Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Hezkezl]

3 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

He said in his response that they haven't paid it back but claim they offered to. Everything said fits squarely into the timeline with everything else. If that timeline is wrong it's awfully strange that neither Linus nor anyone from LMG has said otherwise. Posting receipts should be trivial, right? "Here's a screenshot our email from back in [June] where we offered to pay it back with all the private information blacked out."

https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rxni4/our_public_statement_regarding_ltt/

 

Billet themselves laid out a timeline here on Reddit where he says the same thing that people in here are saying (that the timeline Linus is alleging in here isn't right, and that LTT only contacted Billet AFTER Steve's video went live.)

 

Is that good enough for you?

[AamirA]

1 minute ago, Glorthiar said:

1. The follow up seem particularly more hostile and just straight up fucking rude compared to the previous video
2. What in the fuck do you want linus to say/do? it seems like when people are criticized they are not allowed to stand up for themselves or explaiun any actions? what in the actual fuck do you want linus to do, fall to his fucking knees and beg forgiveness while flagellating himself? To give his fucking channel to GN and live in the mountain like a hermit?
No fucking matter what Linus did or said it was not going to be enough for people who are just fucking gung ho to ride the fucking hate train.

Not lie

[Thaldor]

19 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

 

Getting some cache amount wrong or whatever tiny data piece isn't a big thing and something that happens to everyone. Owning the mistakes is also good and being transparent should be the default, transparency not "wipe it under the rug and hope no one notices and if someone does then deal with it".

 

But the problem with pinning a comment days, even hours, after the publishing and easily hundreds of thousands views later, is that it doesn't reach many. It's like old PC magazine having an error enough to issue correction and instead of issuing correction in the next issue, they would just made correctional box into the undelivered/unsold magazines and believe that people who already bought the magazine will buy another one just to check if there was mistakes in the one they got earlier.

I don't know would the YT era equivalent of the small correction box in the next issue be already pinned comment explaining the error and correcting it in the next possible video right at the time it comes out or what. But just in that exact video and then just a brief mentioning in the now hours long WAN show (if the error is worth it) doesn't feel like enough. Probably very few would read those comments but even fewer will return to old videos to check if there might be some corrections unless the whole thing blow up.

 

The bigger problem I see is that there seems to be little that would stop the video. Like the Billet Lab video would probably have been good to call off at the moment there wasn't right GPU on the table, and that is just an example, it could be whatever video where things start to go south and it's almost magical no one makes the call to stop right there, call it a day and "let's take a moment to really think" and if it comes to it, issue community post or something like "There won't be video today because we fucked up and need to remake it". YT algorithm probably doesn't like that and I know you take it as a huge achievement how long LMG has managed to go with daily videos, but I think that is fair for everyone that when things go wrong instead of forcing it forward, it's called as it is and tried again. And if the algorithm is so important on daily videos, just make the apology video or wing it like "there should be interesting video here, but we failed and instead you got Uncle Linus going around dancing crab dance with LTT boxers on his head because that's what the YouTube wants".

 

Personally I fear where this can lead and what it may affect. Like does Labs have the same time constraints and error correction? If something goes wrong in the testing that would cause video being week late because retesting everything, would them been given that week to correct the testing or would that be just another "*" in the editing or even a rare mention in the video about testing having an error? Is it possible that the phrase "we sent it to the Labs for testing" in a video may be empty because the Labs didn't have enough time to do their job properly?

Like is LTT videos doing so badly spending the $200-500 even $1000 more to make them accurate when things go south is unbearable and you rather push out video that is just you fucking things up? No matter what it costs to someone else as long as LTT video is on the green, right? Because that will be the Labs failure because there will be times when the question will be either accurate and truthful data or daily and profitable video.

 

 

And yeah, for real, I am really asking what is LMG's priority list and which is sacrificed first when things go wrong: money, daily upload, trustworthiness or whatever else LMG can sacrifice to make things right? What is the first thing that flies out of the window?

 

Also the Billet Lab thing is still extremely fucked up "accident", I don't think even Bob Ross would find it happy.

[LinusCatTips-is-Dead]

@LinusTech is the person who is in the wrong we know he pushes his employees. He says he has the same mindset as them and yet he is penny pinching consistently and that affects content and it probably cost more for the editor to write over the bad bits of the video than it would have costs Adam's time. This is one instance we heard of a hurt company. I was watching the wan show a bit ago and he said it he was talking about his wife and being a bit cheap. It does not matter. He is crazy the people at his company act like its family. Not like they are close like a family tip toeing around grandfather and his weird Ideas. I mean killing and eating your childhood friend(goat in the building pc with sister vid) must have been traumatic but you pretend like you are a normal person who is "just sooo goofy" instead of being constantly mad at anybody who says you are wrong. You are no longer the CEO because you did not want to be and yet you seem to feel that you are loosing power in some way. May I suggest taking a break not just a vacation I mean don't appear in a video for a week or two. Short wan shows. Just pretend for one week you are just the manager of a production company and a dad. Not a Youtuber we get a break you get a break.

We like Linus from 2020-2021 just a guy enjoying whatever is going on.

You are either running and own a $100,000,000+ company for profit or a fun and quirky Youtuber. I think you need to except you can't be both and let Terren Tong do his job and not let any companies get to close.

 

P.S. Who own Linus Cat Tips Is it you or LMG?

[WillHeard]

1 minute ago, HiTechLowSpec said:

Signed up just to reply to this. Knew this was going to eventually come up when Linus announced his intention to create LMG Labs.

 

What you have to keep in mind is that Steve @ GN is not impartial and is as subject to cognitive bias as anyone. For Steve to take on the tone that he's laying out these issues in an unbiased and journalistically open way is the fallacy of argument from authority.

 

Linus is moving into what Steve sees as his turf in the YouTube segment as a competitor. He could have reached out to Linus and said, "Dude, this is what I'm seeing, what the hell is going on over there?" Instead, he chose to publicly make his assertions in a YouTube video to do as much reputation damage as possible, whether it was accurate or not. Then he is not 'monetizing' the video to give the impression of being morally righteous with his unsubstantiated claims.

 

This includes getting to the bottom of what happened with Billet Labs, which could be entirely a miscommunication. Many companies send review samples that they never expect to have returned, and I'm rightly shocked that Billet would have sent their one and only design to LTT for "review". Did GN journalistically investigate the validity of Billet's claims vs. LMG's actions? No. Steve took advantage of this opportunity, with the immaturity of LMG Labs (including a clumsy statement by a non-PR person giving a tour) to pile on and make LMG look as bad as possible. Including using the transparency of a video with employees giving criticisms of Linus to reinforce his premise. This shows no consideration or empathy to how those employees will now feel about their statements being used like this.
 

Linus has even floated an idea in the WAN show recently about some way of open sourcing technical review of their content. This would be used to catch many of the little errors that Steve was noting. Many of the writers/editors do not have the wealth of technical knowledge to catch those mistakes. They openly know there's a problem and are searching for answers, publicly, before Steve's video.

 

Linus is an energetic 'idea guy', which is probably why he is where he is. But having ideas and actually making them reality is difficult. But, to his credit, that hasn't kept him from moving forward. LMG has grown incredibly rapidly as a result. Linus has openly admitted that they are making mistakes and is working to correct them. Linus making the decision to bring in a CEO to actually run what his small enterprise has quickly become is evidence of that.

 

Steve taking this opportunity to publicly wound LMG is probably not the best course of action, even for the continued success of GN. I don't know of anyone that uses a single video to make their purchasing decisions. I think most of us get our information from multiple sources, not limited to YouTube. There are many personalities on the Internet, and I know what I'm now seeing from Steve in this situation is not something I value.

Why do you care more about steve's motivations than the factual truth of his claims?

 

Had you actually listened to the GN update they just posted, it is explicitly laid out how Linus has intentionally misrepresented the timeline with Billet.

[emperorxxl]

Making the mistake of selling the watterblock. Stupid, but stupid mistakes happen at work.

But lying about resolving the issue isn't a good idea.

[Alex T88]

2 minutes ago, Noodlefu said:

One of the biggest issues I have with GN's video is the fact they haven't reached out to LTT for comment

Why would they have reached for a comment, when they took Linus's comment on the situation and presented it as his official stance, which it is. And I think it's best. Most probably Linus, would have dug an even deeper hole, with a potential new comment, aimed specifically at GN.

[Hezkezl]

2 minutes ago, HiTechLowSpec said:

Signed up just to reply to this. Knew this was going to eventually come up when Linus announced his intention to create LMG Labs.

 

What you have to keep in mind is that Steve @ GN is not impartial and is as subject to cognitive bias as anyone. For Steve to take on the tone that he's laying out these issues in an unbiased and journalistically open way is the fallacy of argument from authority.

 

Linus is moving into what Steve sees as his turf in the YouTube segment as a competitor. He could have reached out to Linus and said, "Dude, this is what I'm seeing, what the hell is going on over there?" Instead, he chose to publicly make his assertions in a YouTube video to do as much reputation damage as possible, whether it was accurate or not. Then he is not 'monetizing' the video to give the impression of being morally righteous with his unsubstantiated claims.

 

This includes getting to the bottom of what happened with Billet Labs, which could be entirely a miscommunication. Many companies send review samples that they never expect to have returned, and I'm rightly shocked that Billet would have sent their one and only design to LTT for "review". Did GN journalistically investigate the validity of Billet's claims vs. LMG's actions? No. Steve took advantage of this opportunity, with the immaturity of LMG Labs (including a clumsy statement by a non-PR person giving a tour) to pile on and make LMG look as bad as possible. Including using the transparency of a video with employees giving criticisms of Linus to reinforce his premise. This shows no consideration or empathy to how those employees will now feel about their statements being used like this.
 

Linus has even floated an idea in the WAN show recently about some way of open sourcing technical review of their content. This would be used to catch many of the little errors that Steve was noting. Many of the writers/editors do not have the wealth of technical knowledge to catch those mistakes. They openly know there's a problem and are searching for answers, publicly, before Steve's video.

 

Linus is an energetic 'idea guy', which is probably why he is where he is. But having ideas and actually making them reality is difficult. But, to his credit, that hasn't kept him from moving forward. LMG has grown incredibly rapidly as a result. Linus has openly admitted that they are making mistakes and is working to correct them. Linus making the decision to bring in a CEO to actually run what his small enterprise has quickly become is evidence of that.

 

Steve taking this opportunity to publicly wound LMG is probably not the best course of action, even for the continued success of GN. I don't know of anyone that uses a single video to make their purchasing decisions. I think most of us get our information from multiple sources, not limited to YouTube. There are many personalities on the Internet, and I know what I'm now seeing from Steve in this situation is not something I value.

Conspiracy theories aren't healthy for anybody. You shouldn't subscribe to them with zero proof, especially when you're the one making the claims without proof in the first place.

[AlienALX]

Just now, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

Have you ever run a large team 20+ or business which you grew from nothing?

 

Moving way is extremely difficult, especially when your name is part of the brand. 

 

His fear was a LMG losing its character, techradar, cnet, insert generic brand here...   Which is valid, he has 100+, who have a particular working culture, it was a valid concern.  What would he do with $100m, he has everything he wants.

 

I know a lot about business. An awful lot. I know that it is hard. I know that for the first five years you will not be able to spend one penny, as it is all make or break for five years. I have worked with corporations, and I know a lot of inside info about the dirty business of sales, sales techniques and so on.

 

Linus lost his character years ago. As soon as the business started making bank and he started buying big houses? you lose that hunger. That dedication. This has been easy to see with the content. Rushed, cynical cash cow videos. He even did a video explaining which videos make him the most money. He said it was live streams, and then what do you know? lots of live streams happened.

 

The problem is? when it becomes all about money many things are sacrificed. It no longer becomes about learning, it becomes about posts like the OP - AKA damage limitation.

 

Let's face it. LMG is a well oiled, capitalist corporation. And for making money? it totally works. People didn't even stop watching when the videos started becoming laden with "claymores". IE, sales claymores. Injecting as many shout outs to his products as possible. Hell, people even joked about it and thought it was funny. But it wasn't. It was about him making MORE AND MORE AND MORE money. And that? is what it now is. the ENTIRE structure of the channel. Look at the comments from his own staff. "I wish we could slow down and you know, make proper videos" and so on. But no. Even Linus admits this himself. But that is against the terms of being a corporation and that is? to make money at every single opportunity.

 

I stopped watching because of the endless self promotion. Like, the meme side of it was funny for a couple of weeks but then it just totally got on my tits. Couple that with Youtube ramping up ad insertion and etc? Youtube itself to me became just a big meme and a big joke.

 

I do watch content now BUT ONLY with Smart Tube Next. Which blocks all ads, sponsor claymores and god knows what else traps people have stuck in their videos. And it is the only way I can watch it. Like watching an episode of South Park on TV which is like 19 mins long and plumped up to a round 45 minutes with the ads in - UGH.

[Hobbit]

16 hours ago, Leksi T said:

I know I saw somewhere LMG admitting it was their bad for the auction thing.  Be appreciated if someone could find it and repost.  But in Linus' post he said that they've agreed to pay the number Billet asked straight out. Which is not something you do if you're in the right. There's no way he could have said it in the manner he did, without knowing what it meant.

 

Also taking the opportunity to clarify I only meant in regards to the Auctioned prototype.  Their handling of the review... well, I don't agree with what Linus has said on that front.

this didn't age well... 

I'm a huge ltt fan but this response is just terrible. Linus has been on the edge for too long to hit LMG bottomline to keep the funds pumping for their projects which i'm hyped for but if that means ignoring so many faults i'd prefer them taking it slower

[Vidyagoblin]

4 minutes ago, Noodlefu said:

We don't know that. We know that Billet told GN that, but we don't have LTT's side.

Unless Billet was lying we literally know every email they sent each other after the situation began along with the timeline when they were sent.

[Cash]

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed in Linus' response to this situation. All he had to do was be honest, apologize, and talk about what they are going to do to prevent this stuff moving forward. The gaslighting is not a good look.

[__Dreamer__]

2 minutes ago, Glorthiar said:

1. The follow up seem particularly more hostile and just straight up fucking rude compared to the previous video
2. What in the fuck do you want linus to say/do? it seems like when people are criticized they are not allowed to stand up for themselves or explaiun any actions? what in the actual fuck do you want linus to do, fall to his fucking knees and beg forgiveness while flagellating himself? To give his fucking channel to GN and live in the mountain like a hermit?
No fucking matter what Linus did or said it was not going to be enough for people who are just fucking gung ho to ride the fucking hate train.

Well, Linus literally throw in the garbage years of research of 2 guys trying to start a company without even say "sorry"

[dimforest]

Seeing the updates from both Billet and Steve today just really makes the response from Linus yesterday that much more disappointing. He mentioned needing to be better at reading the room and this is quite possibly the worst read he's done yet. At this point, he's already doubled/tripled down so there is some irreversible damage to integrity (which was a core issue to begin with here). However, I think the best course of action would be to retract the statement from yesterday and issue another. 

 

Furthermore, he needs to fix the problem with Billet Labs. Admit fault and apologize. Do it publicly - not in a forum post or tweet - but on the main channel. If the main channel was deemed an appropriate place to drag Billet through the mud before getting rid of their property against their wishes... then it's an appropriate space to also publicly apologize and attempt to make this right. At this point, I don't think simply bringing it up and talking about it on the WAN show is appropriate either - unless they first acknowledge it on LTT, given the magnitude of the situation. 

 

If integrity is truly something LMG cares about, then they have a perfect opportunity right now to show that. 

[patyk]

Watched both of GN's videos; honestly, I'm baffled how no one had talked about this way earlier!

Modern LTT videos are often riddled with data errors and clear indications of videos being rushed out while a topic is relevant - something that Linus conveniently missed in his response, apart from the generic "we are people and we make mistakes" line.

 

And those monumental blunders do in fact form some people's opinions, even if you correct it for example 10 hours later.

Take for example the Game Porting Toolkit video, where Linus showed that apparently the most powerful Mac can run Cyberpunk at 1080p at... 10 FPS? Shouldn't that sound very wrong right out of the gate, even acknowledging the fact that it's running through multiple translation layers?

If someone at LTT had literally taken 20 minutes or even less to test it on any other lower spec Mac, they would notice that there is a bug with Ultra series chips that prevents them from getting adequate performance, and would naturally correct it within the video.

This is something that someone at LTT had noted after the video's release, and indirectly mentioned under the pinned comment as a "big surprise" - but unfortunately it was too late for that, and people already started forming incorrect opinions about it...

 

..but that rant is making me sound like an Apple fanboy, which was not the point of this post, so let's move on.

 

I know that when you run a company, when you have many YouTube channels that get new uploads weekly and/or even daily, stuff gets hard to manage. I get it. Time constraints are a thing.

But if this is a problem, how about you solve it by not rushing stuff out? How about you fix the upload schedule for your workers to actually enjoy what they're doing and allow breaks in between? This would also solve the data error problem mentioned earlier, as you now have time to think about test results and seeing if they're any correct and/or if there were any mistakes made in testing.

 

Overall, this and the blatant lies about Billet Labs "agreeing" on something, makes LTT seem like a ship that's about to sink.

Although normally all of this would make me unsubscribe from a channel and never watch a video of theirs again, I'm not. I hope that LTT can improve, admit their mistakes and do better.

[kw10001]

Hoping the new CEO will be speaking for LMG going forward. Seems Linus is a victim of his own hubris.

[ImpliedSilence]

29 minutes ago, Thepyrodex said:

So I should just hope that google give me the same thing you saw and are quoting as "I remember someone once said"?  really?  

 

sorry for asking for a source beyond "random thread contributor remembers thing maybe"

 

 

 

[Thepyrodex]

4 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

Oh, no, that's wrong, LMG is absolutely in the wrong and they deserve to be dragged for this lmao

Did i say they weren't?   I said " LMG has issues but this whole situation just stinks of people having a shit throwing fight and claiming that they smell like roses."

 

But of course you're taking that as some defense of them  when it was followed by "I'm just grabbing the popcorn cause this thread and watching peoples insane hateful meltdowns is better than the mouse review with films left on for sure!!!"

 

At no point did I say anything about deserved or not, and the responses in this thread ARE insane.  there was someone that literally claimed they could not link to a thing they claim that someone said at some point...  Like you know how people get sued for posting links of things OTHER people say right? lol  its a special kind of crazy that comes with this level of outrage.  are they people saying these things crazy?  no but good god is it funny to watch how people respond. 

 

Step back, realize this is 2 youtube based media companies about to have an epic clown fight with the crowd involved.  you sure you don't want to grab some popcorn to enjoy the show?

[mcsqueazy]

LTT won't do wanshow segment on it because he literally doesn't give a shit lmao. It's better for the brand to just let it slip past the radar for a bit rather than taking any real accountability. Some coward shit but it's the best way forward for a company with no integrity, it's the best way to not spread drama. If Linus actually cared he would've spent more time on this. Keep up the grind bub.

 

[VisibleXela]

3 minutes ago, Hezkezl said:

https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rxni4/our_public_statement_regarding_ltt/?embed_host_url=https%3A%2F%2Flinustechtips.com%2Findex.php

 

Billet themselves laid out a timeline here on Reddit where he says the same thing that people in here are saying (that the timeline Linus is alleging in here isn't right, and that LTT only contacted Billet AFTER Steve's video went live.)

 

Is that good enough for you?

That perfectly matches with what Linus said, which is "we reached out (at some unspecified time) but haven't paid it back yet." It's pretty clear what the timeline was. LMG sold the block -> GN video went live -> LMG offered to pay it back. Nobody is disputing that timeline, LMG included.

 

Which begs the question, what "response from LMG" are people expecting? What "other side of the story" is there? If the timeline is wrong Linus is free to speak up (as he has multiple times already about other things), but until then, yes, the GN/Billet Labs timeline seems to be accurate from where I'm sitting.

[sgsrrhreneat]

5 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

I'm not suggesting anything. Steve made his own standards but is ignoring them in this instance, you and others either don't see that or don't want to see that. However, it doesn't change that Steve praises himself as reaching-out to companies and having this level of dialogue before making a public video like this, and yet he didn't this time. He's a hypocrite, you're supporting hypocrisy.

u mean like how LTT should have reached out to(or even read the emails) billet labs before selling of their prototype. but i guess u are fine with that hypocrisy.

[Thepyrodex]

THANK YOU!  I was actually and literally asking for the information I don't know what the other person was on about "not wanting to get involved in a deformation suit" 

[K4shira]

7 minutes ago, Noodlefu said:

 

We don't know that. We know that Billet told GN that, but we don't have LTT's side. One of the biggest issues I have with GN's video is the fact they haven't reached out to LTT for comment, and I don't abide by the statement that they don't have to - that's a poor excuse. Good journalistic practices ensure this is always done for a reason. Playing devils advocate, what if LTT is able to provide emails that show this in an entirely different light? All of a sudden GN falls pray to their own argument and they've brought misinformation to the masses.

 

All around this is a pretty poor showing from both LTT and GN - both should hold themselves to a higher standard.

They've included Linus's comment in the video. Linus himself commented on the issues on the WAN show. You're asking GN to ask for Linus to comment on his own comments on the WAN show... 

 

The videos containing the mistakes as well as Linus comments on these mistakes are public and do not require request for comment, as IPSO says here:

 

Quote

If the article is reporting on factual information that is already in the public domain, such as a recent court case or comments made publicly on social media, not contacting someone before the article is published is highly unlikely to be a breach of our rules.

 

And the reason they didn't ask for comment regarding the Billet issue should be clear now that Billet has said that LTT had only offered compensation for the stolen prototype AFTER the release of the video. If GN had asked for comment then LTT would've just swept it under the rug. And IPSO again says this is perfectly correct under journalistic standards:

 

Quote

There are many reasons a journalists may need or want to contact someone prior to publication – for example, to check facts, to seek further information, or to get comment − but the newspaper is not under a duty to contact every person involved in every story they write.

In fact, there are several reasons why they might not, for example:

• telling the person prior to publication may have an impact on the story

 

[plurus]

18 hours ago, Vishera said:

Sloppy is pretty much the norm with LTT videos and that's inexcusable:

To LTT's excuse, I did see a similar thing-turns out, it was just Google trying to do English-English "translation" of the caption. So yeah, check what "language" YT chose for the captions. 

[djenson]

53 minutes ago, Darkpriest667 said:

This is a company worth multi-millions of dollars that was using a WINDOWS OS as their server before it crashed and they lost PBs of data. That's not something technically proficient people do.

I do not believe whonnock server was running windows, and it was a motherboard failure that led to a raid card failure, nothing to do with windows. Data was not lost, as the array was recovered, and they had a backup, just not for the current projects that were expensive videos to make. Don't turn into LTT and have to add asterisks and corrections now.....