Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[BWMerlin]

On 8/15/2023 at 7:25 AM, LinusTech said:

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece.

Hi Pot, I am Kettle.  You have missed the entire point of the video Steve was making in that your company didn't do "proper journalistic practices" which lead to publishing false and misleading data.

[IseeFractals]

9 hours ago, eece_ret said:

By in large part I agree with this.  However I think if Steve was trying to be as above board as he espouses and given the implications he has attached to the Billet Labs portion, a request for comment prior to go live would at least more align with the journalistic standards he purports to hold himself too.  If not by letter then in spirit, call it what you wish.  But at least provide an avenue to obtain the other side of the situation before sending it.

When part of the problem being highlighted is how Linus, specifically, handles any and all criticism what is that realistically going to accomplish?

The various "mistakes" present in a growing number of videos are publicly available. The billet situation was already shown to be ignored, they stated in the original "review" of the block that it was a "one of a kind prototype" and that "they wanted it back" and then it showed up for auction in other publicly available video's. They talked to billet, got the back round they needed through the email trail.

What happened after the callout video went live? Linus tried to do damage control. He went and responded to billets ignored emails at that point, immodestly said "we've agreed to compensate them, everything is good" even though he was the only party making that assessment, because he still hadn't talked to them. 

The reality is that "asking for comment" wasn't going to elicit anything useful, it's going to get the same excuses, justifications and deflections that always arise in these situations, and it's going to give Linus an opportunity to "get ahead of it" and trot out a:

"it was just an oversight, a communication breakdown, as soon as this was brought to my attention i personally reached out to billet labs before the GN video went live and everything is good, we're only human, we make mistakes, we're committed to doing better" 

which muddies the waters. It would result in a weakened position for GN for absolutely no gain, to themselves or the community. 

[Budget DIY]

19 minutes ago, perryckd said:

 

as many have shown, tech Jesus made mistakes and he never owned up to it.

 

tech Jesus used crafty condescending language that is too personal, petty and editorialized

 

tech Jesus can always take the high ethical ground (for real) and communicate with Linus first.

 

LMG has been around for ages, if their ways were scummy (as implied by tjesus), they would have folded

 

let see what this witch hunt hate hunt has created? if you notice, Steve specifically Cherry picked out things that aren't necessarily false but omitting the fact that Linus is almost too transparent to a fault sometimes. And a lot of these concerns have actually been addressed consistently on the WAN show. So it's very easy to dogpile and to accumulate things that you want to curate yourself. 

 

moving the industry or hate mobbing your potential new rival?

There isn't a negative reaction to chose from. So I'll let you know this way: crawl out of that dark brown-ish hole, and sniff some fresh air.

-GN DOES own up to mistakes when pointed out to him, or find the mistakes by himself and pointing them out.
-GN didn't use hatespeech, and kept things factual IMO.

-GN at times did create high-quality content, without talking to the person(s)/company in question before. It's not out of the ordinary, and it's not even required to do so. And still be a high-tier journalist.
-GN has been around for ages too. They initially were written-only, then expanded into the YT scene. (I've been subbed to GN since they were ~100k subs, stopped watching LTT content soon-ish after they moved out of the house)

Linus is transparent about certain things, yes. Probably most transparent in several categories for channels with over 15 mil subs. This is however totally unrelated to the issues mentioned by GN. Several issues have been talked about during WAN shows, which is also why all this "knowledge" is in the public space, which is also the reason GN didn't feel the need to contact anyone from LTT. Many of the concerns weren't actually dealt with, or fixed, or handled properly/professionally. (Billet Labs being the worst of them) The dogpile is very valid. And if you can't see this dogpile is valid, you're just fanboing over LTT. LTT behavior as mentioned by GN, should never ever be defended.

 

Sidenote: From what I've seen in the past, people in the tech space know each other, and don't consider themselfs rivals. Many even work together, or have behind the scenes communications about test results. LTT used to be part of this group of people, but I doubt it's anymore.

[Shlouski]

8 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

No

 

You were supporting my argument so well I had to check. 

 

10 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

correct

 

Thanks

 

11 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

You have not seen either show

 

Seen both. 

 

12 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

They bring out the worst people, the dumbest people

 

He's made linus sound like one of these people, maybe even worse, considering how GN totally crapped on him and had little to nothing good to say about him. 

 

20 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

have them fight on camera, more outlandish

 

Exactly what GN is doing, provoking fights over the Internet, and sensationalising them in his videos. 

 

24 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

. It is is no way comparable to calling someone out for shitty behaviour.

 

 

Again, literally what Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer did. 

 

At least they pretented to help these people through counselling, GN admitted he's been seeing these problems for months, even actively looking for them, and did nothing, didn't even offer the tiniest little bit of help or even give the smallest of warning to LTT, instead he planned, schemed and collected data over months so he could hit them as hard as possible with no regard for a community he admitted knew would be damaged, this is very telling. 

 

41 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

you silly goose

 

[rYzYr]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:25 PM, 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.

“It's more like I just read the room wrong.”

 

**Trust me,  bro.** You’re still doing it.

[McGherkin]

This thread, this conversation, it’s done. The things LMG was accused of in GN’s first video weren’t great but survivable. 
 

Linus’s response to this was worse than the original issues.

 

Madison speaking out about the literal sexual harassment and brutal culture at the company has completely and utterly destroyed any possibility of this being salvageable. There is no way sponsors are going to continue endorsing the company after this.

 

Sit back and enjoy the flames folks, this one is burning to the ground.

[Nathat23]

Basically from the video Colton sent an email before GN's video but forgot to add Billets as a recipient.

[Tanaz]

Just woke up and read Madison's twitter thread. Also saw that linus made a "what do we do now" thread but still hasn't published the video probably because Madison hadn't posted when he filmed it. If even half of what she's saying is true I don't know if there's anything he can "do now" to fix the situation. It's just over.

[yoc]

17 minutes ago, Nathat23 said:

Basically from the video Colton sent an email before GN's video but forgot to add Billets as a recipient.

Source?
I mean, it will be completely hilarious if that's what happened, lol.

[Godiwa]

1 minute ago, Tanaz said:

Also saw that linus made a "what do we do now" thread 

where? link?

[Tanaz]

Just now, Godiwa said:

where? link?

 

[aaradorn]

5 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

He's made linus sound like one of these people, maybe even worse, considering how GN totally crapped on him and had little to nothing good to say about him. 

Linus made Linus sound like one of those people, GN put a mirror up.
 

Quote

Exactly what GN is doing, provoking fights over the Internet, and sensationalising them in his videos. 

Pointing out inaccuracies, flaws or straight up bad behavior is not provoking a fight. 

Quote

Seen both. 

 

*X* to doubt

 

 

You goofball, you can't even handle my shtyle

 

 

[E-Waster]

There’s a floatplane video out called ‘what do we do now?’ - since I ain’t paying for a floatplane sub, when will the video be out on YouTube?

[f222]

Links to the what do we do now video are available on reddit...

[Nathat23]

3 minutes ago, yoc said:

Source?
I mean, it will be completely hilarious if that was what happened, lol.

[JJBart245]

2 minutes ago, E-Waster said:

There’s a floatplane video out called ‘what do we do now?’ - since I ain’t paying for a floatplane sub, when will the video be out on YouTube?

tomorrow. i think.

he should post it on youtube NOW not later

[tukykarmakar]

I think there's a major miscommunication going on here and statement is poorly worded. Following is what I gathered from all of Linus' statements--

1. The Billet Labs cooler video was not meant to be a critical analysis, rather a video showcasing how overkill the product is and that it doesn't make sense. Which is why significant effort was not dedicated to use the correct GPU that the product was advertised for.
2. The Billet Labs product was not "sold" to make money for the company, rather it was auctioned for charity. If this is true, then it should've been mentioned that way, ie., The company didn't sell the prototype to make free profit, rather it was auctioned off to fans with positive intentions because there was a massive failure of understanding that Billet Labs needed it back.
3. The Pwnage mouse and various other frequent inaccuracies in multiple videos were probably caused by less effort being dedicatied to video QC because of the CEO transition.

To Linus, you run a company now. And as a company, you should live up to your own standards that you have mentioned multiple time. You have mentioned multiple times that you trust the community to keep you honest, and here we are trying to clear this mess that have happened for whatever reason. You are being defensive, but I don't believe anyone (with reasonable and functional brain) is attacking you. We're just pointing out that it's not been going good lately, and we're just a call away from helping you. I'm sure all other online creators would agree. Steve didn't have to reach out to you personally, you didn't hire him as your consultant, but he did have the courtesy to disable monetisation of the video where pointed out your issues.

 

As an outsider, who has no understanding how YouTube business works, I can't say how you should operate. But all I can say to you is that you can trust your community to not leave you because you're uploading less videos than usual. You CAN take a break from regular video schedule to sort out things internally. I can only imagine the chaos that might ensue in a CEO transition for a company like yours. But I want you to know that we will understand ONLY IF you trust us and let us know that you needed the time to sort out internal issues.

 

But there's still hope, this situation can still be salvaged. This happened publicly over YouTube videos and should be resolved the same way. Get Steve from Gamers Nexus, and maybe other creators who you think has an issue with your media content, and sit down in an a questionnaire/interview/conversation or whatever you wanna call it, and discuss about what caused the issue, why is it an issue and how it can be resolved. I don't know about other creators, but Steve would definitely be willing to do it. Take a day off where you have no other thing to worry about in your schedule and upload a video of that, it's the best and only way I can see this can remediated, plus y'all could get some sweet views too.

[avg123]

there should be a clown emoji reaction too on this forum so I can give it to some replies to this thread.

Also a shit emoji reaction

[aaradorn]

2 minutes ago, avg123 said:

there should be a clown emoji reaction too on this forum so I can give it to some replies to this thread.

Also a shit emoji reaction

Agreed

[yoc]

3 minutes ago, Nathat23 said:

Thanks! This is really funny, lmao.

[Mark Kaine]

On 8/14/2023 at 8:06 PM, trotski94 said:

Maybe you should watch the entire video with the full reasoning before cementing your opinion

no, they're actually right, this coming from gn, is highly ironic as they're doing the same they critique lmg for, just with lower production values and much more snakeoil lol.

[IseeFractals]

15 years ago or so, my uncle was a VP at AMD, and he arranged to give me the honor of "leaking" (though it was sanctioned) the full performance benches of the Phenom II chips.

He handed me a little blue tray with 6 engineering samples, told me, "you have a week, test them, retest, write it up, tell the truth, don't fuck it up"

I spent 20 hours a day, testing, retesting, retesting the retesting. Every compatible board, 20 games, every synthetic test, every memory config. Overclocked, undervolted, temperatures with various coolers, windows Xp, windows Vista, 32bit vs 64bit. Every test repeated on every hardware config and OS version.

All to write up a leak, as some random nobody on a hardware forum. I tracked all my data, written by hand, in a spread sheet, with screenshots, and actual photographs and i made damn sure everything i said was 100% accurate before i even thought of getting approval.

And despite my admitted favoritism towards AMD, i still called out every short coming, and compared them against the current Intel chips, even when it wasn't favorable.

I was 24. Wasn't getting paid, my opinion didn't really mean anything to anyone, adidn't want or expect to get anything out of it beyond getting to play with unreleased toys. I enjoyed the process for what it was, and the knowledge that i would always be "first" in this little sliver of history.

The results themselves didn't matter to me, good or bad. The response to my findings didn't matter to me. That i presented the results accurately, and commented fairly and without bias was EVERYTHING. I wanted to make sure that once these started going out to real reviewers, that everything i said was going to be backed up.

That's the mindset i expect of anyone presenting themselves as consumer focused reviewer. Obsession with the methodology, the data, not whether it's viewed favorably by the people you're meant to be informing.

 

[Mark Kaine]

8 minutes ago, IseeFractals said:

Obsession with the methodology, the data, not whether it's viewed favorably by the people you're meant to be informing.

Then you shouldn't work at youtube

 

usually none of those actual objective channels is successful.  only one i can think of rn is techmoan.

 

Only other would be mentour pilot,  but he doesn't really "review" products in that sense. 

 

generally any none consumer "reviews" are useless anyway.  

[RandomDude843]

All of this could have been fixed by saying sorry and we’ll do better. Sorry is indeed a magic word.

[Kravatie1]

just some comments i saw on facebook

 

"I'd like to know who decided that Steve was the tech community police? Other than Steve himself. Who likes to remind us in every video that it's his "job". The Billet Labs incident is unfortunate. But I'm not leaving because of that. I think it was a misunderstanding. Which Linus said. Why are people so quick to believe Steve and not Linus? Steve said this is what the Billet Labs guys said. And how do we know that for sure? See the problem here guys? Steve isn't perfect, despite what he says and his fanbase says. Steve is pretentious. He thinks every channel needs to have the same standards as him. And now that he's decided to do hit pieces on other channels, he better be careful where he casts his stones. Steve also lives in a glass house."

 

"While he's not lying, or wrong, it is a bit of a conflict of interest for Steve, considering LTT is his direct competition, and his attacks started right after the announcement of the lab. People should both hold Linus accountable, and question Steve's motivations. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive."

"I disagree. He's not the only one to talk about it. There are plenty of other videos talking about Linus in the past and after this. Just look around a little. Hell, I saw at least 5 reactions to Steve's video from tech channels just today. Which are obviously people trying to hitch a ride on the drama train. Typical YouTube stuff.
And Steve is absolutely telling Linus how to do things. Did you watch the video? He demanded one of his videos be taken down. That's directly telling him how to do things. He's also telling him how to do things by demanding Linus' content and testing lives up to his standards. He's saying Linus has a responsibility to do so. Which is 100% telling Linus how to do things. I don't blame Linus one bit for being pissed. Linus could have been more tactful in his response though. His anger shown through and it doesn't look good on him.

We can agree to disagree. There are multiple ways to look at things. I have my fair share of complaints about Linus. And I don't mind getting into that. I'm simply just saying that if Steve is a journalist as he claims, he's now doing hit pieces. And he would be wise to navigate carefully. If you're not careful you may end up dying on that hill alone. I believe Steve takes this way more seriously than 95% of the public."