Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[RockerBug17]

Just now, Drazil100 said:

It's the internet. The internet ALWAYS lacks tact. It's been lacking tact since the very beginning.

Linus has been in the game for a LONG time and by now he not only knows what to expect, but has a support structure to console him in times of extreme sense.

There will be a time to defend him on this in the future after they have fixed their processes and they have proven that they are serious about doing better. Now is not the time to defend him. Now is the time to take lumps.

Sounds vindictive.

[wreakinghavoc]

I wish Linus would have been more humble about it. 

[RockerBug17]

Just now, MiltownClowns said:

I'm sorry, but if you need me to define spoon feed you the basics than maybe you should do some more rudimentary research before you hop in to a massive discussion like this.

How did I not see that one coming, L. U. L. Z.

[ShadowLinks]

LMG rushing videos
-yes absolutely and everyone beyond a casual viewer has noticed
-LMG not taking down videos for every correction probably has more to do with algorithm/youtube reasons. There's a can of worms i'm not going to open. I'd rather they just cut down on mistakes.

 

GN if quite right in picking at all inaccurate factual data. Its his channel's platform.
-The cooler video was main channel content, and i think due diligence with the 3090 should have been done, even if it didnt change the conclusion
-The SC video is somewhat forgivable? More due to the scope of the channel. Usually a quick 10 minute look at an item and if something that wasn't really evident in that time is conceivably an issue with the product and I think their feedback is valid, if a bit distastefully done. Again though, picking at the error is quite valid still and reiterates the point of LMG going too fast. 
-Kinda hoping Labs can pivot with this scrutiny and improve. This level of factual data evaluation is the kind of thing they will have to deal with CONSTANTLY given their vision.

 

While not monetizing the video is respectable, (if a little odd, has he done that before?), I think the more respectable thing would be to fire off an email to LTT "FYI, im about to unload on you". Its not going to undo your journalistic integrity. "Ignoring personal relationships is my job", perhaps is and odd way to put it, but im pretty sure there is some degree of common decency expected in the space.

 

Auctioning the waterblock. They're in it deep now. Billet may have gotten whatever monetary value they asked for, but the trust LTT has lost from that...thats going to hurt for a while.

[VeryScary]

5 minutes ago, Teksers said:

 Correct but then Linus should be the one ever again to review a laptop. Or comment on how repairable it is. That was the point GN was trying to make.

Hasn't he stopped reviewing laptops since then? When was the last time Linus himself did a laptop review? 

[Teksers]

8 hours ago, Jazmodo said:

This was overly dramatic & sensationalist, and isn't the first time by GamersNexus either.

I think the underlying growth of LMG upsets GN. Moving more into more detailed hardware tests directly competes with GN, and they clearly don't like it.

GN also seem to feel LMG 'copied' some of their merchandise sales. LTT deskpads came out after GNs Modmats. LTT screwdriver came out after GN screwdrivers. 

LMG content is fast, and loose, sometimes inaccurate, but (almost) always entertaining. Some criticism is valid, this just seemed overly salty.

When you review a product and people watch it to make up their mind on what to buy, you need to be accurate.

Otherwise what's the point of the video. I didn't see any warning that the video was a pure entertainment and should be treated as such.

[VisibleXela]

Just now, VeryScary said:

Hasn't he stopped reviewing laptops since then? When was the last time Linus himself did a laptop review? 

I think so, and if not from what I recall he's pretty good about disclosure. I think some people think nobody at LMG should review laptops at all due to Linus and, while I don't agree, I think that's a valid criticism and a reasonable opinion to hold.

[Emperor Numerius]

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Edited August 15, 2023 by Emperor Numerius
um i broke the ai thing so i removed the ai parts :)

[arcanition]

5 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.

Hey Linus, doubt you'll ever read this, but I made an account just to respond to this and express how sad I am that we've lost the Linus that appeared to be a good guy.  Where is the Linus that made videos years ago? Who is this corpo-legalese dude now that treats their community like this?

 

You say "it wasn't sold, we just auctioned it off and gave the money to charity" as if that absolves LTT of wrongdoing. Who cares where the money went? And no, this isn't something you can just write off as a "simple mistake" due to "growing pains". Why would you spend 75% of your response being condescending about how the community shouldn't be mad at you for this. Didn't you literally just get angry recently for one of your LTT backpacks being at a thrift store? And this is your response to Billet Labs?

 

Good lord, look at your post. Imagine you're the Linus from 10 years ago and you had a prototype of something. Imagine giving it to a reviewer who 1) uses it for the wrong product, 2) publicly trash talks the product and company, and 3) sells it off to a competitor... and then you come back with a snide remark about "haha acktually it was an auction not a sale"... come on Linus.

[Teksers]

1 minute ago, VeryScary said:

Hasn't he stopped reviewing laptops since then? When was the last time Linus himself did a laptop review? 

 

Last month, I do not know if that device counts as a latop but it is called and treated as one and this is just on the main channel haven't checked ShortCircuit.

[hysteresis]

8 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:

SMH this is the kind of schizoposting  that justifies Linus digging his heels in and ignoring legitimate, sane criticism. There is absolutely 0% chance that anything within a million miles of being this conspiratorial occurred.

 

LMG did a crappy rush job of reviewing the prototype. It then got lost on a shelf somewhere, not scanned back into inventory or similar. The emails requesting it back were missed or ignored due to some combination of overwork and incompetence. Down the line, someone who has been given not enough time to find “any old weird stuff” to put in the LTX charity auction found it and were like “wtf is this? Oh lol this weird one off waterblock, let’s put it in.” and that’s that.

Additional correspondence from billet labs was ignored until a public stink was raised, making billet the squeaky wheel that finally got the grease.

 

It’s basic, everyday corporate incompetence. It’s unacceptable, and it’s awful for the billetlabs guys, but it’s not some sort of elaborate conspiracy. LMG don’t have the time to check the labels on their graphs, where do some people think they get time to plot the winners and losers in the hardware industry inside some evil lair?

I mean ... I agree in that I don't think linus nor anyone at LMG actually did that. But ... why is the response "We're throwing money at it so please look the other way"? 

 

Edit: It just sounds like linus has something to hide here and wants to use money to make the problem disappear. 

[Drazil100]

2 minutes ago, RockerBug17 said:

Sounds vindictive.

Many people are. I still have faith that LMG will improve.

There isn't anything you can do to stop the internet from being vindictive right now, any attempts to defend him will just come across like you are sucking up (likely even to LMG themselves). Everyone else is in agreement that they messed up. GN thinks they messed up, the community thinks they messed up, and they think they have messed up.

Give them the chance to improve and prove themselves and THAT will be the time to defend.

[eskimododo]

Hot take: Linus doing the exact same egregious actions as the companies Linus always like to call out as terrible on his channels. Linus no longer has any moral right to call out any tech companies for bad support/product.

[CradleGames]

1 minute ago, VeryScary said:

Hasn't he stopped reviewing laptops since then? When was the last time Linus himself did a laptop review? 

Quite recently. There's quite a few in the last 2 months.
 

 

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Legitsu said:

Nonsense. It's very clear, given Steve's recent posting history, that all he cares about is finger-wagging at corporations bigger than him.

It's become a pattern for him: find something to be mad about, and then whip it into a storm and sic his audience on whoever he doesn't like or thinks has done something wrong.

You want proof of this? Why didn't he reach out to LTT? Oh, that's right, because Linus would have handled it professionally and not given him anything to whip into a storm.

Ethics and integrity? Where are Steve's? Nobody with either of those traits would post such a highly opinionated and charged video without reaching out.

I guess Steve thinks he's above practicing what he preaches.

He's come right out and said he's not interested in being a journalist (I cannot, for the life of me, find the video in question, but I will find it later).

I find it interesting you call it "finger wagging".

I guess people expect tech youtubers to blindly shill out for companies these days. Investigative journalism and calling out bulls$%& companies pull isn't "finger wagging".

While we have on the other hand is Linus making a corporate sounding while at the same time trust me bro sounding statement so all the fans come defend him, its clearly working on quite a few people. Linus thinks he is above taking any blame here, and tries to blame GN for issues with LMG.

Then did LTT reach out to GN before attacking them on the WAN show? I don't see any reason why LTT has to be contacted first, it isn't a strict requirement.

GN is known to have ethics and integrity in reviews, not letting sponsors control how his views are making videos, and I find it rather clear that LTT has been caring more about money than ethics or integrity, by taking big name sponsors to do unrealistic to most people sponsored builds, i'm sure the audience thinks thats "fun"  but it isn't very appealing to most people building the average gaming PC or those building their first PC. And the unacceptable response with the Billet water block, he essentially ruined that company and didn't care because the company isn't throwing sponsorship money at LMG.

[VeryScary]

1 minute ago, Teksers said:

 

Last month, I do not know if that device counts as a latop but it is called and treated as one and this is just on the main channel haven't checked ShortCircuit.

Yeah, how to buy the cheapest laptop isn't a laptop REVIEW. Some of you guys are reaching. 

[VisibleXela]

8 hours ago, Jazmodo said:

This was overly dramatic & sensationalist, and isn't the first time by GamersNexus either.

I think the underlying growth of LMG upsets GN. Moving more into more detailed hardware tests directly competes with GN, and they clearly don't like it.

GN also seem to feel LMG 'copied' some of their merchandise sales. LTT deskpads came out after GNs Modmats. LTT screwdriver came out after GN screwdrivers. 

LMG content is fast, and loose, sometimes inaccurate, but (almost) always entertaining. Some criticism is valid, this just seemed overly salty.

I don't agree that the content was overly dramatic or sensationalist, but more importantly I don't really care why it was made at all. LMG is a public facing company and when they fuck up they should be criticized for it. Some of the complaints are petty, some aren't. Some I agree with, some I don't.

 

Bottom line is they should learn from this, do better, and, above all else, stop complaining and playing the victim.

[PressleyPress]

It's obvious that LTT has some severe growing pains to overcome. Walking the line between entertainment and testing is a difficult one. The channel started with a focus on fly by the seat of your pants "authentic" reviews from a single guy. Being "authentic" on YouTube back then was more important than high production values, tight scripts, and flawless execution of those scripts. As YouTube has grown, it has become a "legit" media outlet, and LTT has grown along with it. Linus has a specific persona that his viewers want to see on a video. It's part of the charm of the channel. It might be the persona needs to be dialed back therefore reducing the looseness of the presentation. But if you do that aren't you killing the entertainment part of the channel? Like I said - it's a hard line to walk.

 

Now that LTT is moving into serious testing, investing in a high tech lab, and growing to a size that I would only assume is unmanageable without the existence of strict procedures, they're going to have to focus more on up-front preparedness instead of trying to fix things in the edit. Software Testers call this "moving left", or focusing more at the beginning of the project than at the end. The scripts need to be checked for accuracy, the slides need to match the scripts, the performers need to execute those scripts correctly, and the editors need to assemble everything efficiently. (The editors will have their workload lessened if they don't have to put a lot of asterrisk corrections in the edit. Yay for "moving left"!)

 

LTT's situtation is unique for a media company as well. They already have a 15 million person audience, and a product they've been putting out for years. You don't watch a show on a TV network for example grow and change over time. It's born being what it's going to be. It's going to be "X" and you hire the people, and set it up to do "X". LTT is a big ship making a huge turn very slowly in front of our eyes. Their mistakes are shown to us day by day. That's a unique and difficult position for them to be in. They can't just stop doing what they do, revamp for a year, and then start making content again. That's just not how a YouTube channel works. A TV News Show possibly, but not a YouTube channel. It's easy for Gamers Nexus to make claims that "5 minutes could have been taken to fix an edit" when their staff and company is MUCH smaller and much more agile than a 100+ employee company. Time management difficultly doesn't scale linearly per employee. It's geometric. Managing the time of multiple sets, channels, camera men, etc isn't a trivial thing.

 

In the end, I truly do believe these issues to be growing pains. They aren't malicious. They're mistakes, and they're working on the processes to catch, fix, and report those mistakes.

[wreakinghavoc]

Why not just thank GN and just slow down a bit? 

[CMAN69.420]

7 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

I'm still taking bets on when he walks that back

 

He gun be running that back hahahahah 

[VisibleXela]

1 hour ago, Legitsu said:

Nonsense. It's very clear, given Steve's recent posting history, that all he cares about is finger-wagging at corporations bigger than him.

[RockerBug17]

1 minute ago, Drazil100 said:

Many people are. I still have faith that LMG will improve.

There isn't anything you can do to stop the internet from being vindictive right now, any attempts to defend him will just come across like you are sucking up (likely even to LMG themselves). Everyone else is in agreement that they messed up. GN thinks they messed up, the community thinks they messed up, and they think they have messed up.

Give them the chance to improve and prove themselves and THAT will be the time to defend.

As if I care that others think I'm "sucking up." I don't have time to teach them the nuance of conversation.

 

The only difference between this thread and a stoning is the stones.

[ZombieMan762]

4 minutes ago, VeryScary said:

Hasn't he stopped reviewing laptops since then? When was the last time Linus himself did a laptop review? 

 

They just did a Dell laptop review and Linus wasn't the presenter but his name is listed as the Director and Producer. That is a conflict and should be disclosed. 

[VeryScary]

1 minute ago, CradleGames said:

Quite recently. There's quite a few in the last 2 months.
 

 

Again I say that isn't a laptop REVIEW. Especially a video mentioning buying cheap laptops when framework laptops are anything but cheap. You people are reaching. Is he never supposed to mention laptops ever again?

[Legitsu]

14 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

5 hours ago Linus said "we haven't sent payment."

 

The Gamers Nexus video is 8 hours old.

 

5 is a smaller number than 8.

again so billetlabs was informed on the 11th they lmg didn't have the block anymore

you can't count weekends because well business days 

 

so at the earlist assuming somebody texted or emailed linus on friday/saturday 

the soonest anything could be done about it was TODAY monday 

the fact that they have already agreed to resolve the issue on the FIRST business Day since being made aware is pretty quick

 

steve intentionally didn't wait so he could use this issue to sell his entire video and you people who apperently don't understand how days work or how businesses work in the real world got sucked right in and paid no mind to the timeline that was being provided 

 

and as for the point about the missing prototype being a major problem for billet labs

I am sorry like if you lose one prototype and its the end of the world for you? then my god what are you even doing? fire up the cnc machine and cut anouther one if you can't come up with anouther prototype and you expect to ship in novemeber ? brauh what are you doing.

 

and assurdly there is no possblity of anybody 'stealing' anything from the prototype trust me bro(tm) nobody in the industry cares because the design is litteral dogwater and linus is right when its that bad nobody should ever buy one ever because its extremely clear the billetlabs has no idea what they are doing