Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Cosmic Emotion]

Just now, ScoggsUK said:

That's not grabbing the qoute where he lied. Qoute a post where Linus lied please. 

 

Quoting other people's interpretation is not a qoute.

You mean he didn't realize that's what everyone understood? Or that everyone on here is a complete shizhead? Cause noone will believe you.

[TheProfosist]

18 minutes ago, IndustrialBananaBread said:

A non corporate copy paste apology acknowledging all the mistakes up to this point live on the WAN show would be great for a start.

So you want an apology video? Cause those always go over oh so well...

[jooroth18]

3 minutes ago, SimonShipperd said:

I understand that a company would send out a prototype for press coverage. What I don't understand is apparently sending out the only prototype that you have that's good enough to further your development.

Well you would want to put your best foot foward so the results can be as high as they are. Sending linus a worse prototype would be bad optics, as the rewiew would be bad, and even though they might say in the video that billet has a better prototyoe with x improvement, who would believe that? Most people would see it as BS like every single kickstarter.

[VisibleXela]

4 minutes ago, PandaSasquatch said:

Or maybe Linus actually thought it was resolved? Come on, maybe chill on the rage for a bit.

Can we explore this alternate reality?

 

Billet sends LMG the prototype

LMG doesn't give it back

LMG auctions it off at LTX for charity

Billet continues to ask for it back

LMG tells Billet "sorry we don't have it"

The Gamers Nexus video goes live

Linus sends Billet an email offering to pay them back, but hasn't gotten a response yet (at the time)

 

Why would Linus think the situation was resolved at that point? If I kick you in the shin and tell everyone that you were ok with it because I texted you to say "I'm sorry," but you literally haven't even responded yet, doesn't that make me an asshole?

 

I'm just exploring the hypothetical you put down here, that's all - your idea makes Linus look way way worse.

[Shatterhand]

9 minutes ago, harls said:

He never said he had an agreement with Billet labs.  

 

Quote

...

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).

...

He wrote it, right here in the forum.

Said he already agreed as a critique towards GN, while he contacted Billet only after the initial GN video went up.

So he lied.

 

 

[wanderingfool2]

1 minute ago, SimonShipperd said:

I understand that a company would send out a prototype for press coverage. What I don't understand is apparently sending out the only prototype that you have that's good enough to further your development.

It was essentially a press prototype.  So one that you send around to the press so that they can assess it.  It's not that they can't rebuild it...it's about the fact that they now HAVE to rebuild it.  It breaks up essentially their marketing potential for the product (and to properly assess people's feeling on the product)

[RoseLuck462]

If LMG truly wasn’t supposed to sell the cooler than they need to rectify that ASAP.

 

Otherwise I thought it was but not picky to show just a handful of videos with errors.

[ToboRobot]

Just now, TheProfosist said:

So you want an apology video? Cause those always go over oh so well...

Live video.  So much harder to be fake live.

[Caphenning]

2 minutes ago, daydreamfaze said:

Linus hasn't realized yet that the most valuable thing his channel has is not the expensive Lab, not the 80+ employees or his ego. It's the trust of his subscribers and he's working hard to lose that. Without subscribers, LMG is nothing. If he's not even willing to invest a few hundred bucks to retest a failed result, how can we trust him with anything?

That’s really the issue, people see the money he spends at home and on cars, yet is unwilling to spend relatively paltry sums to do his job right. The problem with having a career based on building a fan base is that fan base can turn on you and end your career much faster than it took to build. When you fall into the psychopathic narcissism trap, you become evil, and Internet personality doesn’t come with the leverage a dictator has.

[Wintyr]

2 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

Linus giving it a thumbs up would have been worth millions. It’s a calculated gamble that paid off poorly.

they sent him a 3090ti the card the model of the prototype was build for Linus used a 4090 and reviewed it as such Linus could have said no but instead choose to damage the company and its rep by doing what he did then actioned it off

[ScoggsUK]

Just now, Cosmic Emotion said:

You mean he didn't realize that's what everyone understood? Or that everyone on here is a complete shizhead? Cause noone will believe you.

I asked you a pretty simple question, please post a qoute from Linus where he lied. He has like one or two posts on this thread one of which is pinned. 

 

Please can you qoute where he lied?

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, Wintyr said:

yup you can open the profiles and see when they created there accounts its funny there people that that have joined today that have more posts then i do and i joined in 2014

Yeah. There are plenty of people with a few dozen posts over the course of years, to me that's still being active in a community. With the barrier to entry basically being an email address to make an account here, it's super suspicious when tons of people show up to a forum when some bit of drama has gone down. Not to mention, what many of them are posting is not universally constructive. 

[kalleth]

2 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

By not going to Linus for comment, Steve opened himself up to defamation claims. It might even clear the legal bar for defamation of a public figure precisely because he failed to maintain journalistic neutrality in his reporting.

 

Many of the claims in his video are valid, and I found Linus’ response pretty lacking. That said, Steve had a professional, ethical, and possibly legal (tort legal, not crime legal) obligation to seek comment before publishing his hit piece. Steve’s failure to seek comment in advance, ironically, shows the same out of his depth sloppiness he is (seemingly largely correctly) accusing LMG of with their accuracy issues.

If "the words complained of are true in substance and in fact", that's not defamation. And from what I can see, nobody has pointed out a single factual error that Steve has made.

 

And even mainstream news outlets are perfectly within their rights to not request comment from the subject of a piece before publication. They have to (in some countries) provide the right of reply after a piece has been published, though.

[PandaSquawk]

13 minutes ago, coopa said:

Sorry, I don't get this take, at all.

1. LMG offered money to make Billet whole first... then offered to locate the original sample and get it back from the individual they auctioned it off to.
2. As the card (3090 Ti) that Billet sent to LMG has been missing for over 9 weeks and the monoblock is in collectors hands, they already started buying parts for a replacement prototype... and with no timeframe to get it back on, it'd be more efficient to complete the new one rather than deal with uncertainty over time to recover the old one, plus they don't know the condition of the old one.

LMG made an offer (money to reimburse them to make a new prototype), then a secondary offer (get the OG prototype back from the person they sold it to). Billet explained their rationale for taking LMG's first offer (that it would be quicker and lead to less uncertainty over the condition of the product they get back).

 

I will say as someone that has been very critical in this thread of how LMG handled it and Linus' post misrepresenting the nature (that they didn't make any offer to make Billet whole until Steve's video was published, versus the language in Linus' post implying via weasel words that Billet and LMG had already agreed on the monetary route by the time he posted his first reply), I will give props to LMG making an offer that Billet found amicable.

Still outstanding is a more meaningful reply from Linus on every other issue in the video, and a proper apology to Billet for the flawed testing methodology and refusal to test that painted their product in a very bad light.

I mean, seeing as Billet Labs machines everything themselves and has the original CAD files, the entire risk of the prototype going getting sold was the risk of it ending up in the hands of a competitor. If I were them and thought it was a huge risk, I'd want the block back a lot more than $800. At this point, I suspect LMG is going to do both, it's only logical. The block wasn't theirs to sell, and clearly it was auctioned by accident (and not for profit).

 

The attributions of malice that are being thrown around are outright stupid. Come on people, use your brains.

[Leksi T]

6 minutes ago, PandaSasquatch said:

Or maybe Linus actually thought it was resolved? Come on, maybe chill on the rage for a bit.

I was gonna drop this thread of convo, but...

 

CE has his opinion, and if he feels lied to and wants an apology, he can say it out loud.

 

Personally, I am willing to give Linus a bit of slack on what he posted yesterday.  Do I think it was horribly unprofessional, yes. Did he lie? Ugh... I'd have to go into whether he knew what he was saying was truth or not... I just don't know.  But CE and others have the right to believe they were lied to.

Edited August 15, 2023 by Leksi T
Grammatical

[Lagonas]

4 minutes ago, Wintyr said:

yup you can open the profiles and see when they created there accounts its funny there people that that have joined today that have more posts then i do and i joined in 2014

Maybe that is because they did not see any reason to register till today? Not feeling the need to weigh in other discussions (that have nothing to do with this) but this big thing that is ongoing right now is completely normal. We all watch LTT on YouTube. I have done so for years upon years. This is a separate platform linked to the company where Linus decided to post his only response. It is the only logical location to get into the discussion.

[eece_ret]

2 minutes ago, TheProfosist said:

So you want an apology video? Cause those always go over oh so well...

 

 

[harls]

11 minutes ago, ImpliedSilence said:

Read the following, he lied through through his teeth in his response at the exact moment he said he was disappointed that GN hadn't reached out to him about the billet issue because it was already resolved....there was no resolution in place or happening until AFTER GN posted their video, GN has the email receipts on that. NOW he is squirming around around trying to make it all go away, he didn't try to get the block back/pay them compensation/even acknowledge that he owed them anything until after GN posted the video. THEN he went into overdrive trying to cover his tracks.

Not only all this LTT STILL has Billet's 3090ti which SHOULD have been used for the video! You know, the one they botched and and dragged Billet through the mud unnecessarily, then doubled down on the WAN show?

 

 

Again he did not say it was already resolved. 

[brunick]

5 minutes ago, Wintyr said:

yup you can open the profiles and see when they created there accounts its funny there people that that have joined today that have more posts then i do and i joined in 2014

haven't posted in years, followed mostly along...this is quite crazy, not gonna lie, even if there is a comeback, i guess my follow is gone, too much strange content like the usb stuff, crazy off builds for other yt, now the billet thing...yeah....

[VisibleXela]

Just now, ToboRobot said:

Live video.  So much harder to be fake live.

It's not about "faking" anything, it's that people on the internet are vultures and will descend on anything Linus says and make it an even bigger issue. It's already happened, people (myself included) are tearing Linus's response to bits.

 

YouTuber apologies are damn near impossible to get right, and in recent memory the only times I can remember them working is when the person given the apology doesn't seem like the person in the wrong to begin with.

[Isaiah D.]

Just to chuck my 2 cents into the fire:
If the majority of employees are asking for more time to refine these issues and the response on the previous 2 wan shows are "we would need to hire fact checkers and that would cost a lot of money" maybe you really just need to give your videos more time. Why hire fact checkers when you can tell your current employees to go back and verify their own script for a day. If technical jargon is wrong, surely something as technical as it is is more forgivable than saying "2 HDMI and 3 Display port" while showing the IO to the camera. It's only human after all to make mistakes as they are currently saying. Then maybe tell the hosts to read said scripts a bit closer. Didn't want to bring up the mouse, but just cropping out parts where the skates don't work while keeping the review up is stupid. That was the whole reason not to get the mouse in that review-sorry-unboxing where they recommend things.

 

I'm still mad about that water block though. Imagine giving a Youtuber an LTT backpack prototype and they just auction/sell it off saying "Don't worry, we'll pay back the development costs. I just didn't need a backpack." If Linus doesn't think it's worth $100-$500 of an employee's time to retest said water block then surely he would be pissed at the amount of time wasted to have made a prototype then not have it anymore. You would have to make another prototype clone before they are able to make improvements on it unless you already had everything you needed and nothing to compare it to. I don't think there's any excuse for that one.

[FadedSpark]

6 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

 

Guaranteed there are people here in this thread running a Discord or something else, telling people to come over here. The sheer number of new joins is indicative of this. Again, this forum is easy to join, so it's not really believable all these people just decided to show up as 'long-time fans' today, and get started on this drama. Even if they are long-time viewers, they've not been active in this community at all up until this point.

 

And that invalidates their voice?

 

I had 4 posts on here before this.

 

I made the choice to come here and take part in legitimate discourse, not engage with the trolls on BOTH sides.

 

To imply because someone has just joined that their opinion doesn't count is laughable.

 

The trolls on both sides can politely and succinctly disappear. They aren't contributing anything.

 

What should be happening is useful conversation between both sides so Linus/LTT/LMG truly sees how big an issue this is, regardless of their own opinion on the matter, the communities thoughts at large are pretty clear at this point I think.

[WookieTiddy]

I was honestly surprised at Linus' response to this. While I understand not wanting it to turn into a "sniping contest" as Linus mentioned, I don't think there's any way around it now. A non-apology and triple-down and arguing semantics of "auctioning" not "Selling"...Not a good look.

The Billet labs thing sounds like a MAJOR miscommunication by the inter-company logistics department (i.e. the people who handle special hardware like the monoblock) and there should ABSOLUTELY be a public apology (in some format, not even a video necessarily) to them for selling/auctioning their unicorn prototype, and for LTT's cavalier attitude in not using it as it was designed to be used, even if Billet said a 4090 should work.

First time in LTT's history that I've felt at odds with Linus's opinions. Hope he can pull it back. If not, I may cancel my Floatplane sub.

[PandaSquawk]

6 minutes ago, Cosmic Emotion said:

I'm not raging. Honestly I'm more than happy the Billet situation was resolved. I just want the best for LMG so maybe I can become a fan again. I want the best for everybody to be honest, it's a human instinct.

At this point, I wouldn't personally say it's resolved yet, but LMG is clearly trying to make it right.

[TensorVortex]

In the past 3 years, I have come to LinusTechTips just for the fun and exciting content, not for accuracy.

 

Before that I was coming here for accuracy, but that was probably a mistake