roof in order to support the heat pumps that we've been trying to get procured since last summer.

The real world is messy, and the more cooks you have in the kitchen, the more room there is for error.

 

With that said, if all you want is a non-ambiguous statement that we're going to keep trying to get better, then here it is. We're going to keep trying to get better. Gary did a wonderful 'state-of-the-union' update for the company this morning about recent milestones and what we have in store. Those investments will keep flowing, and I promise that they will be a win for consumers and the tech industry.

For now, it's hard to do because I'm frustrated by the timelines too, but all I can do is say, "Stay tuned. it's upward from here and we're really excited."

 

[Blademaster91]

29 minutes ago, VicBar said:

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.

Exactly, we the "hard core" viewers are the ones he should be listening for how to improve how videos are made, though it feels like he's been out of touch with his viewers for a while now. GN and LTT are both good friends, and videos like this is a call for Linus to pay more attention to what the viewers have been trying to point out for a long time. I feel like LTT videos have been decreasing in quality for years, and it does hurt to see them slipping into putting quantity over quality as I watched LTT since their NCIX days.

40 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

 Even if the issues Steve talks about might be overblown, they are affecting LMG, and the level of quality they're producing with their videos. They won't be taken as a real authoritative source until they fix these issues.

I think it isn't affecting just LMG, it is affecting the whole tech community, Linus is going for tech entertainment, and the videos get millions of views, in order to make the change to be an authoritative source with trustworthy data, the content would have to change, or critically accurate data benchmarks would have to go to another channel. I've said this before but it seems LTT has created their own problem, the viewers want entertainment and any changes would mean views would go down. I've seen plenty of comments of people complaining they can't sit through a GN video, so there would have to be a balance of data driven content and entertainment.

 

[bbhaag]

10 minutes ago, Ethrillo said:

I find Linus answer to be piss poor. Its meaningless corporate speak. The entire thing is an attempt to deny responsibility and justify actions that have been CLEARLY wrong. The billet review should have never made it out and none of your excuses make it better. My takeaway is that Linus didnt learn anything from this and will keep doing what he does.

I agree 100% and the fact that he burying his head in the sand and refusing to even bring it up except for here on a message forum is crazy. wtf??

[Domi060288]

2 hours ago, BakerT said:

I find it a bit weird that a lot of people take Steve's word as absolute truth here. Some valid points yes, but a competitor that says "I have to do my journalistic duty" and people then believe every word also seems biased.

You know LMG is not a fair competitor, GN is far better in Review Content. 

[LarsW1337]

This video and response has seriously damaged the reputation of LMG/LTT, at least for me.

Wrong numbers in a diagram are one thing but the whole Billet situation is a royal fuck up. I do not recognize an apology, even if all the claims Linus makes (that the product basically is a waste of money) that would still require an apology. If you do not intend to review the product properly then do not review it.

 

Personally I have stopped watching LTT for the sake of reviews some time ago. Still - especially the affiliation with noctua - seems troubling. I do not believe that LMG intentionally made these mistakes to make noctua or others look better - but would these mistakes have happend with a noctua? My guess is someone in the chain would have second guessed the results in a video for so important affiliates.

 

 I do not think that anyone here is evil or intentionally makes company A better than company B but an apology/correction is still warranted. And especially the response does not seem like a clarification/apology but more like an sorry excuse. Especially the section regarding billet. I don´t get it - just acknowledge the mistakes and apologize. 

 

I hope that there will be a more appropriate response than than this thread. Sometimes it takes time to acknowledge mistakes - I think everyone has experienced this.

[xg32]

9 minutes ago, charliebros said:

Man... in that case I have shitty friends then

i'm talking hypotheticals with friends atm, most of them agree that steve shoulda reached out first (not my first reaction), really gets me thinking.

[Tugmaster]

Steve is tech Jesus and Linus tries to be an entertainer. Both jobs are needed, but only one resurrected. 

[Leksi T]

7 minutes ago, IndustrialBananaBread said:

Jay puts his two cents in under GamerNexus' video.

Wow, that's a really good take.

[The Spectre Report]

Just now, xg32 said:

i'm talking hypotheticals with friends atm, most of them agree that steve shoulda reached out first (not my first reaction), really gets me thinking.

You normally give friends the benefit of the doubt.  I won't dispute that.  But if you don't give friends the benefit of the doubt to begin with (as Linus and his employees didn't with Steve and GN that kicked this all off) then why should Steve do something different?

[KyuTheFox]

Dear LTT Community, I now I have never posted on the forum and I have first signed in to the forum this year thinking of joining a discussion about an product idea I saw on the WAN Show, But hear me out before throwing rocks I'm hurt enough.

 

Before reading forther please watch Gamers Nexus Video.

I know I have commented this already under that video but I think this is the place where I will most likely be seen.

 

After watching this Video as a person who has to watch content on the side on the second monitor and listening to only the audio I don't see the "*" changes and trusting in LMG as an now Data oriented company with labs I feel lied to especially when for me the only way of understanding a graph / statistic is getting it explained to me. I'm no one that would notice an **% Error and having all the content I want to watch in a playlist I don't see the corrections in the comments.

 

But now after this Video I don't know if I can trust that the recommendations I gave to even less hardware saviy people hold any water.

 

And the WAN Show doesn't help me because Getting the closest to "real talk" with Linus as he says so himself only uncovers more when thinking about it.

 

A : Linus says "A man that is kind to you but not to the waitress is not a kind man" in the Hardware Unboxed Nvidia debacle and than publishing a "Killshot" Diss Review against a startup that partered with them knowing that it wasn't made for the card they tested and then selling the block.

B: Linus mocking xQc for living in an echo chamber and thinking that he is invincible. When he kind of thinks that people will be ok with fixing errors in the cheapest way possible. When a techquicky by the filmmaker rule (3x the end video lenght in Footage) is 15 Minutes in Footage, not even getting the host to say what should have been said in the mic and Overlaying it to patch up the readout errors is in the Buget.

Louis Rossmann in a video about the Reddit CEO saying "what we hate the most in other people is what we have done ourselfs"  Puts Linus's Quotes from the WAN Show in a position where I don't think I can trust anything you say even the "real talk" WAN Show.

 

I'm writing this trying with the last bit of respect I once had for the Brand to chose my words wisely without sounding harsh. I'm going to sleep it is long overdo it is 2:41am and I'm gonna log off to not get notifications about this thread while I try to get over it.

This is informative and unfortunate

[Intoxicus]

It can be possible for Steve to use valid criticisms as a basis for an attack piece.

 

It's a classic play where you take a partial truth, or even a full truth, and reframe it into an ad hominem attack.

 

Steve has been taking an increasingly adversarial and overly critical stance over the past few years. And it seems like he has the bias of "big equals bad."

 

I saw the early brewing of this with the "Trust Me Bro" video he did.

 

He feels threatened by Linus and Labs and this is his way of trying to level the playing field.

 

Linus is correct. It's a dick move to not fact check this properly and blindside Linus like this.

 

Steve knows this. And he did it intentionally.

 

Steve wants drama and division. It's literally strait out of the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. You attack a larger entity to gain attention and social leverage. It's an old power play tactic, you see it all the time.

 

Linus fucked up. Yeah.

 

But Steve is going out of his way to blow it out proportion to effectively sabotage LMG and Labs.

 

Labs is a massive threat to GN in Steve's mind. Which is toxic competition. He's brewing unnecessary drama out of fears and insecurity.

 

If it really truly was about the high horse ethical considerations he would have approached this very differently. And much more respectfully.

 

 

[jaskem]

3 hours 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.

@LinusTech

 

Great response, that clarifies a part of the GN story. But what you fail to cover is the impact it has on a consumer and company when a review/unboxing is done in a sloppy way. We are talking about people who work at those companies and consumers making decisions based at least partially on your reviews. You as a media outlet have a responsibility. The story about the mouse is terrible. The reviewer made a pretty silly mistake that you could easily own up for. But instead denying it while still editing the video is not aligning with being transparent and showing responsibility.

 

I admire everything you have accomplished as a team and have enjoyed tons of video's from you. I just hope you understand the importance of owning up to mistakes, even if they are pretty silly and painful to admit. If you are not fully confident about the data you present, why don't you just say it upfront in the video's for full transparency? If a product is not presented/used in a right way in a review/unboxing, why not act accordingly once you get the information?

This is not a hate comment on LMG, just a concern from a viewer who would like to continue watching quality LMG videos with helpful information, as that is what has drawn me to your channels many years ago.

Edited August 15, 2023 by jaskem

[HaughtonBothered]

2 minutes ago, dimforest said:

To be fair - it seems more to me that he's defending his own content. You seem to take issue with Hardware Unboxed's response but not the one above it? 

 

Either way, I don't think this snippet is really helpful to this current discussion regarding ethics and integrity. YouTube comment sections are one of the last places I'd check if I were looking for either.

Why assume I don't take issue with it? It's a common youtube nonsense troll comment, we all can agree. But what I don't expect is the unprofessionalism from the content creator responding to it.

[charliebros]

7 minutes ago, VoidX said:

Both channels strive for accuracy and risk their relationships for a correct review, this is one of the rarest and most important traits in the landscape. I can stand behind both of them.

 

If you run a small company with only a few of you, then GN's way is perfectly viable: quality over everything else, and you only buy new toys when there's money for it. It's stable, but there's no way to do everything you want to do. Not even remotely close.

 

LMG is one of the largest YT operations by a long shot, and he has to provide to all these people. Allocating more time for videos is a double loss in this case: you have to pay more for it, so you will have less views, less revenue from said views, sponsors, reach... This loss of income can and do hurt jobs. Just look at what happens at similarly sized companies when a minor project is canceled. Entire groups are fired. This company is not large enough that the CEO can take a smaller loss from his salary to keep said employees on the long term. That feature comes at 1000 people which is not yet possible in this landscape.

 

You have to understand both sides. These creators act from the kindness of their hearts and not from greed. This is just an expected side effect of running a factory. Manufactories have way lower scrap rates than factories. Yes, it's true that the QMS is just better at GN, but Linus has a way wider portfolio. You just can't have the best of both worlds, that doesn't work. I won't believe that major changes will happen. Yes, the lab will do more comparable results, and the employees will be trained for more appropriate communications, but that's all they can do. And because we need both a quality and a quantity channel, it's good this way. Keep up with the good work, both of you!

Thing is, you would thing that the reason they are getting so large, is precisely to have as many people needed to keep allocating nice and big time budget for stuff, you would expect to have a larger variety of hosts, each with a certain area of expertise in order to bring a better view for the things getting reviewed, they kinda make this in ShortCircuit, with Plouffe making Keyboard and Monitor videos, Dan doing audio videos, etc. (I hate the dude that makes the phone videos tho, terrible takes). However, is either Jake, Alex or Linus making videos.

 

We demand MORE EMILY.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

5 minutes ago, Eleude said:

Did GN approach the issue in a way that could have been more journalistic (talking with you first)? Yes, you're correct

You can probably reasonably claim that Steve got really salty about the way Linus treated him and that's why he issued this video without contacting Linus prior to publication. Does that make any of the Steve's point less valid? Absolutely not. Judging from the reaction of the community, he correctly identified all the pain points.

[Intoxicus]

4 minutes ago, bbhaag said:

I agree 100% and the fact that he burying his head in the sand and refusing to even bring it up except for here on a message forum is crazy. wtf??

He doesn't want to play into a back and forth drama battle.

 

How is that not obvious and so difficult to understand?

 

Did Steve do such a good job of villainizing Linus that y'all turbed your brains off that much?!