Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Monolithic]

1 minute ago, HiTechLowSpec said:

Don't assume I don't know the point of a prototype, OK pal?

 

Their machining is very good. The application is extremely specific for CPU, GPU, and case. Even Billet's own images of the solution weren't practical. To be honest, the whole thing was a mess and wasn't worthy of being a video, IMO. But then I wonder if it would have been better for nobody to have heard about Billet Labs, or in this case, get this huge exposure with the nerdTuber audience watching the trainwreck.

Regardless, that doesn't defend the literal theft that happened.

[RangerSavage]

1 minute ago, WTBMFWKEF said:

I don't feel like this is a good take. How you present yourself is part of your character. That was literally one of the things Steve was talking bout with Linus and questioning his character.

Would you care to elaborate on how Steve acted poorly? Was it the placement of his eyebrows? Was his tone of voice too monotoned? Did he sound upset? Was it the haircut?

 

Because I can tell you what people are currently upset with LTT for, for auctioning off property that wasn't theirs to sell, and on top of that defaming the product by using it in such a way that it had a gap to not cool properly.

 

One of these is more important than the other.

[Saeumii]

12 minutes ago, Monolithic said:

Honestly, it being a charity is worse. Is it ok for someone to steal your money as long as they donate it to charity? LTT included a totally innocent third party in this whole thing, the charity.

"Is it ok for someone to steal your money" again, all i'm saying is that the incident didn't seem malicious, and attributing malice to it would be done in bad faith. yes, they included an innocent third party in this incident. yes, this incident should not have happened at all. but there's no reason to believe that any of this happened knowingly and intentionally and maliciously

[HiTechLowSpec]

29 minutes ago, Monolithic said:

This is true, but it becomes an issue when we are getting two different stories.

 

The slighted party is saying something totally different than Linus is.

That depends on whom you define as "the slighted party". Billet Labs says they're good. I still see a bunch of nerds with their undies in a bunch while clutching their participation trophies, demanding satisfaction.

[strayts]

1 minute ago, ILikeHardware said:

What LTT offered to Billet:

this was a true laugh out loud for me

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, mitcHELLspawn said:

 

You're making really vapid stupid posts. Stop asking stupid questions. The issue is that millions of people watch their content to inform them on making buying decisions on products. The fact that they constantly have inaccurate data, and only catch about 50% of it at best and just pin comments on to the videos means that people could be and most like have made ill informed decisions  based on their content. Yes, they did something wrong to us, the people subscribed who watch their content in good faith that the content and information was actually vetted and correct. Thankfully I only watch Linus for entertainment as I am an IT professional and so I can very clearly see the glaring issues on most of the topics - especially storage as that is my field. I have seen some absolutely egregious mistakes made on some of their NAS/SAN and overall storage content that has just baffled me.

 

so stop making bad faith arguments and actually open your mind to what the issue is here.  

My question was not stupid. You act like you were personally attacked by Linus or LMG. My point is thats not the case and everyone needs to chill out. Even if millions of people watch LTT, they do not owe you anything. Thats just the truth. If you don't like the issues then unsub and stop watching videos.

[Nintendo Prime]

I am a huge fan of LTT. Been watching them since basically the end of the NCIX days in the very early Linus and Luke days. I am a "somewhat" successful youtuber myself in a different space. I am nowhere near LTT or GN's size, but I support 3 kids and my wife doing YouTube with 130k+ subs talking about Nintendo games, news, and the tech they use. I present this to give some context for my viewpoint as a fellow content creator who has also made mistakes, dealt with call outs, and how this whole mess has gone down.

For starters, Linus does need to stop pretending that the tech community of youtubers should still be treating him as buddy-buddy. Gamers Nexus made it known ages ago that he can no longer treat LMG like it's just your average tech youtube channel anymore - they are big corporation with over 100 employees and now run 6 actively successful youtube channels where the lowest subbed one is at 421k... and it's Game Linked which is their newest and still growing. Almost all of the other tech youtubers in this space have a single channel - sometimes maybe 3 max. One for all their main content, another for a podcast of sorts, and then maybe a 3rd for clips.

But in generally, they are a one channel show. Even with millions of subs. Even MKBHD who does have a handful of channels - only the podcast channel and his main channel are consistently active. The others just get videos whenever. No real schedule. So even other megasized youtubers don't really do what LMG does, and certainly don't have 100+ employees.

Now, all of this isn't to say this is a mistake on LMG's part. Linus has a vision for what LMG can be, and that vision is extremely ambitious compared to other channels in the space and he has every right to use the success he's built to continue chasing that vision. But, along with that vision comes the responsibility of accepting you are no longer going to be treated like an everyday tech youtuber anymore. You have a literal corporate structure with managers and people working for you from major parts of the tech industry. 

 

This prefaces what I am saying, because Gamers Nexus doesn't reach out and wait for comment from any other major organization. He didn't with ASUS (nor did Jayztwocents), and nobody blasted him for that. He didn't with newegg - and again - nobody blamed steve for that. In fact, it's arguably his newegg videos actually may have long haul lead to positive change - or at least an attempt at it given how newegg responded, which was in a very professional way. It is not on him, to reach out privately to corporations and get a list of excuses for why there is objectively bad flaws with videos. Also, with the borrowed and auctioned off part - GN can't be seen showing bias to a tech youtuber by getting their response to it first before publication, when the other sided provided a bunch of evidence that's all dated.

I will say, Steve maybe could have at least gotten a remark from LMG before bringing up this aspect of it, but when the damn thing is publicly auctioned off at LTX... it's hard to wait. Still, I can agree with some here that he should have asked Linus first, and gotten both sides before publication. A flaw in GN's process.

But, everything else he pointed out in that video is fair game and he doesn't need to contact LMG to get a list of excuses for WHY incorrect data is being used in videos, or how important they think that data is to the final statement - if it's not important, why include it? And, because so many data flaws keep happening, how can we have faith in data from labs in the future, when Linus has talked at length about how important accurate data is, while the content presents inaccurate data?

This isn't talking about Linus' response, which feels a lot like how he responds to most things which is to go on the defensive, and take some time before he realizes the errors going on. He was that way with the backpacks before Luke seemingly got him to understand it more and then he eventually changed tunes a bit. Enough to satisfy the issues, at least. And the new CEO clearly wasn't going to stop him - Linus may not be CEO, but he is still the owner. So it still falls on him, either way, unfortunately.

LTT has inspired me to built sets and I've used their recommendations for equipment and other purchases made to do my job. I love their content so much. But I also believe in integrity. As content creators - big and small - we all make mistakes. And sometimes we don't even realize it. But when those mistakes are pointed out, the only correct way to respond is to acknowledge it, deeply apologize, and talk about and figure a way to help mitigate similar mistakes in the future. Calling out the other outlet for pointing out your many mistakes is not a good way of responding. 

Steve isn't infallible. He makes mistakes but does often own up to them at least without needing a lot of pushback. And how he handled this situation wasn't 100% perfect in every respect, but it doesn't make what he presented any more factually incorrect. I think for him, just as someone who works with other youtubers, making that video wasn't probably easy. There are likely people at LMG, Linus included, Steve actually gives a shit about. And he is trying his best to treat this like he woudl any other company.

In the end, Linus needs to better address this and I hope he pulls a newegg, invites Steve to come out, and then hash it out.

[Corey Clak]

27 minutes ago, Monolithic said:

Being LTT is down over 100k subs in 24 hours isn't looking good.

^{Source? - Way back machines (And Social Blade) are showing the opposite of what you are saying.} 

^{They may have lost some but not a 100K.}

[Monolithic]

Just now, Saeumii said:

"Is it ok for someone to steal your money" again, all i'm saying is that the incident didn't seem malicious, and attributing malice to it would be done in bad faith. yes, they included an innocent third party in this incident. yes, this incident should not have happened at all. but there's no reason to believe that any of this happened knowingly and intentionally and maliciously

Lack of malice IMO makes it any better, because that would state it was negligence. From someone that asks us to trust them with very expensive purchases.

[justin one]

Just now, WTBMFWKEF said:

My question was not stupid. You act like you were personally attacked by Linus or LMG. My point is thats not the case and everyone needs to chill out. Even if millions of people watch LTT, they do not owe you anything. Thats just the truth. If you don't like the issues then unsub and stop watching videos.

linus alt confirmed

[moatmote]

On 8/14/2023 at 4:25 PM, LinusTech said:

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.

 

"Growing pains"? You've been mishandling errors and misinformation in your content for far too long to blame this on "growing pains".

 

Short Circuit has been hiding behind its "unboxing, not a review" mantra since its conception, and continues to blatantly put out misinformation that could be avoided by performing the most basic level of due diligence, like reading a damn spec sheet. You completely ignore both the reality that whether or not people should believe every spec you read on Short Circuit, they do, and the responsibility that comes with that as a large and influential media company.

 

To this day, you've still made no efforts to establish a (regularly monitored) section of the forum dedicated to reporting errors in your video, or establish any other way to do so (transparently).

 

And not to beat a dead horse, but I still remember the blatant misinformation you read out on the WAN Show about the S23 having 60 GB of bloat, something that was already debunked at the time of your reading it, and something multiple people tried to make you aware of. Another member of the community tried to inform you via chat, which you read out loud, incorrectly interpreted what they were saying, and instantly dismissed them. I then tried multiple times to bring the matter to your attention, both on Twitter and here in the forums. What was your next move? To clip that section of the WAN Show and upload it to LMG Clips with a title & description that doubled down on the misinformation, with no hint that the topic was even disputed.

 

The vast majority of errors still go unaddressed, and a good number of the ones that do get addressed aren't done with pinned comments, edited videos, or dedicated correction videos as they should be. That's reserved only for large controversies that gain public attention. No, the few issues that do get addressed are often just passing remarks in completely unrelated videos—remarks that no one investigating the original topic would ever find. Your idea of addressing a mistake is often just saying "Oh by the way, in another video we said that <some product> only does this, when it also does that too." in the middle of a hours-long build video.

 

On 8/14/2023 at 4:25 PM, LinusTech said:

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this.

 

This wasn't "quickly" at all. We've been complaining about these issues for years and we've been ignored until now.

 

It's incredible how out of touch your response is. Up until now, I've at least managed to hang onto the illusion that maybe these criticisms just aren't making their way up the chain to you, and I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, out of the high esteem I once held for you. But it's become clear—especially now seeing this response when a platform as large as GN makes you directly aware of these things—that that benefit was undeserved.

[Monolithic]

Just now, Corey Clak said:

^{Source? - Way back machines (And Social Blade) are showing the opposite of what you are saying.} 

^{They may have lost some but not a 100K.}

Someone posted a picture in the forum from socialblade showing thew numbers....like 30 pages ago.

[TechDeckCAD]

1 minute ago, Saeumii said:

"Is it ok for someone to steal your money" again, all i'm saying is that the incident didn't seem malicious, and attributing malice to it would be done in bad faith. yes, they included an innocent third party in this incident. yes, this incident should not have happened at all. but there's no reason to believe that any of this happened knowingly and intentionally and maliciously

Emailing a company that you're going to return their prototype, and then, you instead auction that product, with no recourse or compensation until GN calls him out, is incredibly malicious.

[Separatrix9]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:25 PM, LinusTech said:

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.
 

If this "context" is actually a bundle of fabrications and confusions, that doesn't make me think you're very trustworthy, or that Steve ought to have sorted things out with you privately. Ask yourself, would you really have paid Billet Labs back if it weren't for Steve?

Hypothetically, if you had sold it because of a miscommunication rather than auctioned it because of a miscommunication, would that make it any better? And do you feel better knowing that this charity was donated money based on the "auctioning" of a product without the owner's consent?

This statement isn't quite as bad as Steve claims, but it's really bad. You didn't have to make his job so easy. Once Steve posted the video, you could have taken some time to gather your thoughts first, maybe go through the statement with Yvonne, I don't know. You're just digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole here. None of this is necessary.

Think about the things you say about customer service departments who receive complaints and either don't reply for a while or deflect. What part of this Billet Labs fiasco would an independent reviewer think was acceptable, forgivable, redeemable? It's so bad, and once you know you've made a mistake, you don't have to keep doubling down. Get the data first, then you can tell us it wouldn't have changed your conclusion. That's the honest way.

[andreimj]

10 minutes ago, K4shira said:

It is absolutely irrelevent how good or bad the product is. The only two things that matter are that it was never even remotely adequately tested and that they sold the prototype. It is for the viewers - which could be potential customers - to decide whether are interested in the product or not. But Linus's refusal to competently test the water block means that the viewers - and therefore the potential customers - did not have the chance to evaluate the product for themself. 

 

For you it might be mediocre, for Linus it might be ridiculously bad, but maybe for John Doe it might be exactly what he was looking for, but he may never now because LTT never actually tested it in a useful way.

If John Doe needs a reviewer to have an opinion, he may be in the wrong place.

 

What if Billet would've said "it should work on a 4090" to a client? The client would've ended with a 800 dollars slob of high purity copper that doesen't cool properly.

 

That's what is the problem with this community and the reaason of why this blew out of proportion. The educated community is is too focused on the "what ifs" and not on the facts.

 

If it's irrelevant how good or bad is the product, why don't you put a slab of gold on your CPU and call that a cooler?

[Saeumii]

15 minutes ago, ddpp said:

Yeah, wouldn’t want the anti-union guy who constantly spams ads in your face to be portrayed as a scumbag…

>bad faith take

typical

[J82465]

can the new CEO Terren just put linus in his new place and stop him from his own stupidity

 

Linus should only read and act his part of the script, anything involving handling relations is clearly not his strong suit

 

Please LMG get a real PR person, also get this man out of the wan show if you want to last another 3 years

[Monolithic]

2 minutes ago, HiTechLowSpec said:

That depends on whom you define as "the slighted party". Billet Labs says they're good. I still see a bunch of nerds with their undies in a bunch while clutching their participation trophies, demanding satisfaction.

Per Steve's contact with them, they are not good. They haven't received a dime from Linus yet, the video was published a month ago, and at the time of publishing the video, Steve says they hadn't even responded to Linus yet.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, RangerSavage said:

Would you care to elaborate on how Steve acted poorly? Was it the placement of his eyebrows? Was his tone of voice too monotoned? Did he sound upset? Was it the haircut?

 

Because I can tell you what people are currently upset with LTT for, for auctioning off property that wasn't theirs to sell, and on top of that defaming the product by using it in such a way that it had a gap to not cool properly.

 

One of these is more important than the other.

I am not going to argue with someone that does not understand body cues or reactions but others have commented here about Steve as well. He had a personal issue with Linus and this was his way of handling it. I am not saying Steve was wrong but the video was unprofessional. Remember, these are not individual creators having a fight. These are two media publications that should be treated better from both sides.

[Drazil100]

Just gonna drop this here so everyone is on the same page about this...

[eece_ret]

Just now, TechDeckCAD said:

Emailing a company that you're going to return their prototype, and then, you instead auction that product, with no recourse or compensation until GN calls him out, is incredibly malicious.

If executed by teh same person sure I guess.  However if the left hand and right hand are not aware of their independent actions.  Things fall through the cracks.  Sometimes literally and in places youd last expect

 

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2590600/fbi-ends-investigation-into-missing-los-alamos-hard-drives.html

 

[Saeumii]

2 minutes ago, Monolithic said:

Lack of malice IMO makes it any better, because that would state it was negligence. From someone that asks us to trust them with very expensive purchases.

fair point

[Tanks]

7 minutes ago, TechDeckCAD said:

So if I were to tell you that a heatsink for the PS4 is absolute crap, and my methodology consisted of using it on the PS5, would you call that a valid test? And not call me an idiot right then and there?

I don't understand why you're being obtuse and trying to act like the test is still valid, when it's abundantly clear that a 4090 and 3090Ti do not have the same physical design language, and was literally stated to have a gap between the chip and the copper heatsink, as the copper heatsink was not specifically designed for the 4090.

And moreover, even if GN did come up with the same numbers you could trust their process of being fair and accurate in a way you no longer can with Linus. 

It's frustrating to watch. 

[WhateverGuy]

5 minutes ago, HiTechLowSpec said:

That depends on whom you define as "the slighted party". Billet Labs says they're good. I still see a bunch of nerds with their undies in a bunch while clutching their participation trophies, demanding satisfaction.

But Billet Labs did not, in fact, say they are good. That's taken from what Linus said when he was playing damage control, but they are anything but good based on the communication Steve showed.

[Monolithic]

1 minute ago, Drazil100 said:

Just gonna drop this here so everyone is on the same page about this...

Is there much difference between the first two? 1 is the reason for 2...