Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Blademaster91]

12 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Yeah, I just watched a video from GN last week about a prebuilt PC for $800 from Micro Center. Dude went in on it being a bad design and thermal throttling under Blender, and came to the conclusion that it was a bad gaming PC. Problem is, I saw zero gaming benchmarks in the video about the gaming PC. I consider him knowledgeable, and his methodology was flawless in that video, but he seems to have issues with the scope of his videos.

 

It makes it hard for me to recommend them as a "review channel" when people won't get relevant review information. 

 

This pales in comparison to the scale of issues he pointed out about LMG, but it's still something he himself would have to acknowledge to avoid being hypocritical with his push on ethical testing and scope.

The criticism of the gaming PC overheating in Blender is fair enough, as it was built by Microcenter, I was expecting a PC built a by a gaming PC store to do well enough in any scenario, depending on the game it would utilize the CPU and GPU enough to have similar overheating. The main criticism being the CPU cooler, which I agree with his sentiment on spending a few more dollars on a decent cooler so it wouldn't throttle.

I think he needs to inform himself more about OEM workstations and servers, he has gotten things wrong in regards with parts like power supplies , but I like his pre-built reviews in general.

[Tajl3r]

6 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

 You need to slow down and think.... 

So do u , u can't pump false information on yt cause u have 300 employees so u need to feed them and u doing the videos fast like working rabbits ...

Ur making ur content suitable for non educated kids and making u totally irrelevant in serious tech audience but that's going on for awhile,since i'm here long time ago [2013] i can atest that.

GROWTH is great but not like this.

There is a saying"when u fly way to high the crash is even lower"

nhf

 

[NorKris]

would it be better if LTT stopped posting  numbers and stuff in vids ?  we know we cant trust them anyway

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, Alvin853 said:

Well LMG has really been going downhill lately, I hope they see this as a wakeup call to reconsider some of their strategies. I'm not a fan of drama, but I have noticed a lot of issues with LMG videos lately and was hoping sooner or later this topic gets brought up so LMG can do the right thing.

 

Just look at this segment: 

Mr Framwork Investor and supposed Right to Repair advocate Linus thinks it's "pretty cool" that the mainboard and case are non-standard so once you want to replace either one of them, the other one is unusable and becomes e-waste. 

Stuff like this happens way too often, and if LMG doesn't want to become a joke and untrustworthy they need to work on it.

To be fair.  It is "cool" in the sense that it makes assembly easier and just the overall system less mechanically complex.  You cant have your front panel header come unplugged if its part of the mainboard.

My stance is on the side of this being something dell shouldnt do.  But i can see why Dell did what they did and i can see where they were coming from and it is, to me, kinda nifty.

[post_screen]

4 minutes ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

I mean, did you read the one comment made about his kids? Some people are a little off their rocker over this.

I'd also agree that calling the situation over the block "theft" is an overstatement. It's a serious fuck up that sounds like it will have a significant dollar value attached to it. But at least now we know how it is being handled. It doesn't answer the IP concerns, but it's good to know it's getting resolved (even if the solution isn't ideal).

I know. I'm not defending the community and I know that there are always people whose soul purpose is going for blood. Never the reason to go personal into anything of this type. 

 

This is a great learning opportunity for LMG. Yes, it is a part of those "growing pains" and it is exactly why it has to be addressed, not swept under the rug 

[RasmusDC]

5 minutes ago, insanityclown said:

Steve doesn’t owe you anything. Implying that this is unfair or not journalistically proper because he didn’t contact you before publishing an expose is absurd. If they wanted your take, they should have reached out after publication. You own a large company, and people rely on the information you provide. Sometimes that means you will get taken to task publicly for a screw up. Stop whining, show some integrity and just admit you f-ed up and need to do better. End of story.

This, so much this..

 

Accept that you are called out on shit you HAVE done.

 

Learn from it, and slow DOWN.. quality over speed, you have to big an impact, to not prioritize quality, you have the marked to actually have an impact, not just be a Kardashian that does what works on the "money counter"... maybe you overinvested.. you took to big a risk.. also this talking about "price evaluation of your company"... you have lost focus .. and lost footing..

 

and it is SO clear in the people around you, especially your partner Luke, that you DON´T have full support in your own house. 

 

this is when you learn.. and there is 2 ways in my many years i have seen management can go.. EITHER you staff up on critical people, and you listen... OR you kill the noisy birds, and surround yourself with "YES MEN/GIRLS" because it boost your EGO..

 

the easy way is always to kill the noise. but this is what makes one better, even if you are GREAT at what you do, you can always learn. 

 

i miss the old LTT, i scrub more than ever in videos, and if it has something to do with "reviews" i don´t watch it.. right now LTT is mostly, destroying Linus home with wierd ideas of automations, and Jakes server solutions i watch.

[DeerDK]

4 minutes ago, GotWeez said:

Reach out... you mean like Billet Labs did to recover their prototype before it was auctioned of fOr cHaRiTy?

You are not responding to what I said. 

If you consider yourself a journalist, and you write or film a piece like this, with these accusations,Well funded or not, you reach out for a comment. 

Have you ever read a deep diving article that didn't include the wording in the general direction of: "we tried contacting x, but they did not wish to comment" or "presented with our data y answered that..." 

[GotWeez]

Just now, Dom1252 said:

I don't understand why would anyone ever trust LTT data 

it's obvious that LTT is either full of people who should never touch computers, or they just don't care (and in both cases, they shouldn't put out any reviews) 

 

 

the fiasco with prototype shows that LTT is just an evil company and should be sued to oblivion 

 

stick with funny videos, they don't harm anyone and they're fun

You don't need to be a master mechanic to be an amazing driver.

You can see when given the opportunity to put an appropriate amount of time into their work, that there are very talented folks in the organization. 

The problem is, the organization is crippling them. 

 

And this isn't the first time this has come up. "Growing pains." Well... LMG is how old now? I think we can call the "growing pains" what they are... "crippling deficiencies."

[Dom1252]

28 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

 

 

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...

 

if you aren't willing to test anything properly, why did you get the lab? why even test anything at all then? 

I get it know, views which equals money... 

 

but don't pretend you're "sinking" money into lab when lab is only an excuse for more wrong data in your hands 

 

I seriously hope your CEO will take some action to start fixing things, as someone who watched every LTT video out there... but I have no hope left 

 

 

I wish that lab could actually focus on good data, but it seems like no one cares

[LTTinthegravetonight]

3 minutes ago, Jazmodo said:

I'm equally amused that so many here find a differing opinion equal to a lack of understanding - "you can't have watched the whole thing" or "go watch more than 5mins".
 

In summary of the GN Video:

• LMG is rushing too much, creating mistakes - Weak opinion. ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking is far more detailed than either GN or LTT. Does that make AHO "better"? Debatable.
• LMG employees agree - Sure... snippets to try and prove a point. How many LMG employees would go work for Steve/GN? Employees may not think it's perfect, but clearly agree with the ethos, else wouldn't still be working for the company year after year
• This isn't Drama - No Steve, it really is. And he loves the drama, which is why he goes in for it again & again
• Bad data - Sure, and as previously stated not a problem in itself. Corrections are made, and just because they don't meet Steve's 'self-imposed' standards, doesn't mean they're not acceptable corrections. Poor editorial QC is all this part of the GN proves, unworthy of the 45min rant
• CPU Coolers - GN cherry-picking data to shout about how they do superior quality testing, and have superior methodology
• PSU Error - a literal typo? Weak argument there from GN
• Asterisk Errors - This is a video, if you can't read the text, don't believe everything you hear. You don't have to 'cut it' or 'correct it in video'. That's what Steve would do, that's not what EVERYONE has to do. Supremely arrogant attitude from Steve.
• Ethical Concerns, Irresponsible actions - All about Framework & Noctua. This is a complete non-issue. The framework investment is mentioned repeatedly, and Noctua were an LMG favourite well before the screwdriver, so why the big deal? Not everyone has to follow Steve's 'Ethical Guidelines'. 
• Ethical Concerns, Billet Labs - Reeks of a story told from a 1-sided point of view, with cherry-picked comments. Was the review sloppy? Yes. Did it harm the business of Billet Labs? Definitely not. Being exposed to tens of millions of people is no bad thing, and anyone taking a YT video as gospel is frankly deluded.
• Ethical Concerns, Pwnage Mouse - The most valid argument of the video, but hardly work a 3/4 hour rant. Again, I doubt Pwnage suffered at all from this huge exposure.
• Unacceptable & disturbing community - Steve knows he's going to get heat from this latest cry for attention, so tries to get ahead of any criticism. The only disturbing aspect to the GN video, is Steve's worrying lack of editorial direction, if he thinks this kind of content is going to do him any favours in the long run.
• Unfair to everyone - Nope. LMG has done wonders for the tech industry, and to suggest otherwise is follow. GN thinks it's an editorial, scientific review journal. LMG IS an entertainment outfit. At least LMG knows what it is. 

 

an official LTTstore sock will be arriving in your mailbox soon (maybe in a few months). Thanks for your hard work defending poor Linus and his 100 million dollar company online.

[ShadowedFox]

21 minutes 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... 

Quote

Sorry, but you're the one in the wrong here. You're the one that has failed on multiple occasions to uphold good values in journalistic practices. The fact Steve is calling you out is Steve standing by good journalistic practices. Not sure how you're trying to spin that as if him keeping it quiet and keeping the audience out of the loop would have been better. 

In regards to selling it, money was exchanged for an item. You could call it a transaction then, it still was not your item to give away. Scumbag move regardless of 'sold' or not. 

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 

Quote

This has been going on for a long time as shown by Steve. Its not growing pains at this point. Its quite clearly your rushed schedule to produce content, regardless of its quality. 

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. 

 

Quote

Clearly not, you've been messing up charts and information for a long time. Your voice could potentially be the one people listen to for purchases and you should be owning up to the fact you and the team are letting down the audience. Not trying to brush it off. 

 

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. 

 

Quote

Referencing my previous point - but you don't seem to care when you have misinformation about graphics card $500+ that has misinformation and you silently correct it after the fact. You can't claim to care about the buyer for this and not the videos with misinformation. 

 

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. 

 

Quote

I think this was a long time coming. Your channel has sunk into clickbait meme content, its not even journalism at this point. The fact that you abuse your position as a content creator to kit your house with stupid tech decisions that are a waste of time with free products is a testiment to that. 

 

 

Address this publically and don't sit with your tail with your legs and make excuses. You and your team messed up. Never mind past issues like the "trust me bro" on your over priced merch. 

[bright_things]

3 minutes ago, Karl Mern said:

This makes LTT literally a thief or a criminal. Despite of this, it's so appalling that there are people in this forum defending linus and ltt. No wonder steve showed how linus's community jumped to his defense against Hardware Unboxed. At this point, you can just sit back and laugh at the absurdity of this company and its community. I hope Billet Labs sues ltt to the moon.

Look at Linus's response a few pages ago. The Billet labs issue has been solved.

[RockerBug17]

I've been following LTT since 2010. He ain't perfect, but Linus has been very consistent in opinion and tone. I trust any issues he has on the backend were being addressed well before this drama started.

 

@LinusTech Don't let all this dishearten you. Tomorrow will be a good day.

[wanderingfool2]

7 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Show me a perfect company!  Even companies worth billions make mistakes.

It's how you deal with them that matters.

Yes companies make mistakes; but it's telling when they keep making mistakes.  For a company that is trying to label themselves as being accurate and trustworthy; making the same mistake multiple times over and quite frankly missing many points where transparency and disclosures would be required or at minimal helpful is unacceptable.

 

From what I've seen, it doesn't really seem like LMG takes much care in trying to present unbiased data; or even correct data.  At a certain point it's like they just blindly trust what is written.

[LTTinthegravetonight]

Just now, bright_things said:

Look at Linus's response a few pages ago. The Billet labs issue has been solved.

You mean the post where he admitted that they were billed but still haven't paid, seemingly only considering it now that there's a shitstorm?

[Rsg_6100]

1 hour ago, Skipple said:

You're missing my point. I don't think Steve has a bias in this video. I think he has a conflict of interest. I'm attempting to draw a distinction between the two. 

I think had he not gone out of his way to monetize a video that would get a ton of revenue I could see that. He has a horse in this race and I see it as him trying to protect his livelihood. He knows and states that this is not going to do anything but send folks like yourself in a tizzy attacking him and anyone agreeing with him. It's not going to cause LTT any significant drop in viewership or make any sponsors drop him. Why does holding someone accountable have to automatically be a negative thing. you see the same mindset in people that defend police abuses. It might just be tone of voice since Steve has zero bedside manner so to speak. You are almost taking these criticisms personally, which you should never let any company become part of your identity.

[post_screen]

1 minute ago, Ex14 said:

I disagree. In this case I really don’t think it warrants this level of pitch forkery.

Didn't say to this degree, but something has to be said. It is kind of a big deal, they damaged another company with some of their actions. For someone who preaches accountability and transparency, something has to be said, even if its as little as we messed up, we are sorry, and we will do such and such to hopefully not do it again.

 

 

I'll start writing this at the end of every post: be CIVIL; don't make it personal by going after someone's families

[Paul Thexton]

14 minutes ago, izan TM said:

I would like LMG re-testing stuff if it wasn't because as far as I've seen in the GN video, the results for a specific GPU on a specific game changes from one review to the next, meaning they re-test everything but don't cross-check their results with ones done previously to ensure everything is working well

There can be reasons for it. Running tests on nominally the same hardware you can certainly simplistically expect the results to be consistent… But in reality there *are* other factors involved.

 

For one thing, was the hardware test spec *actually* the same between runs beyond which GPU was used? Drivers the same? Was the game compiling shaders on the older run? Is the underlying OS the same, game at the same patch level? etc etc.

 

I’m not making excuses for the examples offered in Steve’s video, but I can see how it’s possible. Conveying info about all the relevant test conditions is the important learning here I think.

 

If it were me and I saw performance data leap outside of what I’d consider margin of error then I’d certainly manually validate the results and put a bit of effort in to understanding the cause. That does take time/resource though.

[MayaYa]

31 minutes 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.

Pretty weak response Linus

[Absentia13]

Linus: 

As a viewer of your channel and GN's channel but not a "fan" of either because that's just dumb...I have noticed errors in your videos as well, just as someone who watches a video once while playing WoW or something. There is something happening inside you where you still want to be treated like you're just Linus, the (I mean this) decent, normal, caring guy that you obviously are, and at the same time, run a very large corporation. Those things are diametrically opposed to each other. Your feet are being held to the fire, what are you going to do? Playing the "hey I thought we were buds card" falls flat when looking at yourself as the corporation, and in the prism of the LTT Youtube channel, that's what it is.  

 

As someone who doesn't always have the best reactions to things at work or home, here is my advice: You need to talk about this and get it all out in the open so YOU own the story, and story doesn't own you.  You may want to even dedicate an entire WAN show to this. Analyze each mistake in the video, explain how it happened, why it happened, why it won't again. 

 

There's a reason I don't watch LTT reviews anymore in hopes of making a purchase. It's not just GN noticing this stuff, it's regular people too. Either get better, or lose credibility. You have an entire labs team that can't get their tests right. Steve has 3 or 4 people that work on testing. There's really nothing more to it than that. And your buddy in the labs video calling out GN and HUB looks awfully foolish today. 

 

Wish you the best of luck, will be watching WAN show this weekend. 

[Wolta]

13 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.

The last time I posted on the LTT forums was around the time LTT had just released the first GTX 700 series reviews. I really enjoyed your content in those days.

 

You’re correct that GN has not followed a journalistic etiquette by allowing the party of topic to respond prior to publication of a critical piece, if you weren’t contacted beforehand.

 

However, it is impossibly difficult to gloss over the ethos behind this statement; the writer of these words has evidence against them, from a source with historically larger ethos through publication accuracy, that their own professional practices lead open holes for inaccuracies and fallacy in their own product. 
 

If you found it disappointing that a piece was produced without adhering to etiquette not employed constantly but rather only intermittently by other outlets than The Associated Press, Ritzau, Reuters and the like, imagine the disappointment of us who’ve followed your channel and supported your team monetarily for well over a decade when dishonest practices are revealed - and the response is “Did we make mistakes? Yeah. But we’re humans.”

 

Repeated offences in reporting accuracy or professionalism costs most of us mortals our jobs. Not just our internet popularity. They are corrected with stringent plans of improvement and outlining how honest mistakes occurred, and how they will be corrected, with future projects safeguarded against these mistakes.

 

Linus’ reply is not a plan of action or clarification of future intent. It’s an excuse, alongside self-pointed questions, a classic method of deviation away from critical questions so overused it appears as a joke in a certain children’s movie.

 

5 years ago, when Xiaomi made a MacBook Pro lookalike, LTT and a few other YouTube channels produced content covering it. I bought it off of those reviews’ presentation, implying they were analyses of a product and the analysis showed it was a good product. It turned out to be an insanely flawed laptop, with easily uncovered issues, many of which I since listed in the comments on those videos, if you spent anything more than 24 hours with it. And I got a response to it. 

 

“Sorry, we just don’t have that amount of time to cover these products so you can’t expect us to do that much.”

 

I asked back then, and I will ask now 5 years later once again: if covering these products to their exact specification, use case, and the results they deliver in those circumstances is too much work, then why in the world do you brand yourself a reviewer? Why do you talk big game about a “lab” (an insult to anyone having anything to do with actual laboratory science granted the “lab”s flawed results so far…) if you’re not willing to give products and testers the time they need in the first place? Brand yourself as what you are instead - and entertainment influencer - and leave genuine reviews to the organisations that take the time and due diligence to apply scientific standards and proper methodology - and scrutiny, an absolute requirement - to channels that take the extra time to produce this content. 

 

A such source has called out this unacceptable contrast between branding and actual content delivered by LTT as a content source, and the response is now excuses and self-aimed questions and answers so cliché they’re jokes for kids. 

 

This is ignoring blatant long term health issues of speeding your employees to a point where they cannot stand behind their own work. This is well documented and meta analyses on the topic are readily available with overwhelming evidence at the US National Library of Medicine’s website. I would know - I wrote my BA on the damned psych. category and designing interventions for it. It’s horrific long-term and killed one of my parents. Shame on you for this alone.

 

In conclusion, I regret supporting this company entirely and whole heartedly. I’m sorry your day is awful. I hope your company seriously revises itself.

[xg32]

11 minutes ago, NorKris said:

would it be better if LTT stopped posting  numbers and stuff in vids ?  we know we cant trust them anyway

thats what ive already been treating the benchmark videos as for years, the data is just not accurate and useful to enthusiasts and harmful to consumers.

[ToboRobot]

1 minute ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Yes companies make mistakes; but it's telling when they keep making mistakes.  For a company that is trying to label themselves as being accurate and trustworthy; making the same mistake multiple times over and quite frankly missing many points where transparency and disclosures would be required or at minimal helpful is unacceptable.

 

From what I've seen, it doesn't really seem like LMG takes much care in trying to present unbiased data; or even correct data.  At a certain point it's like they just blindly trust what is written.

I guess you didn't read the second line of my post.

" It's how you deal with them that matters. "
 

[Cavalry Canuck]

20 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I miss Luke's videos, he had a more genuine personality in videos, while Linus seems to do fake excitement for the camera while seeming to be too scripted like he's reading off marketing material.

 

I was so excited when Luke came "back" to host a few videos. Looks like he's gone again though. I just can't tune in to the new hosts the way I could to Luke, and later James & Rylie.

 

20 minutes ago, IndustrialBananaBread said:

Made an account to make this post. Honestly, the entire defense about inaccuracies seems to boil down to "we're not perfect", which frankly isn't good enough for a company that was offered to be bought out for a hundred million dollars.

 

Man I've got an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico I'd like to point out to you...

 

15 minutes ago, BaidDSB said:

you fucking cheap ass bastard. "basic due diligence" doesnt mean  THEFT, no matter if its for charity.

 

 

For anyone wondering what the pitchforks look like. ^ 

Actually, are you the same guy going off about Linus' kids earlier? 

 

13 minutes ago, bright_things said:

The issue isn't that Linus didn't get a heads up, the issue is that his side of the story was not included, which from his response it seems like was very important in this case. In fair journalism I would prefer to see both sides in an expose, otherwise its just an opinion piece. I hope and think that Linus will face it head on, but now he has to waste time clarifying inaccuracies in GNs video before he can talk solutions, etc.

I think it's unfortunate that Linus didn't get a heads up. I know I have been somewhat anti-Steve in this thread, but I was really hoping a private conversation was had, and rebuffed. That said, this now provides @LinusTech an excellent opportunity to develop a content piece that lays out his side of things in detail. I hope he does. Go over the mistakes, how they happen, how they can be corrected, etc. 

[SmittyShmee]

re: benchmark errors,

Im not entirely convinced here. Can there be human error? of course. But they could just as easily have gotten discrepancies that others didn't. Since most reviews for <new product here> all drop within minutes of each other, its not like they can compare against others to see that their numbers were off. Its not like Steve was in their lab watching everything they did, how can he say for certain there are faults? Simply saying "my testing shows..." isn't good enough. The silicon lottery is real.

 

That said, they _could_ post follow up videos after the fact when they see that there _appears_ to be data issues and then compare against other reviewers.

 

If Steve's assertion that speed is a factor in the above though, there may not be time to go back and see if there are data errors compared to the community... which adds to his other assertion, if LTT is trying to position itself as a data-integrity/accuracy place with Labs, the onus is on LTT to ensure there are no errors or are as few as is reasonably possible in their findings.