Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[eece_ret]

3 minutes ago, nightryder21 said:

I guess you missed all the info GN pointed out about Asus and it's obvious bias.

They are editorial pieces, personal perspectives are allowed.  I've been building with Asus since 1996, a good ol TX97-A socket7 with an intel P200MMX.  Never looked back, been building with them for 27 years, Pentium 1,2,3,4, Core2, Core i 1st -> 9thGen (12th gen if supply chain woes didnt exist.  Had to go Gigabyte, which has been fine)

Do I have a bias, sure.  Is it a trivial bias based out of thin air or one that has formed after years of first hand experiences.  Im also open to change having built with other brands and even use other brands.  

So I do not fault them for some off the cuff remarks born of personal experience.   

If they were coming out on stage all kitted out with Asus Schwag and literally took the whole time extolling Asus forever, then OK I get it, but thats not what I see here and to equate it to that seems kinda disingenuous. 

 

[Nyotengu]

1 minute ago, tinverse said:

Pretty crazy to see this mess. My initial thoughts were, "Yeah, I thought some of those numbers were weird in the benchmarks." Specifically where the 4090 had an insane performance jump or the 3090Ti had performed closer to the 4090 than I was expecting in some benchmarks.

 

I was hoping Linus would just own it and put the breaks on production to figure out the quality issues. Event the Billet Labs stuff I thought was horrible, but I figured Linus would make it right. Seeing Linus' response and then the GN response I have to say I am a disappointed.

Not going to lie. He looked quite puncheable in the “sorry but I am not going to apologise” WAN episode about the Billet cooler.

 

[LinusAuctionTips]

2 minutes ago, AlTech said:

It's the appearance of a conflict of interest. HUB and GN have both said, LMG can't be trusted on laptop reviews because of this appearance of a conflict of interest.

This. I am studying to be an attorney and have worked in a very large law firm (in the 100 largest in the United States). Appearances of impropriety matter just as much as whether actual impropriety is occurring.

[Drazil100]

12 minutes ago, LinusAuctionTips said:

And Linus' reaction shows that his honesty is questionable at best. Who is to say that if Steve reached out that Linus wouldn't just lie through his teeth. I mean, he already manipulated the facts in his public response.

I don't know that that is entirely fair to say. Given how bad his response was it's clear that he didn't run things by anyone before posting a response (otherwise his salt towards GN poor journalistic practices bit would have probably been left out). It's very possible that there was some sort of communication issue as he was learning about this situation where the facts were miscommunicated to him.

THAT BEING SAID, your conclusion is dead on. We shouldn't trust Linus (or Linus's employees) to be honest. We need to make sure he is held accountable, and that he isn't manipulating facts and trying to deceive us.  The misinformation, while not as egregious as the other issues Steve raised are not acceptable.

[LinusAuctionTips]

1 minute ago, mikaelus said:

As if Steve doesn't have his own biases. Here's a top tip: don't worship Youtubers. These are just some blokes with cameras, telling you WHAT THEY THINK not WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK. I'm under impression that many people fail to understand this.

 

And I can't stand Linus for many reasons, but Steve bores me to death most of the time. And his subjective views are often poorly substantiated anyway - like his interjection about a "$600 budget card", which he clearly believes should not be considered "budget" - in complete and utter ignorance of the global economic situation as well as the challenges IT companies are facing.

 

So, yeah, I don't like him much either. In fact, I don't think I respect any tech reviewer at all. I watch some of them for entertainment, that's all.

homie, i'm an atheist, i don't worship anyone.

[yuck]

25 minutes ago, miagisan said:

Linus is also building a multi million dollar lab to be accurate as possible.  Meanwhile his videos are riddled with errors and issues.   You ok with that? The Billet labs was a tremendously bad move on their part, and how they handled it.   But if you are investing in a multi million dollar "lab", you have to get the basics right.  

For me, that's it.

You can not brand youself as the most accurate data provider and so on, which LTT has been doing, and refuse to retest stuff and having basic errors (without proper corrections since everyone makes mistakes) like the ones that GNs presented.

[VicBar]

11 minutes ago, Nate_LapT said:

"Valued at"
They didn't sell. 

Apple being a Trillion dollar company is precisely because of it's valuation.... you think you discovered smth there but in fact misundertand it.

Edited August 16, 2023 by VicBar
spelling

[mikaelus]

1 minute ago, RotoCoreOne said:

Idk man, Asus was one of the major sponsors for LTX to which Linus admits always loses money. And as his opinion on retesting billets cooler has shown, he's priotizing costs over other things like accuracy

Not enough to allege anything. Either you have evidence or keep it shut. Especially as a tech reviewer who is bashing others for mangling test results. It's pure hypocrisy.

[MartinTheActor]

3 minutes ago, mikaelus said:

As if Steve doesn't have his own biases. Here's a top tip: don't worship Youtubers. These are just some blokes with cameras, telling you WHAT THEY THINK not WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK. I'm under impression that many people fail to understand this.

 

And I can't stand Linus for many reasons, but Steve bores me to death most of the time. And his subjective views are often poorly substantiated anyway - like his interjection about a "$600 budget card", which he clearly believes should not be considered "budget" - in complete and utter ignorance of the global economic situation as well as the challenges IT companies are facing.

 

So, yeah, I don't like him much either. In fact, I don't think I respect any tech reviewer at all. I watch some of them for entertainment, that's all.

I'd suggest reading up on Parasocial Relationships. 

Linus built a career on the back of the Parasocial Dynamic. This (this thread and controversy/backlash) kind of criticism is the major problem with creating a Parasocially-supported career.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, AlTech said:

Not to the satisfaction of GN which is Steve's point. Other reviewers can't trust LMG to be honest in laptop reviews because Linus invented in Framework. This hasn't stopped LMG from preventing Linus from evaluatinf laptops from Framework's competitors on camera for LMG channels.

LMG gave Asus an easy ride on the Asus motherboard fiasco with AMD CPUs and LMG gave Asus the kind of blanket endorsement that never comes free.

They ideally shouldn't but the reality of YTers funding their reviews means they need sources of revenue and they try hard to prevent it from biasing their reviews. It's also why many reviewers have a policy of not reviewing products that they've been sponsored by before or products that they had a hand in making.

It's the appearance of a conflict of interest. HUB and GN have both said, LMG can't be trusted on laptop reviews because of this appearance of a conflict of interest.

I'm not sure how this relates to abything GN has said or I have said.

 

The appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad as an actual conflict of interest. LMG has major conflicts of interest that they've done nothinnf about and GN took then to task for it when other smaller channels were too afraid to say it to LMG.

The phrase of art is "appearance of impropriety".  It's not that you've done anything wrong. It's that a reasonable person will question the nature of your honesty if you're aren't clear about certain "interests" involved. LMG has a couple(?) of former Asus employees, works with them for years, and seems to give them a bit of a pass on things. Some basic disclosures solves a lot of issues.

 

Oddly enough, LMG doesn't have this issue with Intel, because they've roasted them enough over the years that ever "gets" that Intel can take some heat. At least sometimes. Actually, in totality, I think LMG has shown a great amount of "appearance management" with the big 3 consumer producers (Intel, Nvidia and AMD) compared to a lot of the brands that sell their products.

[Chroot]

Linus. Could you take 6 months off. You have Ceo now, be with your family,enjoy life, enjoy your success come back with a fresh perspective, burn out is a real thing.

[Hazz3r]

I do hope @LinusTech is getting a thorough telling off from the rest of the C-Suite today.

 

I have strong doubts that Linus didn’t talk with Terren before posting that response, which unfortunately is considered to be the official response of the company.

 

Let’s hope it’s simply a sign of his struggle to adapt to his new role, and not a sign of how he intends to act going forward.

 

Would not be surprised if his forum posting privileges are revoked in the very near future.

[mikaelus]

4 minutes ago, miagisan said:

Linus is also building a multi million dollar lab to be accurate as possible.  Meanwhile his videos are riddled with errors and issues.   You ok with that? The Billet labs was a tremendously bad move on their part, and how they handled it.   But if you are investing in a multi million dollar "lab", you have to get the basics right.  

Absolutely not fine with that, as I have made clear here many times. In fact, I'm bashing Linus here as well. But as I'm doing it I think it would be a grave mistake to canonize Steve when he can't stick to his own rules and got personal when he didn't need to. That's all. The world isn't black and white, you know?

[PlankAndBarrel]

40 minutes ago, mikaelus said:

These are allegations that are completely unsubstantiated. As I said, like those people in photos with Epstein, who now "may be" or "may not be" pedos.

 

You just don't do that. Linus has been very forthcoming about his investment in Framework. Is every tech reviewer disclosing his stock market bets? How many of them own Apple or Nvidia shares? Does it affect how biased they are? Should each of them give full disclosures before every video? I mean, come on.

And what about all other companies which have at some point sponsored LTT content (but also GN or any other channel). Intel ran a whole series of sponsored upgrades, now taken up by AMD. Does this mean there may be conflict of interest between LTT and the biggest chip makers, just because they pay for some clips? 

 

Aren't ALL tech reviewers living mostly off this sort of income? Should they then not review anything because they got money from nearly all tech companies at some point?

 

And I'm not defending Linus here - he's done a lot of bad things and has become all ego - but Steve went from talking about evidence to suggesting malicious things he can't back up with any evidence.

Created an account just to respond to this line of thinking because it's as common as it is misguided.... Tell me you don't understand conflicts of interest without telling me you don't understand conflicts of interest... a doozy.

 

Another commenter laid out very clearly what the worry with conflict of interest is. It is NOT a witch hunt "Epstein-esque" scenario, nor guilt by association. It is the POTENTIAL of abuse/bias that is created from a conflict of interest, and it is tangible. The outcome does not matter... whether Linus trashes competitors or not does not matter, the fact we have to ask the question of his motivations is the problem. The POTENTIAL for it to manifest as bias is the problem. This works exactly the same as dating your boss. Did an employee get that raise because they earned it (possible), or because they are dating the boss? Actual answer could be either and it could be a completely innocent situation, but there is a reason this is frowned upon. The potential for bias is the key part, the fact the question needs to be asked is the issue.

To your question..... yes. Those are all potential conflicts of interest (your scenarios with chipmakers and all tech reviewers). The professional "duty" of the review could be clouded by parallel sponsorship, and thus the fact that YTers make money off of advertising is something to examine. However, these biases are largely mitigated by the fact that large YTers also have dozens of potential advertisers to work with. If YTers trash an advertiser, that does not subtract from their expanding pool of new clientele for ad spots much. If you watch a youtuber shilling for ONE specific company and always has one single sponsor, you probably take their views with a grain of salt. If they had dozens, you probably wouldn't feel the same way.

 

As far as ownership interest, its very different to have ownership directly in a company as a seed investor and having ownership as part of an index or random shares. Also a difference in small vs large shares of companies for this reason (1934 Act, 13Ds, etc.). There are clear distinctions drawn in securities/financial regulation.

 

With Frameworks, its actually much more concrete than your examples as well. Linus is an investor, meaning that Linus has a VESTED INTEREST in Framework and its success. Direct 1-to-1, not by association. He is open about that, yes, but that does not eliminate the potentiality for bias, nor the existence of the conflict of interest.

 

Not going to respond to the other whataboutisms in previous posts beyond saying this - I'm sure there are other tech reviewers who are much less open and transparent, its irrelevant. Disclosing is bare minimum.

 

To summarize, yes, it is good that Linus is upfront with his investment... however it does not eliminate the existence of a conflict of interest, it only provides transparency. And sometimes, that is the best one can do. Not even saying Linus has had any of that bias seep into his comments/reviews, but please actually grapple with what folks are calling attention to. Don't box with shadows.

[AlTech]

11 minutes ago, mikaelus said:

So, as I said, no major tech reviewer can do reviews anymore. Only some nobodies recording from their basements can, since they never got sponsored by anybody.

Now you're twisting my words.

 

If you review restaurants and Dominos' sponsors a video from you.

 

Can you review one of Dominos' pizzas? Sure, just not the food that Dominos' paid you to eat.

 

If you do car reviews and VW sponsors a video about the ID.4 then you can still honestly review any Skoda car (owned by VW) and a VW car that hasn't had a sponsored video made by you for it.

[Quirkz]

3 minutes ago, Erioch said:

I'm sure that company is counting its lucky stars that it wasn't accepted.

It's very likely that with this controversy, LTT is getting even more views, especially on the older reference videos.

Anyone interested in paying 100 mill for a media company would be giggling and rubbing their hands with glee. Exposure is attention is views is $$.

People who haven't heard of LTT will suddenly have videos pop up in their streams, and will start watching, and be entertained and subscribe.

 

The controversy is real, and I think GN have excellent points... but... this isn't watergate level, and people will forget, and in the meantime, LTTs value will only grow (unless they COMPLETELY mismanage this, which they won't.) They'll create a clever well crafted video about it written by their large and talented writing team that apologises about some things, glosses over the rest. And unlike GNs video, it WILL be monetised and the fans will walk away sated and entertained.

 

Corporations have PR teams, and know how to handle this shit. Just another day in the office.

Also - Handling this isn't even Linus's responsibility any more. We'll get good insight on to how their new CEO will run the brand in the future based on what happens next. Brushed under the rug? Addressed head on? Finessed quietly to the side? Let's find out! As always, I'm on the side with a bag of popcorn, watching LTT media group, (not Linus Scientific Industrial) entertain. 

[Stevkev]

On 8/14/2023 at 2:25 PM, 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.

I honestly cannot see how LMG can simply walk away from this issue without properly addressing the concerns raised.  It absolutely requires a minimum of a Video response taking responsibility for the concerns, and not attempting to defend the processes in place.  Just like sports, LMG is now a large enough company that the only thing that matters is the results.  Its been shown that the results are wrong more often than should be allowed, and ya you have to own that.  Furthermore, now that it's all over the internet, you have to respond to it in a way that accepts the facts, and how you're going to approach these concerns moving forward. 

 

I believe this process has started with the hiring of a new CEO.  Not even 2 months in and he's got a massive public relations issue to take care of.  Probably not the way anyone wanted the new direction to start, but it's here.  And it cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.  Every YouTuber, big and small, is talking about this.  Sponsors will run.  New manufacturers will go elsewhere.  It can't just be "there won't be a big segment on the WAN show" reaction. 

 

LTT has a fantastic following, and has done so much for the tech community.  This story does not take that away.  It is showing concerns that not only Steve has shared, but millions of LTT viewers.  If these concerns get ignored, so still those viewers.  And I know Linus would say "I don't care". But he doesn't run the show anymore.  And LMG as a company absolutely MUST care.  It might be the first boxing match between CEO and  owner, but he may ultimately have to instruct Linus to deal with this much more head on. Its going to damage everything the team at LMG has worked for if he tries to sweep this under the rug.

[mikaelus]

10 minutes ago, AlTech said:

Not to the satisfaction of GN which is Steve's point. Other reviewers can't trust LMG to be honest in laptop reviews because Linus invested in Framework. This hasn't caused LMG to prevent Linus from evaluating laptops from Framework's competitors on camera for LMG channels.

 

The appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad as an actual conflict of interest. LMG has major conflicts of interest that they've done nothinnf about and GN took then to task for it when other smaller channels were too afraid to say it to LMG.

Jesus Christ, so you actually believe in guilt by association? Wow. Well, then we can't talk logically here. On this basis anybody who dealt with Epstein is automatically a pedo - because association makes them as guilty as committing the actual act.

 

And nobody is barred from reviewing anything even if they are invested in competitors - as long as it's acknowledged. It's up to you to use your brain and think whether the review is biased or not - you have hundreds of other outlets to compare it. It's not like LTT is the only source out there.

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The phrase of art is "appearance of impropriety".  It's not that you've done anything wrong. It's that a reasonable person will question the nature of your honesty if you're aren't clear about certain "interests" involved. LMG has a couple(?) of former Asus employees, works with them for years, and seems to give them a bit of a pass on things. Some basic disclosures solves a lot of issues.

 

Oddly enough, LMG doesn't have this issue with Intel, because they've roasted them enough over the years that ever "gets" that Intel can take some heat. At least sometimes. Actually, in totality, I think LMG has shown a great amount of "appearance management" with the big 3 consumer producers (Intel, Nvidia and AMD) compared to a lot of the brands that sell their products.

I was referring to Asus sponsoring some GPU videos and seemingly getting glowing recommendations and an easy ride as a result.

[Rimson]

201 pages of comments, this isn't dying down isn't it
Linus should do a mea culpa, and apologise to us and to Steve and hardware unboxed.
He should learn some  humility ...

Sadly we all know he is too stubborn to do this.

[mikaelus]

3 hours ago, nightryder21 said:

Guess you didn't watch the GN video.

I did, the entire gruelling 45 minutes - which was the only video by GN I've ever watched in full because Steve is just mind-numbingly boring at times. So, either you can make an argument or you should stop adding to the noise.

[PlankAndBarrel]

 

Just now, mikaelus said:

Jesus Christ, so you actually believe in guilt by association? Wow. Well, then we can't talk logically here. On this basis anybody who dealt with Epstein is automatically a pedo - because association matters to you as much as the actual fact.

 

And nobody is barred from reviewing anything even if they are invested in competitors - as long as it's acknowledged. It's up to you to use your brain and think whether the review is biased or not - you have hundreds of other outlets to compare it. It's not like LTT is the only source out there.

I wrote you a long post, please read it. This is not guilt by association... conflict of interest is not the same as guilt by association, please stop conflating the two, its a disservice. "Jesus Christ" indeed.

[mikaelus]

1 minute ago, AlTech said:

I was referring to Asus sponsoring some GPU videos and seemingly getting glowing recommendations and an easy ride as a result.

Was it baseless?

[atxcyclist]

3 minutes ago, Hazz3r said:

I do hope @LinusTech is getting a thorough telling off from the rest of the C-Suite today.

 

I have strong doubts that Linus didn’t talk with Terren before posting that response, which unfortunately is considered to be the official response of the company.

 

Let’s hope it’s simply a sign of his struggle to adapt to his new role, and not a sign of how he intends to act going forward.

 

Would not be surprised if his forum posting privileges are revoked in the very near future.

You think Linus’ forum access is going to be revoked? You think there’s some actual likelihood that would happen?

[nightryder21]

28 minutes ago, UncleFunkle said:

That doesn't mean they have $100M.

It does mean the have $500