Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Orthusaku]

So billet sent them a 3090ti to test with, and still somehow ended up testing with a 4090? I'm sorry but what exactly happened to the 3090ti did someone steal it?

[Blademaster91]

7 minutes ago, SimonShipperd said:

People should get their facts straight about this. Linus has always said that he would feel that he failed if he gave his employees a reason to form a union. And even more important, and something he stated himself, legally he can't stop them from forming a union. So it's utter BS that he would refuse it since it's not his choice to make.

Same for the discussion of wages. Yes, it's probably stated in some employee handbook / contract. But I don't know if any of the people criticizing actually ever read their own contract. But I can assure you that almost every company has some form of "discussing wages is not allowed" clause in it. Since companies don't want people to find out other people performing the same job are earning more. But they could never legally enforce it. I work in IT consultancy and work with dozens of different consultants from different companies. And each and every one of them has some sort of clause prohibitting them from discussing their wages.

 

But for some odd reason, people always try to frame it as Linus being some sort of iron fist dictator that terrorizes his employees. If he truly was that evil, do people honestly think that long standing members like Dennis, Luke, Ed, etc would still be working there?

I don't understand why he feels he would have "failed" if his employees would be allowed to form a union, Linus seems to take business matters too personally and doesn't want to separate his personal feelings from LMG as a company.

My only point was we don't know what their wages are and we don't even know if they are fair compared to other tech companies.

As for why people think he wants complete rule over everything its because of his attitude which he keeps displaying, and is made obvious in this thread that he's out of touch with the community, and the non-apology and refusal to publicly acknowledge this whole thing seems like he doesn't care about anything except the profit of rushing out a new video every day.

[Amaninacity]

6 minutes ago, kalleth said:

This is not true.

It is not strictly legally required. But journalistic organizations do include it in their codes of ethics. For instance, the society of professional journalists includes this:

 

“Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.”

https://www.spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics.pdf

NPR has this to say:

 

”Guideline: Give sources time to respond.

If our audience wonders what someone we report about had to say in his or her defense, and we haven't provided that information or explained our efforts to get it, we have failed.”

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/688177789/fairness#fairnessinpresentingthenews

 

Seeking comment, or credibly explaining why you were unable to do so, is baseline practice.

[dwkekciej]

Here's what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. I've been watching their videos for years now, and I know that they are as much an entertainment company as they are a business, but I can't imagine the amount of errors/negligence that led to the following:

1. LTT lost the 3090ti that Billet sent their prototype water block with

2. Tested the water block on the wrong GPU (because of 1.)

3. Wrote a video and published it with invalid results based on the wrong GPU

4. Provided their recommendation to their audience to not buy the product based on the results using the wrong GPU

5. Billet posted on LTT's video that they used the incorrect GPU.

6. LTT "liked" the comment by the Billet, but neglected to address their incorrect results/recommendation based on those results.

7. LTT told Billet they would return the block to them

8. (Presumably) lost the waterblock in a way that it was able to be auctioned off at LTX

9. LTT told Billet that they no longer had the block, but found the 3090ti, in the most offensive way possible (..."at least it's not on a shelf")

10. On WAN show, LTT says they didn't want to spend the time/money to fix their testing mistakes.

11. GN points out LTT's mistakes

12. LTT responds to Billet for reimbursement for the water block hours after GN video.

13. LTT sends out response, say they won't mention any of the above other than on the forum they run, misleads audience into thinking that they already made an agreement on reimbursement for the water block, says that they wouldn't recommend the water block even if it performed miraculously. Then mentions that another LTT member wanted to re-test the product correctly but Linus disregarded his employees request. Finally, he signs off by being upset that his audience is angry with him for all of the above.

14. LTT offers to get water block back and send it back to Billet, but they still haven't sent the 3090ti back.

15. With a host of valid concerns about LTT's offer, Billet rejects it

 

LTT has gotten very efficient at making entertaining videos, pumping them out at ridiculous speed, but they are still operating like a tech start-up working from a basement. From a long-time user, I hope they take a gigantic step back, look at what led to all of this mess from a complete top-down approach to everything they do, evaluate what needs to change, and make that change. They also need a serious public (and maybe also private) response to GN, their core audience, and Billet. Anything short of that would be a further misstep by LTT.

[Glorthiar]

1 minute ago, Leksi T said:

I don't think GN ever implied malice in their video.  What they are implying, or maybe they outright said it, is negligence. It's a subjective term, but unfortunately, it would be very hard for me to say that the word is wrong here.

I had the same thought until I saw GN's reply to Linus' reply this morning.

it was honestly so shitty and rude it made me reevaluate the entire previous video.
What I saw previously as a difference of opinion and slight oversight now feels like malicious manipulation of the the truth to invoke outrage. 

[Drazil100]

3 minutes ago, Leksi T said:

I don't think GN ever implied malice in their video.  What they are implying, or maybe they outright said it, is negligence. It's a subjective term, but unfortunately, it would be very hard for me to say that the word is wrong here.

Linus has backed this up many times in the past in regards to why he stepped down as CEO. He knew he was incapable of running the day to day operations at the scale they had grown to and it was necessary for them to hire a new CEO who did have the experience and also the time to manage LMG properly.

[harls]

3 minutes ago, aka473 said:

Look. In Linus' original statement he said that "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". This statement has a connotation that the said act, being them agreeing to pay Billet Labs and Billet Labs agreeing to that form of compensation, was already done and agreed to by both parties, and that it was completed BEFORE the release of the GN video. However, we know from Billet Lab's own communications that this is patently UNTRUE. Billet Labs was never contacted by LMG about compensation until the GN video was published, and even then Billet Labs THEMSELVES hadn't responded to the email or agreed to the terms set out by LMG in that email. That original statement is at best a misrepresentation of the truth of the situation, and a down right Lie and lie by omission at worst.

Your interpretation is that it means LMG and Billet agreed to compensation. 

[jooroth18]

1 minute ago, Karon said:

You're projecting your own main character syndrome onto others. Shame on you. 

Bro, what?  I said what i said because i sympathise with his feelings, but to just watch the video again. Its not projecting, its demonstrating an understanding. Im trying my hardest not to be toxic here.

[strayts]

He probably wishes he took that $100mm right about now.

[DestructiveLlama]

21 minutes ago, SimonShipperd said:

I agree, and I understand Billet for sending the product. But you would think that any company, even a startup, would have at least a 2nd one they keep on site at all times. For al they know, the plane transporting it from the UK to Canada could crash in the Atlantic Ocean. 

That is pretty weird TBH. Did they halt all testing and development while the product was waiting to be reviewed?

 

LMG should have still sent it back and it was wrong to accidentally sell the prototype, though.

[Nodachi]

11 hours ago, LinusTech said:

If you're new to the channel, I understand why you might not know this, but we are extremely committed to improving our accuracy to the point where we are building out a $10M+ facility jam-packed full of equipment and engineering know-how. It's taking time, and this kind of aggressive expansion has been a learning curve for us, but to frame our recent actions as "sacrificing accuracy" is misleading at best. 

We need to make a lot of process changes to get to the point where everything is water-tight. That's a big part of why we added our new CEO Terren to our leadership team, but once again... things take time. He's been full time on the job for less than a single quarter and he's getting up to speed on all the things we are doing right... and yes... all the things we are doing wrong.

 

Trust me, we know. But we are making major investments in improving all of this and we won't stop.

I'm new to the forum, but am actually long time viewer. And I apologize. I am going to be a bit blunt here. When I say sacrificing accuracy, I don't mean that there is active intent to provide incorrect data, but that the continued push to keep to this release schedule. On top of the expansion and CEO transition is causing a distinct degradation of the service you provide. There were even issues configuring your bench tests so outliers wouldn't show up in test results. Which is a rookie mistake to make. You've been doing this for years. You're well past the point where that is acceptable. Not to mention it sure doesn't bode well for any future testing once the lab is done. What good is new machinery that's not configured right? As far as we can tell there's been no real attempt to correct these issues. Just spin the Billet issue in another direction. Which also doesn't appear to be on the level. GN confirmed the timeline of events. There wasn't any communication with you until after his video went live. You'd also be better served addressing his points in their entirety. You didn't even touch the conflicts of interest. For lack of a better way to put it. You need to get your shit together. We want to see you succeed and hope you'll do what's needed.

[TexZeTech]

2 minutes ago, aka473 said:

we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype

I just re-read this as "We (internally at LMG) have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype"

being someone who is ADHD as hell ..... I probably would have typed it out like that as well.....

also to be clear I am disappointed in this whole everything.

[RichardBirch]

Just now, throwawayManMode said:

Do you guys think Linus or anyone on his staff is still reading these responses or do you think he's given up and trying to hide?

Doubtful.There's too much noise here now. Most of this thread is conjecture, personal opinion, and flaming, sprinkled with new information pertinent to the subject as it was published online.

[jeo]

It seems like a lot of people are attributing this to Linus's greed and/or malice.

I don't think it is greed, since Linus could have sold the business and walked away with enough money to do basically anything.

Malice does make sense either, why?

Instead I think it is growing pains, they need better internal control and system. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

 

[dustypaws]

1 minute ago, throwawayManMode said:

Do you guys think Linus or anyone on his staff is still reading these responses or do you think he's given up and trying to hide?

He himself? God no... But I bet you 50€ that he has 2 or 3 people monitoring and summing this thread up for him, Yvonne and Terren.

[Leksi T]

3 minutes ago, joaopt said:

 

how is the liar going to learn a lesson? serious question.

If the subs fall, they fall. If LMG loses money, they lose money.  Posting a counter here, where most of us are trying to discuss what this all means, and what we'd like to see LMG do about all this is counterproductive... though I am heavily leaning to using a much stronger word.

[dege13]

4 minutes ago, PandaSasquatch said:

This is inevitable at any company with more than 10 employees. There are communications breakdowns regardless of the pacing. Anyone who has worked at one should know this.

I have worked at several companies of over 10,000 employees, but handling a product like this should only involve maybe 5-15 people. Communications breakdowns can for sure happen even with only 2 people, but how you deal with it when it is pointed out says a lot about the type of person and company. I personally think it was handled poorly based on the info from Billet on Reddit.

[TennSeven]

No mention of why the LMG Labs guy (no idea what his name is) felt the need to take pot shots at Gamers Nexus and other journalism sites in the LMG video that started this whole thing?

[Retire]

22 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.

Let me give you a harsh reality check @LinusTech, You should have retired the moment you had that infamous live stream with the 10M milestone, you are incompetent to run a company like this, constant gaslighting, constant pointing fingers, the problem is not your team, or Gamers Nexus, or anybody else calling you out, RIGHTFULLY might i add, the problem is you, and your self-centered, egotistical, narcissistic, two-faced bitch attitude, and this "statement" is only fuel to the fire, everyone is gonna talk about this in the Tech Sphere, because YOU Choose to not take accountability for once in your goddamn career and instead tried to sweep it under the mudd, classy Linus, really fucking classy, the only peoples i feel bad for is your workers, who at this point, i would not be, in the slightest bit surprised, if they started to mass quit because you cant do your fucking job properly and instead of giving them the freedom to do what their jobs ARE, you crunch out 2 dozens of videos for the sake of a few bucks more, if you have the money to mass produce 3-4 videos PER DAY, and you have money to make a fucking 100K gaming PC For fucking Minecraft, then you have no fucking excuse as a millionaire to pay a couple hundred bucks to your OWN EMPLOYEE to do their fucking job properly.

 

in short, get fucked.

[PandaSquawk]

4 minutes ago, Leksi T said:

I don't think GN ever implied malice in their video.  What they are implying, or maybe they outright said it, is negligence. It's a subjective term, but unfortunately, it would be very hard for me to say that the word is wrong here.

When you call it out as a problem of ethics, I take that to mean malice.

[jooroth18]

3 minutes ago, throwawayManMode said:

Do you guys think Linus or anyone on his staff is still reading these responses or do you think he's given up and trying to hide?

Someone is definately reading these, garenteed 

[Karon]

1 minute ago, jooroth18 said:

Bro, what?  I said what i said because i sympathise with his feelings, but to just watch the video again. Its not projecting, its demonstrating an understanding. Im trying my hardest not to be toxic here.

I am terribly sorry, the quote tweet was supposed to quote someone else. I will fix it right away. 

 

My apologies. 

[SimonShipperd]

1 minute ago, throwawayManMode said:

Do you guys think Linus or anyone on his staff is still reading these responses or do you think he's given up and trying to hide?

I wouldn't blame them for not following up this thread. First of all, it's moving at such a pace that it would be a full time job to keep up. But I honestly don't understand what people want?

 

One of the most valid points brought up by GN and the community is that they LMG should take a bit more time on their video's and content. But for some reason, people are getting upset that there hasn't been a complete 30 minute explanation and apology video. It's only 13:20 over their at time of writing this post. So the entire thing basically exploded over night while they were all asleep. People really need to figure out what they want. Quickly rushed out video's or quality.

[The_Q42]

7 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

It is not strictly legally required. But journalistic organizations do include it in their codes of ethics. For instance, the society of professional journalists includes this:

 

“Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.”

https://www.spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics.pdf

NPR has this to say:

 

”Guideline: Give sources time to respond.

If our audience wonders what someone we report about had to say in his or her defense, and we haven't provided that information or explained our efforts to get it, we have failed.”

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/688177789/fairness#fairnessinpresentingthenews

 

Seeking comment, or credibly explaining why you were unable to do so, is baseline practice.

I think the set of circumstances here is . . . unique-ish.  LMG has massive power in this space, and could've done a lot to preempt GN's video and/or actively harm GN's business.  I don't think LMG would DO that, but I also kinda get where GN is coming from here.  Giving LMG a chance to rally its rather massive fanbase could've diluted what are genuine concerns.

 

I'm not saying I AGREE, just that I get it.  I think GN should've reached out at some point, but I'm not sure what the best approach would've been there as I'm not a journalist, nor am I a professional YouTuber trying to run a business.

[Guest]

I am so disappointed, I thought the lab was going to be linus investing to improve their workflow and provide more quality in-depth reviews. instead Defensive, doubling down and ignoring valid criticism is so heartbreaking.

 

Auctioning that prototype is unacceptable. from start to finish LTT abused and trashed Billet Labs so badly that seems so damn malicious at this point. and fact Linus doubles down I am so appalled. 

 

I can forgive bad data if they make efforts to improve and increase accuracy of their data and prevent incorrect data being shipped in the future.
I can forgive ethical disputes and brand favoritism if they make efforts to improve.

 

All linus had to do is show integrity and express interest/effort to improve. but he doubled down.