Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Nucleosynthesis]

1 minute ago, Cosmic Emotion said:

Billet Labs response. Posting this in case anyone missed it.

 

 

And a little meme to make things even worse. UwU

 

This thread is going so fast, I think a lot of people are missed this.

 

Also GN had a dilligent response to Linus' post:

 

 

Again, I still think Linus has it in him to do the right thing... I wonder how the Linus from 10 years ago would have looked at 2023 Linus...

[perryckd]

Just now, Hezkezl said:

lol, whatever you say blind fanboy. The entirety of Steve's videos are completely invalidated because of your valuable contribution! Good work!

 

/s

 

lets be objective. the words steve accused LMG off, i have shown, it applies to steve guerilla team too. 

 

Look if LMG wants to play hit jobs like steve, youtubers are going to get more hostile, tit for tat. 

[Arthur Winchester]

21 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.

Just disappointed with this response Linus

[IndustrialBananaBread]

1 minute ago, ILikeHardware said:

I'm amazed at all of these fan boys basically going "I WILL DEFEND LINUS NO MATTER HOW MANY STOLEN GOODS HIS COMPANY DECIDES TO HANDLE!" 

 

Also, timezones exist. Get over it.

Honestly don't get how you can continue to defend the indefensible. Steve bought receipts, pretty much everything he went through had evidence behind it.

 

[ImpliedSilence]

1 minute ago, perryckd said:

 

steve runs a much smaller organization, his motive is to do hit and run job on bigger boys because they dont response as fast. this hit job took steve 6 months of planning, goes to show his scummy ways.

All it took was one day and Linus lying through his teeth.....again.

[Wintyr]

1 minute ago, ILikeHardware said:

I'm amazed at all of these fan boys basically going "I WILL DEFEND LINUS NO MATTER HOW MANY STOLEN GOODS HIS COMPANY DECIDES TO HANDLE!" 

 

Also, timezones exist. Get over it.

look at every Tech makeover video he jokes about how his own staff steals from work and linus probly does the same thing they watch him.  oddly i gota wonder does this happen at all tech/tube  companys

[J82465]

I just wonder how big of a deal and how many videos and rants in the wan show wouldn’t linus have done

if someone who linus sent a screwdriver prototype in good faith before release to the public:

 

1.released a video saying never to buy this screwdriver even if its not the finished product after they “tested it” by hammering nails.

2.didn’t returned a needed and one of a kind prototype.

3.Ghosted and didn't responded to emails asking for the prototype back

4.“auctioned” without permission as if the loner prototype was their propriety no matter where the funds go to.

[Cosmic Emotion]

Billet Labs is getting their money back finally. At least no rival company had the block. Linus got off this one easily. Please repost for context.

 

Quote

UPDATE

For full transparency, Linus contacted us this evening saying it's likely he can get the block back from the buyer.

We have declined this offer, and asked for the previously agreed monetary value instead for the following reasons:

1. we have already spent a significant percentage of the value of the block in the last few days on replacement parts to build a new block, assuming we'd never see the original one again.

2. we do not know if the original block is still in good working condition, and how much money will be needed to fix it if it's not.

3. we don't know if any of the bespoke fittings are missing, each of these costs money to replace if they are.

4. LTT have had our 3090ti without using it for 9 weeks, so we have lost confidence that they will return items quickly.

5. LTT isn't currently in possession of the block, they've only said that they can get it back. We therefore don't know when we'd get it back, and time is of the essence.

6. LTT has confirmed that the block is with a private individual rather than a rival company, so lost IP is much less of an issue.

We wanted to state this publicly just in case anyone has any issues with the fact that the block has potentially been found, and we chose to take the money instead. We hope you understand our reasoning here. We can have our new block that we're currently making ready in the next couple of weeks, and we are sceptical that we would have the original block back in fully working condition in that amount of time – it would be a gamble at the very least.

Much love

Dean & Felix

 

[wanderingfool2]

4 minutes ago, Ironman420 said:

I think they mention in their video that Linus is invested in Framework laptop or at least mentions it via the text below. Now I can't say for sure whether they do it for each video or not, as I am aware of it, I don't really care about it that much. If anyone has any skepticism about their laptop coverage, I can understand why that is.

No they didn't; even prior to GN stuff, in the Toyota thread I was talking about this being an issue (and generally getting the well it doesn't need to be disclosed).

 

In the last 3 LTT videos that I saw regarding laptops, none of them mentioned disclosure of Framework at all.  It's why I've said that Linus also violates the Canadian Competition Act (and Linus' essential response to the Competition act is he feels that the purpose of it was for when companies are endorsing products...ie he feels as long as money doesn't exchange hands he doesn't have to disclose anything; even if he's for example given a free rental)

 

7 minutes ago, Ironman420 said:

. You said that if someone in the same space creating a video about another creator, where is the problem? Well, let me clarify. Steve is a very, very good tech reviewer, and he maintains a high degree of accuracy in his tests. That's what he does, and that's what he makes videos about. He doesn't go and expose another creator in the tech space (which, if you want, many can be exposed). This is the first time I am seeing it. And I am saying he saying anything wrong. I am just saying he has much to gain. And you should not deny that can be the reason behind making the video. 

No where the problem is is it's that they don't really have to disclose it if the connection is blatantly obvious.  This is about disclosure, which is what I think a lot of people don't seem to understand.  No one is saying Linus shouldn't do laptop reviews etc...BUT, he should be disclosing any material connection during the video.

 

Just like if Toyota made a video about Ford, they wouldn't have to disclose anything because we all know the relationship between Toyota and Ford. If a reviewer who usually gets their cars from a dealer suddenly gets it from Toyota they need to disclose it.

 

12 minutes ago, Ironman420 said:

I can see where you are going with this. I can't deny that I haven't seen it. But I also believe there is little to no evidence exists that it is because of Gary.

But when it comes to biases there never really will be evidence (unless it's to the point of being so bad that no conscientious mind could see it as such).  What comes into question though is when you start getting what appears to be at least some biases; you don't know if it's because of the prior relationship or because they genuinely are fans.

 

As an example, I would stick up for the last company I worked with; or at least play devils advocate if there was discussions about it in my real life.  It can change perspective on some things, which then biases the output results.

[HiTechLowSpec]

49 minutes ago, Reclus said:

That is what Linus had a chance to say bud didn't. Spare me the BS 99% talk. Your implications or theories are meaningless because we have evidence and facts presented. Absolutely embarrassing this fanboying club of LTT... 

Really? You have "facts"? You have seen the actual emails? You've seen who the recipients of those emails were, the time stamps, and know that Linus was involved in those exchanges?

[IndustrialBananaBread]

Just now, JuanF Madrid said:

I just wonder how big of a deal and how many videos and rants in the wan show wouldn’t linus have done

if someone who linus sent a screwdriver prototype in good faith before release to the public:

 

1.released a video saying never to buy this screwdriver even if its not the finished product after they “tested it” by hammering nails.

2.didn’t returned a needed and one of a kind prototype.

3.Ghosted and didn't responded to emails asking for the prototype back

4.“auctioned” without permission as if the loner prototype was their propriety no matter where the funds go to.

You forgot 5, where you have to get large controversy on your side to even get a response from said company.

[iAxX]

Just now, Leksi T said:

The conflicts of interests are bothering me too.  Personally, I find it hard to think of that as a priority, because I've been around a long time and am very aware of their situation, and can make decisions keeping in that in mind, but for a newish viewer, it's alot bigger of a problem. In this case, I don't think 'TMB' cuts it.

 

On the other hand, there's alot of things needing doing within LMG.  I personally think with the money, the personnel, and public exposure going into labs, it may be more important for them to crack down on that data inaccuracy.

 

But it's hard for me to say we should give them any great length time for the COIs either, cause once this dies down, it would be very easy for them to backburner any action on that. 

 

I guess I am just stating what I think, and don't have a good answer here.

If I had to steelman the other position it would be... 

I wouldn't even care much for the Noctua COI to be honest. The fact that the NH-D15 can't cool down a house burner of a CPU a very small percentage of viewers will buy is not a big issue, under most conditions it would never get that hot. 

 

The ASUS one is very dodgy though, not covering ASUS during a major fuck-up that hurt consumers is huge. I can't defend that. 

 

1 minute ago, TheProfosist said:

I dont think LMG's aim is to be GN. LMG is a Media companyaka Entertainment. Theyve also had partnerships with both companies in the past.

 

Original LTT Noctua Black fans before Noctua put out the Chromax line. Literally have one of those coolers in my server.

 

ROG Rig Reboot as just one example from ASUS

Yeah a few years ago I would've agreed with you but now...

They're investing $10m into a lab and staffing to do the same kind of reporting that GN does. Technical and factual. In Linus's own words he wants to test the accuracy of a company's marketing. That is literally what GN does. 

There are a million ways a conflict of interest could affect that. 

• Not testing the claims of a major manufacturer because you're buddy buddy
• Misrepresenting or misinterpreting data to benefit your favorite manufacturer
• Not including top contenders in your analysis so that your manufacturer comes out on top.

 

[ColonelSupremePizza]

1 minute ago, harls said:

No I acknowledge LMG fucked up.  As more has come out we are seeing that Steve posted his video about 1 business day after LMG told Billet that they sold the prototype.  So LMG "ghosted" billet labs for at most 2 business days.  Steve quickly ran off to bash LMG.  Linus said they agreed to pay Billet labs.  This easily could have been internal communications on how to handle this big of a fuck up in order to respond to Billet in that 1 business day.   Steve said he did not reach out to LMG because he knows LMG is doing bad things.  if he was a journalist he would have gotten both sides of the story.  He would have included the information Linus has publicly spoken about on how they are trying to eliminate the mistakes.  and he would have seen if LMG had any comments or evidence to provide an accurate narrative.   This does not mean that if Linus said no we paid them all should be well, but it should have been evaluated along with any emails LMG would show to as evidence.  This way we could be confident it was a complete accurate story. 

That's not how this works.

 

GN made the video the next day because Linus had put out their official statement. That's it. Steve also never reached out to Linus because he didn't want any of that to taint his response and he is trying to treat LMG like any other company, and Steve doesn't have a direct line to most companies that have issues.

 

Your view is similar to GN not publishing their video showing the issues of the NZXT risers that literally caught fire because they didn't contact the person responsible. Linus chose to ignore all the issues GN brought up, gave an atrocious response, and that's what GN had to go off of. Trying to say it's bullshit because they didn't talk to Linus directly is a hard cope and also shows you aren't understanding how GN approached the whole issue. Steve didn't want to bring in any of his personal interactions with Linus into the video and only wanted to be factual about it. That's it.

 

You are judging all of this hyper critically because it's a content creator you enjoy. You are wanting to give a benefit of the doubt.

[eece_ret]

2 minutes ago, Monknot said:

Honestly this is why there needs to be a YouTube channel that mediates between channels when there is drama. Almost like an official debate where people can talk and work things out. You know that healthy thing adults do. I'm in the middle on this one. Both sides are correct and wrong. Some times it's not what you say but how you say it.

They tried that already

 

[Granular]

From the very begginings at NCIX, Linus has been churning out videos that trick people into thinking they've learned something about a product, when in fact doing so would take more effort than either they or Linus are willing to commit.

Did Steve really expect him to 'do better'?

[throwawayManMode]

1 minute ago, perryckd said:

 

lets be objective. the words steve accused LMG off, i have shown, it applies to steve guerilla team too. 

 

Look if LMG wants to play hit jobs like steve, youtubers are going to get more hostile, tit for tat. 

bruh, you're just embarrassing yourself at this point with your blatant shilling for Linus. Is he buying you a Lambo? Sending you free merch? What's your deal?

[TheProfosist]

23 minutes ago, Nucleosynthesis said:

 

Have you watched the GN response video? Linus is twisting and covering stuff up.

 

I think the right thing to do is to have a good look in the mirror and to adress this in full. I know Linus has it in him to do the right thing. 

See what would entail addressing this is full. Also at this point how could he make it come off as sincere?

[VisibleXela]

6 minutes ago, ScoggsUK said:

Maybe it's a case of massive comments failure internally. 

 

You could see how it could have happened in the busy period leading up to LTX. Business relations and logistics handling the return of the equipment. Pushing videos to get ahead for LTX week. And an LTX organisational committee that is potentially looking for items to auction for charity. 

It's quite easy to see this scenario in which comes amongst an increased busy period happens. 

Oh sure, I can fully understand how something like this falls through the cracks, but I still feel strongly that LTT has handled it poorly and should be held to task for A. making the mistake to begin with and 2. handling it so poorly after the mistake was made (e.g. not reimbursing the company until after the video goes live then posting a squirrely statement implying that they had already reached out to Billet despite not having done so).

 

6 minutes ago, ScoggsUK said:

The point I'm making that professional courtesy should have been extended for a right of reply, because I can totally see potential scenarios where this is both known internally before the GN video or its the first time LMG or Linus hears about it.

 

You keep bringing stuff like this up, but I can't express how little something like this would change the situation. Whether it slipped under the radar this entire time or they had a resolution in the barrel ready to go is immaterial, because it still took 2.4 million views to pull the trigger and implement the fix. That's pretty bad, whether they were already planning it or not, and it certainly appears that LMG had no interest or intention of fixing it. That's not something that should just slip through the cracks, and if that was what was going to happen I'm super glad GN posted the video so Billet gets something at the very least.

 

6 minutes ago, ScoggsUK said:

Keeping it private is not necessarily attributing a malice intention. People are placing that intention on those words. 

I can't pretend to know what happens in Linus's head, but with the series of events it still looks shady. Even if he had the best of intentions he still probably should have kept his mouth shut. It's still a pretty bad look.

[Wintyr]

Just now, ColonelSupremePizza said:

That's not how this works.

 

GN made the video the next day because Linus had put out their official statement. That's it. Steve also never reached out to Linus because he didn't want any of that to taint his response and he is trying to treat LMG like any other company, and Steve doesn't have a direct line to most companies that have issues.

 

Your view is similar to GN not publishing their video showing the issues of the NZXT risers that literally caught fire because they didn't contact the person responsible. Linus chose to ignore all the issues GN brought up, gave an atrocious response, and that's what GN had to go off of. Trying to say it's bullshit because they didn't talk to Linus directly is a hard cope and also shows you aren't understanding how GN approached the whole issue. Steve didn't want to bring in any of his personal interactions with Linus into the video and only wanted to be factual about it. That's it.

 

You are judging all of this hyper critically because it's a content creator you enjoy. You are wanting to give a benefit of the doubt.

for follow up he probly should reach out now but to the CEO not linus

[LumpyCrumpet]

It's the accuracy stuff that really gets me, the Billet Labs stuff and Linus (bluntly) lying about it is bad but it's the fact that LTT keeps putting out bullshit that's beginning to grate on me personally.

 

I too have noticed that there's lots of asterisked corrections on LTT videos, it's like every single video someone gets something wrong. Which is all well and good if you're going for being the Top Gear of tech, it's a different thing entirely if you want people to recognise you as a trusted source of information. And when you're making basic factual errors in videos all the time, and your amazing super incredible Labs keeps putting out data that's simply not useful for any real purpose, or otherwise your video production methods take what might be useful data and present it in meaningless ways... you don't get to be a trusted source of information.

 

GN manages to do stuff with a high degree of accuracy and exhaustive (and at time exhausting) attention to detail, and Steve has actually said before "I didn't believe this result, so we repeated it, multiple times, and got the same result". They're four or five guys working out of an office. Yet LTT's super duper expensive bragging point Labs can't spare the time to redo a test when a simple look at the numbers shows them to be nonsense?

 

I don't think Linus quite gets that there's absolutely no point blowing tens of millions on "Labs!" to then have all the data that comes out of them be complete bollocks that nobody trusts.

[IndustrialBananaBread]

1 minute ago, Cosmic Emotion said:

Billet Labs is getting their money back finally. At least no rival company had the block. Linus got off this one easily. Please repost for context.

 

 

Honestly, I hope he does not get off easy. If not for Steve's video, it's likely Billet would have never gotten their money back.

[Thepyrodex]

Just now, jitteryzeitgeist said:

Authors note:  when you have to look up words on google, ensure you read past the first definition when you reply back.

 

Otherwise it becomes clearly obvious you did just that.  Ten bucks says “brown noser” is a synonym.

Oh no you simple little man, see words have meanings and you just don’t understand them and tried to use a BIG one to feel smart when you weren’t and didn’t think to check yourself.  I doubt self reflection is one of your better strong characteristics.

 

im sure you are a happy person if after a year of not watching LTT they are still so stuck in your head you’ve spent the day on the LTT FORUM….

 

but hey, I’m done at work for the day and so no longer have a need to entertain myself with your impotent rage.  
 

Touch grass occasionally and you’ll understand, you being this angry over a youtuber is useless in effecting change AND benefitting them.

 

honest question:  how many people are going to rewatch LTT videos looking for errors because of this?  Trying to prove LTT is the worst and the whole time not realizing they still got the view count and watch time for each and every person who does that…

 

you want to actually hurt him, stop caring.

 

the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

[Alex T88]

1 minute ago, perryckd said:

Look if LMG wants to play hit jobs like steve, youtubers are going to get more hostile, tit for tat. 

What are you talking about ? This is a very serious matter, not some drunk "mine is bigger than yours" contest. This should be about owning up to stuff, not trying to settle a score or seeking revenge.

[mew4ever23]

Frankly, they have a major point about the embarrassing quality errors, such as the incorrect spec sheets shown on some reviews. If the pace at LMG is so break neck that such simple errors are slipping through, then you need to slow way down and conduct some actual Quality Assurance.

 

RE: Billet labs. There are no excuses you can possibly give for this. During the review, when it was discovered the card on hand was not the card the block was designed around, it should have been stopped, and the right card switched in. That it continued made the review immediately invalid. The price point being a little stupid? Okay, sure. But any data driven result is not valid, especially with a prototype part. Now we come to the auction. Linus has completely missed the point here - namely that it was not LMG's to auction, period. Billet labs wanted it back, and you've done them major damage by selling off their best working prototype. I honestly wonder if they might look into suing over this.

[Lagonas]

5 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

I have seen this type of brigading on multiple other social media platforms and forums before, it is up to the word of the new joins that they are long-time watchers of the channel, but they have no presence here until this goes down?

So, what you are saying is that because people do not have an arbitrary high number of messages posted here, although some of us (can't talk for all) have watched LTT for over a decade but are just not into forums that much, their messages hold no value till they get a higher post count?