Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Alexeygridnev1993]

3 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

I did have to laugh during a WAN show they were talking about outsourcing accuracy checks on their video to the community as like a "bug bounty" kind of thing.

Yeah, I've heard that too and it was pretty ridiculous. Much smaller channels somehow manage to produce regular videos without being so wrong so often.

[TylerD321]

3 minutes ago, SetOutMode said:

I feel like a little kid who’s parents are about to get divorced and can’t understand why mommy and daddy are fighting.

 

Steve absolutely should have reached out privately. However, that doesn’t change the fact that many of his points about the data are all valid.

 

Many of the points falls back to the pace of the upload cadence… everyone in both sides knows that the cadence should slow down… but it can’t slow down because that cadence is needed to keep the lights on… so then the other option is more people to support the upload cadence, which requires more money and thus more videos… it seems like kind of a spiral. Hopefully the new CEO can find some harmony between quantity and quality. 

 

I was all on board for TMB. A warranty is only as good as the company that stands behind them, just because the fine print doesn’t spell out everything exactly doesn’t mean it isn’t any good… just like having the warranty spelled out doesn’t mean that a company will honor it. 
 

I think Linus and Steve just need to sit down and have a beer and hash this shit all out away from the cameras. 

I am sure they have done the math to figure out that more frequent videos at lower quality yields both the most profit and costs the least in terms of materials and wages.

[rob_ob]

4 minutes ago, snkiz said:

How do you do a piece like that and not reach out for comment?

Because he isn't obliged to. Linus proved in his response that he wouldn't have taken that opportunity for comment in good faith and would have instead used it to try and discredit GN. Linus already tried that in his response; he claimed that everything had been settled with Billet Labs, but following GN's latest HW news, and Billet Labs post on the LTT subreddit, it's clear that Linus never reached out to them to settle this until GN's original video went live, and when he posted his response, he had only agreed to pay the cost of the prototype that Billet mentioned in a throw away comment, and hadn't even waited for a response from Billet before telling everyone on the forum that was sorted. Billet haven't even received anything. 

 

Linus has proved over the last 24 hours that he does not deserve the kindness of being reached out to for comment, and has demonstrated that he would only use such an opportunity to obscure facts and protect himself. 

 

Honestly it's good that Terren is CEO now, maybe this transition period can be a course correction too. If I were Terren I'd put Linus on, say a 6 month sabbatical. Let the new CEO really ingrain himself into the company and force Linus to let go of the reigns. Linus clearly needs to go touch grass, and this is a perfect opportunity to do so.

[LinusTechLies]

1 minute ago, Legitsu said:

Nonsense scraping your competitors content for things that you can edit and cherry pick to make your point is an opinion and bad journalistic form

So the fact that they stole someone's intellectual property and auctioned it off was cherry picking? Or the fact that they all admitted in their own videos that they are producing too much content at the expense of quality. Or that @LinusTech blatantly lied to his own community.

 

So exposing all this is bad journalism gotcha!

[Billetlabsauction]

45 minutes ago, swimtome said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think this word treading is a perfect example where Linus's way of talking causes easy shots.

 

If I watched Steve's video without any other context, I would think Linus was selling the block for his own monetary gains.  As in an evil greedy get cash for everything!  Linus obviously gets defensive about that and wants to clarify it was sold for charity.  He isn't trying to deny wrongdoing, just wants to be specific about whoa I didn't do THAT.

 

Does it change the result - that a serious lack of ownership caused them to lose something that didn't belong to them?  No, of course not.  And I don't think Linus would deny that.

 

 But when you're getting attacked it's very easy (and human) to focus on the extremes. So I minorly disagree with Steve's recent hardware news response treating Linus's response as if he said "I didn't do anything wrong, I AUCTIONED IT FOR CHARITY, noT sOLd it" when Linus is really saying "Whoa what the hell no I didn't sell it for my own gain. But I did fuck up so..."

 

I'm not trying to get into but Linus/Steve this/that... just trying to say that Linus (for better or worse) speaks without a PR person so I find a slightly unfair when pitchforkers will act like he's an evil CEO lying about everything when I think we can all agree it's at least a little more nuanced then that.  Like everywhere in life, when you talk in extremes, you're probably being at least a little inaccurate.

This changes absolutely nothing. I'm not gonna borrow your car, auction it off to charity and then act like I am a better person than if I pocketed that money. The end result for both cases is that you lost your car, which happened to be a one in the world prototype that you built as a passion project. Also, LTT didn't even respond to billet labs asking for compensation until AFTER the GN video. This situation is objectively damning for LTT in every aspect. 

[QChoumont]

18 minutes ago, Nachmanowicz said:

What kind of comparison is that? Are you on crack? It's more like, do you think a Coca Cola major shareholder should be reviewing Pepsi's products?

How do you figure that?

We are talking about LTT and GamersNexus, two companies that in the past have done exposés on other companies in the tech field, this behavior is precedented. The comparison to the Washington Post and Times is not without merit as those two companies have set expectations of reporting in that fashion. Coke and Pepsi have set no such expectations and have no established history of integrity. 

Please elaborate on how the comparison to Coke and Pepsi is more fitting.

[Legitsu]

8 minutes ago, InvaderMig said:

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

 

That is the statement from the company.  LTT did not contact them for reimbursement until after GN put out the video.  Linus made it seem that if GN would have reach out they would have known that they were in the process of resolving it, which is a lie according to the company.  The company was ghosted by linus as far as a response to reimbursement until after GNs vid.  Which makes linus full of shit.

No and Steve's own video. He says bill at labs was not made aware of the accidental sale of their prototype until Friday the 11th Linus responded Monday in the midst of having this shitstorm thrown at them by gamers Nexus. What about that is hard to understand I'll fault them for not getting the prototype back to them in a timely manner but also no single person is responsible for the actions of the corporation as a whole, not even the current CEO furthermore, Linus should have kept his mouth shut on wan show and not doubled down, but that doesn't change the fact that Steve took advantage of the situation reached out for comment on an issue he had no part of which he only knew about from scraping the comments of somebody else's video. It's not like Billet labs reached out the gamers Nexus no Steve went out of his way to find something to post about and happened to discover on a major problem and like an egotistical child he went. I'm a report on that. Everybody give me a gold star for looking for a problem and telling the whole world about it this is my problem with gamers Nexus. He is such an egotistical douche nozzle about stuff that I don't even care. If he's right, I don't when you're that much of a jerk about it and don't follow the very journalistic standards and integrity that you claim to be enforcing on the world. It makes you look like an asshat

[ayysub]

6 minutes ago, SetOutMode said:

I feel like a little kid who’s parents are about to get divorced and can’t understand why mommy and daddy are fighting.

 

Steve absolutely should have reached out privately. However, that doesn’t change the fact that many of his points about the data are all valid.

 

Many of the points falls back to the pace of the upload cadence… everyone in both sides knows that the cadence should slow down… but it can’t slow down because that cadence is needed to keep the lights on… so then the other option is more people to support the upload cadence, which requires more money and thus more videos… it seems like kind of a spiral. Hopefully the new CEO can find some harmony between quantity and quality. 

 

I was all on board for TMB. A warranty is only as good as the company that stands behind them, just because the fine print doesn’t spell out everything exactly doesn’t mean it isn’t any good… just like having the warranty spelled out doesn’t mean that a company will honor it. 
 

I think Linus and Steve just need to sit down and have a beer and hash this shit all out away from the cameras. 

why? now, based of Linus' weak response, we now know his true colours. he only cares about his bottom line. 

[Ironman420]

1 minute ago, Cosmic Emotion said:

 

Noone questions the things Linus has done over the years but, you have to admit, this is a VERY bitter situation. I understand that Linus is going through a rough time right now and that's for the best. If Spiderman was a thief and a liar, (and unfortunately this is exactly what has happened here whether by accident or intentionally) ,you have to admit, the line wouldn't hold any water. I put the nouns in bold italics so everyone realizes how serious this is. You might not understand it, but you are directly affected by this.

 

Please, people, if YOU don't hold Linus accountable he's heading for a very bad future and noone here wants that.

I agree with you. In my post, I highlighted his attitude toward the shortcoming is worrisome. He needs to acknowledge the problem first, and only then those problems can be solved. 

[VisibleXela]

1 minute ago, ScoggsUK said:

It's conjecture, it's GN's opinion of what has happened and has gotten only one side of the story at that point. It appears that it was sold auction, but do GN and Billet know at that point the video is released that it's been sold, no they don't. The only two parties that know are the purchaser and seller. Its incorrect to call it fact. 

The video states that LMG had the prototype (obviously true, and easy to confirm with Billet). It states Billet requested it back (again, Billet has receipts). It states that the block went up for auction (they literally have video to prove this one), that Billet has no idea where the block ended up (easy to follow that train of logic, no confirmation needed), and that Billet was ghosted by LMG (also confirmable by Billet, and we know it was true at the time the video went live).

 

Where's the conjecture? What would or could LMG confirm or deny that would change that story in any way? Unless I missed something, in which case feel free to point it out in the video, it seems GN only reported on the facts.

[joaopt]

2 minutes ago, Ry3w said:

Trust me bro at least it's entertaining 

 

he is entertaining now, a massive shitshow but highly entertaining lmao

[Nachmanowicz]

Just now, m9x3mos said:

Well isn't that why he hired a new CEO?

He needs to make it that persons responsibility to come up with how to frame a response and deliver it.

I think the was the perfect opportunity for them to step back and say "sorry, yeah we screwed up. Here is how we will fix it".

That is the same expectation we have for manufacturers that bung up.

But that wasn't what he did.

 

in fact, maybe it shouldn't even had been Linus the one posting the response here. He's not the president no more. He and his wife are the majority shareholder, but he's just not responsible for the running of the company no more. And his response here shows it really shouldn't be him. Linus should just let the pros take care of it, honestly.

[AnonCoder]

Not sure if this was mentioned, but in the last WAN show, Linus talked about a prototype WAN themed backpack at LTX.
I thought what he said about it was pretty hypocritical considering what they did to Billet...

 

(Timestamped video link, Starts at 53:29)

 

[DerKleine]

13 minutes ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

That is just nonsense. They were much more reliable before when they had a 20-30 people team; there is no reason they cannot do it again even without an expensive lab. All they need to do is to give more time to the team to do their job properly.

But surely you realise that having more people increases the amount of work that can be done (hence why LTT can release so many videos per day now across multiple channels) while also increasing the chance for internal communication mishaps and creating a whole bunch of management challenges?

 

Adding people gives a company more work hours, but maintaining standards doesn't get easier by adding more people. Processes need to be developed to deal with that.

[harls]

3 minutes ago, InvaderMig said:

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

 

That is the statement from the company.  LTT did not contact them for reimbursement until after GN put out the video.  Linus made it seem that if GN would have reach out they would have known that they were in the process of resolving it, which is a lie according to the company.  The company was ghosted by linus as far as a response to reimbursement until after GNs vid.  Which makes linus full of shit.

Linus may be full of Shit.  Maybe LMG was having internal talks on how to address the issue.  The point is we do not know and LMG should have been given the opportunity to refute any claims made against them.  If they had no way to refute anything then people could trust the story. 

 

As it is now I fully believe LMG made some massive fuckups that they need to make right and GN is trying to spin things to bring down LMG because he is hurt over  the comment and that LMG is coming into his space. 

 

[notFalkon]

20 hours ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

I would imagine it's actually more than 500 USD, having an actual person with some training and a college/university degree work in a building tends to cost around $90-100 an hour. So you need someone doing the work, someone on the camera, someone doing sound, and preferably some sort of director present, so the shoot alone would probably end up costing around $2000, if you then need to manufacture a new mounting bracket, etc. you could easily lose an entire day and now you're looking at somewhere around $4000 to $5000. It also doesn't account for the fact that you might have a deal with sponsors that require the video to come out on a certain date, availability of working and recording spaces, etc.; which is to say that I understand not wanting to do another take. But it's indicative of general communication problems between billet labs and LTT, which compounds further with the block being sold at auction. The real question is how they respond after the screw up becomes known. I experienced this type of communication breakdown at both small start-ups and multi-billion dollar corporations, so I can totally see it happening at LTT as well.

I can tell you right now that they're not paying 90-100 USD/hour. If you do the math on that, 90 (dollars) * 40 (hour work-week) * 52 (weeks in a year) is 187,200 USD or roughly 250k CAD (280k CAD at 100 USD/hour). Linus has repeatedly said on the WAN show that they don't pay Apple/Google money (which to be fair, is probably more than that), so those salaries are definitely off, especially considering the disparity between US and Canadian wages, and how relatively young most LMG employees are.

Edited August 15, 2023 by notFalkon
Clarity

[AamirA]

30 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

That's not a conflict of interest?

It doesn't matter if there's a conflict of interest, Steve reported on facts. You can't change facts.

[m9x3mos]

5 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

Nonsense scraping your competitors content for things that you can edit and cherry pick to make your point is an opinion and bad journalistic form

Well he didn't have to scrape to hard if that is the case.

Also, if the channel (with labs) is reporting itself to be a repository of knowledge on the topic and they do a bad job at it and can't get their data correct, that is a problem for the brand.

And it is journalistic to look at the data that is put out publicly and point out when it is wrong and uncorrected.

There is no reason they should get the cache numbers wrong on a CPU release video when all that information should have been reviewed and checked before being published.

[ayysub]

6 minutes ago, snkiz said:

No I did not. I'm not supporting Steve's witch hunt. The first one was enough.

"witch hunt" lmaoo ur acting like LTT did nothing wrong. man so many yesmen on this forum

[Cl0udK1ller]

3 minutes ago, harls said:

Linus never set a timeline saying when it was agreed to or even if LMG and Billet agreed or just LMG agreed they would need to pay.  

You are playing so much D for Linus here.  I don't think anyone can take anything you say in good faith.  

 

The fact it took a video from GN for Linus to actually reach out to Billet labs to compensate them is mind blowing to me.  It's honestly indefensible and anyone who tries to defend it is clearly bias and shouldn't partake in these conversations because clearly they care more about their weird parasocial relationship with a youtuber than ethics.

[Cosmic Emotion]

1 minute ago, Ironman420 said:

I agree with you. In my post, I highlighted his attitude toward the shortcoming is worrisome. He needs to acknowledge the problem first, and only then those problems can be solved. 

Exactly. People need to be harsh with him at this particular time until he gets humble. There is no other way.

[Blademaster91]

10 minutes ago, Agall said:

Slowing down = less profits, or potentially going negative. Plenty of the community has been unaware of the QA issues in LTT videos since I imagine a substantial major of the 10M subscribers that LTT has aren't seasoned and experienced hardware enthusiasts/professionals, or have the attention to detail or even care when relaxing and enjoying a Youtube video.

I don't know what their profit margins are, i'm not sure I care either, but if they can't slow down to maybe 3 videos per week then their business model isn't sustainable at all and is too much to the point the LMG employees have said they want to slow down on content.

As for the subscribers wanting daily entertainment, I've said it before in the main GN topic thread, but that is a problem LMG has created for themselves. LMG used to focus on quality videos, but their videos have been getting worse for a long time, the errors in videos have been unacceptable since they moved into the new building. I think they can still do the tech entertainment, at best "edutainment" while focusing on getting data correct in videos without having to make correction notes in a WAN show.

 

10 minutes ago, Agall said:

Now the problem they're going to run into is GN's video. That's going to force their hand to do things they've been obviously avoiding for a while. Designing effective formal QA processes is NOT easy and takes a lot of time to get right. There's not only time but complacency issues that arise when doing so, since attention to detail and compliance are very hard things, if not possible sometimes, to teach employees.

Either way its a problem LMG needs to solve if they want to run the Labs and be take seriously, apparently LMG has 120 employees so they don't have that much of an excuse not to do some sort of QA anymore. Although given the reaction from LMG regarding their Labs with the hit they took at GN and HWUB, it seems like they just want to use Labs as something so they can say they're being professional without actually taking the time to evaluate their testing.

[swimtome]

Just now, Billetlabsauction said:

This changes absolutely nothing. I'm not gonna borrow your car, auction it off to charity and then act like I am a better person than if I pocketed that money. The end result for both cases is that you lost your car, which happened to be a one in the world prototype that you built as a passion project. Also, LTT didn't even respond to billet labs asking for compensation until AFTER the GN video. This situation is objectively damning for LTT in every aspect. 

I literally say it doesn't change the end result. My point was from Linus's personal perspective there's a difference of being accused of selling something for personal gain and the probably-more-honest mistake of it getting mixed up into a pile of stuff I'm giving away.  And that's why Linus probably latched onto that specific point.

[Reclus]

4 minutes ago, Reavantos said:

The person and their history matter in their intent. Thats all

no they don't. literally why justice is blind... More and more i feel ashamed for thinking that I belonged to this crowd... 

[dynastes]

Just now, m9x3mos said:

Well isn't that why he hired a new CEO?

He needs to make it that persons responsibility to come up with how to frame a response and deliver it.

I think the was the perfect opportunity for them to step back and say "sorry, yeah we screwed up. Here is how we will fix it".

That is the same expectation we have for manufacturers that bung up.

Exactly. There are prime examples of how to do this stuff well. That requires seeing your mistakes though and recognizing them as such. If you come at these problems with quibbling like "we have auctioned the prototype off, not sold it" and ignore specific criticism of your testing methodology in the same breath, you obviously are unable to, however.

Just now, m9x3mos said:

But that wasn't what he did.

 

Precisely. Which, again, would not be entirely unforgivable, when he did not just attempt to gaslight everyone instead. It is a long way from the right approach to this kind of extreme wrong and an entirely self-aware person might not have crossed that threshold. Well, look what we got ...