Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[dragonuck76]

13 minutes ago, Aiken Drum said:

In that case, he should have taken the realization that he was still being emotional as a signal to re-shoot his part from scratch with a better attempt at humility.

 

The realization step is useless if it doesn't lead to the next step.

stop nip picking at everything.  He like the rest are only human.  They stated they will fix things and it will take time ... so let them have their time now.  

[Godiwa]

1 minute ago, 1982 Original said:

I’m sure Steve from GN won’t respond again. They said they wouldn’t. It will show their true colors if they don’t. i.e. only report on the bad responses, but not the proper one. While I 100% agree with what Steve brought to light, it has always seemed disingenuous coming from a competitor. It’s like Coke doing a take-down of Pepsi. This goes for the warranty complaint in the past and the current issues. 
 

Typically you don't report on someone if they work as they should... if something is broken you report on it to get it fixed...

They just posted the video... Fixed all their crap will take TIME... lets see in a years time if they have bettered or not

[EchoBravo498]

8 minutes ago, Aiken Drum said:

I guess I should have said, "Still chose to put hjs segment into the video, as-is". Sure, it's important for him to respond, but if he's just doing more of the same, what use is it?

Tone of the response is very subjective. Linus took it on the chin from many of his coworkers. Including his wife. Sure it was emotional, but a truly humbling experience will do that. Imagine having your entire leadership (not to mention company you built) looking at you as the cause for a potentially company wide hit on the bottom line - that's a big deal. I'd be emotional and I bet you would be too. Let's judge on the results over time for now.

[1982 Original]

2 minutes ago, mMontana said:

How a damage control video of promises could be a "proper one" response?

First content video without data errors and correction, might be one. But... only one? If the second has issues, should GN play on LMG releases?
I don't think so.

 

1 minute ago, Godiwa said:

Typically you don't report on someone if they work as they should... if something is broken you report on it to get it fixed...

They just posted the video... Fixed all their crap will take TIME... lets see in a years time if they have bettered or not

Both of you are only here to troll. Your responses mean very little. 

[Vexenar]

23 minutes ago, Srius1 said:

ARE ALL THE CRY BABIES and perfect people who never make mistakes happy now? You guys now have stopped all videos and possibly affecting tens of jobs for what????  To satisfy 1 dude who hates the world and wants to watch it burn? You all are PATHETIC BAND WAGON FOLLOWERS and it makes me sick. You people are toxic and need to get a life and stop being parasocial “fans” 

Sorry felt the need to make an account and write a reply after reading this. 
I've been watching LTT since the beginning and I've gotten subscribed to their channels when they were created to promote the team and a community I love. 

There is no issue with making legitimate mistakes and owning up to it, but a company the size of LMG with a gigantic community behind it needs to be held accountable to standards when there is a pattern of misinformation, deflecting key issues and not transparently responding to allegations that you have called other people out for in the past. It comes off as hypocritical and insincere. 

The latest video where they show the price of the prototype is just another kick to a startup that's already been run under the bus by a overly negative review of their product where Linus and his team did not even to choose to test it with the part it was intended for (and was shipped with) for the sake of video views. People seem to gloss over the fact that not every company has the finances the likes of LMG at their disposal, and them releasing the price of the prototype is just another hit to their brand. 

As I previously mentioned I have been a fan of LTT for years, but there is no defending Linus his toxic and unethical practices. 
His first reply on the forum to this, while emotional, had a lot of deflection instead of taking the L and humbly taking it as criticism and moving on from there. 
The entire reason people like me are outraged is because Linus cannot take any form of criticism about his company without taking it personally, he talks about proper jounalism practice of reaching out while he himself didn't reach out to Billit Labs before pushing out the review and negatively impacting their startup.

If it means LMG becomes a better company, and Linus gets reigned in by the new CEO than I am more than happy about there being a hiatus on videos for a week. 

PS- That joke about a segway to a sponsor in the last video? Really out of touch and terrible next to the video being monetized. 

[mMontana]

Thanks for your opinion, @1982 Original. Now i know you don't like me.

[aaradorn]

3 minutes ago, 1982 Original said:

I’m sure Steve from GN won’t respond again. They said they wouldn’t. It will show their true colors if they don’t. i.e. only report on the bad responses, but not the proper one. While I 100% agree with what Steve brought to light, it has always seemed disingenuous coming from a competitor.

They are not competitors, LTT produces content for the masses, GN produces content for the hard-core.  There is probably some overlap between viewership but to say that someone who watches LTT will just switch over to GN's super analytical break downs of devices is just dumb.

Your comparison between coke and pepsi is claiming that GN videos are a substitute for LTT videos, which they are not. A more apt comparison would be:

If Pepsi went after Sunkist because sunkist used bad oranges.

Their highest viewed videos are warranted, companies launched shitty products and they were trying to protect people. The more views = the more people protected from a shoddy product.

[Aiken Drum]

1 minute ago, dragonuck76 said:

stop nip picking at everything.  He like the rest are only human.  They stated they will fix things and it will take time ... so let them have their time now.  

Stop minimizing the problem. He has a significant behavioral problem that is seriously damaging his and his company's reputation, and he is stubbornly refusing to stop doing it, even while everyone around him is clearly trying to fix the damage it's causing.

 

To point this out is not a nitpick, it is valuable advice.

[coopa]

Just now, 1982 Original said:

I’m sure Steve from GN won’t respond again. They said they wouldn’t. It will show their true colors if they don’t. i.e. only report on the bad responses, but not the proper one. While I 100% agree with what Steve brought to light, it has always seemed disingenuous coming from a competitor. It’s like Coke doing a take-down of Pepsi. This goes for the warranty complaint in the past and the current issues. 
 

The newest response addressed every issue GN brought up. I’m sure it won’t be enough for Steve. GN has grown their audience off of their hit pieces. Look through their channel, they are the highest viewed videos. Even if this video isn’t monetized, it still brought views and subscribers to the channel. And criticizing Linus is like rocket fuel for their channel. 
 

In essence, the criticisms were valid of course, but let’s not pretend Steve doesn’t have a vested interest in making them. 

I don't get where people believe this is solely about Steve to have an axe to grind, but here's what Steve from GN said in the response video (to Linus' statement, the recommended post in this thread):
 

So here's the deal: If LTT releases a new PR style comment after this or goes on another rant, we probably won't be responding. This was LMG's chance to take responsibility and he's shown LMG's true colors and what he, as the owner, really thinks. And we're greatly disappointed at the tripling down rather than proposing future looking solutions. At this point, we wouldn't believe them if they released a new statement to try and undo this one because it's clear to us what the company's owners thought of these issues.

I believe that the new video - in bringing all the leads in, in calling out what a major error Linus not re-testing the Billet labs prototype PROPERLY because he thought it wasn't worth it, in pausing all the uploads for at least a week - these are substantive steps that indicate that A) they will take a temporary hit on money (monetized videos) to properly plot a path forward and B) that LMG leadership opinion did not agree with everything Linus said at the time he made his statement. And this video is not just a handwave dismissive statement like Linus' post here was.

I don't know if Steve will comment on his next hardware news show on the most recently released video from LTT with this content, or wait for further information, but I do believe he will respond to it in the near future. 

[geomac]

@Spotty  & other mods perhaps it's time to unpinn the Linus' response since he basically recanted it in the LTT video this morning

[Owsleygarcia95]

12 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Please tell me you aren't actually serious with any of this. GN didn't have to dig through months of stuff just to find some errors, they're all over the place. 

 

As someone who has been watching for over 10 years and watching WAN show for a whole heck of a lot longer than 6 months, I can see why you think the issues with LTT aren't as bad as most people do. You didn't see the steady decline in overall accuracy or the increase in random errors in videos, but I can absolutely assure you things are worse with LTT now than they were years ago.

I have to admit at least the poor linus part was kind of a troll. And yeah, the errors are an issue. I guess it's a good thing that this thread is 240 pages, because if you haven't checked YouTube yet,  they just released a video saying they are taking a week off to address the issue internally. We shall see if it helps.

[Aiken Drum]

3 minutes ago, EchoBravo498 said:

Tone of the response is very subjective. Linus took it on the chin from many of his coworkers. Including his wife. Sure it was emotional, but a truly humbling experience will do that. Imagine having your entire leadership (not to mention company you built) looking at you as the cause for a potentially company wide hit on the bottom line - that's a big deal. I'd be emotional and I bet you would be too. Let's judge on the results over time for now.

See, I don't think Linus is taking this as a humbling experience. I think Linus is reluctantly cowed by the storm of bad feedback from both the audience and the other players on the stage, but at the end he is still being very obviously defensive.

 

Being defensive literally means to defend, to act like the victim and to deflect attacks and try to strengthen one's position. Being defensive is NEVER the right way to respond if you know you're in the wrong.

[1982 Original]

6 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

They are not competitors, LTT produces content for the masses, GN produces content for the hard-core.  There is probably some overlap between viewership but to say that someone who watches LTT will just switch over to GN's super analytical break downs of devices is just dumb.

Your comparison between coke and pepsi is claiming that GN videos are a substitute for LTT videos, which they are not. A more apt comparison would be:

If Pepsi went after Sunkist because sunkist used bad oranges.

Their highest viewed videos are warranted, companies launched shitty products and they were trying to protect people. The more views = the more people protected from a shoddy product.

They are direct competitors in both their merch store and LTT to push into the in-depth testing with their lab. 
 

With the warranty issue, GN only put in place their warranty weeks before doing a take-down on Linus. With this issue, GN only put in place their own error correcting procedures weeks ago.
 

Those highest viewed videos are take-down videos. They are warranted. As I said, Steve’s criticisms weren’t lies in this video either, they were accurate. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t stand to personally gain from an LTT downfall. He does. 

[mMontana]

2 minutes ago, geomac said:

@Spotty  & other mods perhaps it's time to unpinn the Linus' response since he basically recanted it in the LTT video this morning

Why deprive the audience of the authenticity of the first answer from the Ty... CVO?

[Vexenar]

2 minutes ago, geomac said:

@Spotty  & other mods perhaps it's time to unpinn the Linus' response since he basically recanted it in the LTT video this morning

Personally feel it should be kept in to give transparancy on what Linus his actual thoughts on the matter were/are. 

He's basically recanted it because of the community backlash. 

[geomac]

Just now, mMontana said:

Why deprive the audience of the authenticity of the first answer from the Ty... CVO?

I agree that the response should be public. It should be unpinned not removed. Screenshots are everywhere anyway, one does not have to look far.

[WallacEngineering]

Well, this ended up surprising well, better than I expected for sure.

 

While Linus himself deflected a couple things he did make a good point, and the rest of the team were quick to not only apologize but strive to do better and even Linus strives to do better at least.

 

I was concerned that LMG had grown so large that there was a possibility we wouldn't receive a proper response at all. Glad to see I was completely and utterly wrong on that front, although it is 100% clear that Linus is a completely different person compared to when I first subscribed, probably because of all this wealth and success.

 

Shutting down video production may feel like just a band-aid to some of you guys but to me it shows that LMG actually DOES care about us - the community, and values consumers and providing sound consumer advice over making money or else they wouldn't dare just cold-turkey kill production like that. This will seriously hurt their position in the YouTube algorithm.

 

But I do understand some people's concerts that things may not actually end up changing in the end and to that all I can say is you gotta give them a chance. Dont go assuming things will be the same or worse when they haven't even had a chance yet.

 

Lets face it - we all know what happened here, its not rocket science - LMG spiraled out of control. They grew too large for the vision of one quirky man to keep ahold of, and videos were being pumped out so quickly because LMG felt that they had the power to do so as such a big company, completely unaware of just how bad it was going.

 

How much do you wanna bet right now that the truth behind the Billet Labs block is literally someone was told the wrong thing, the block was sold, and now they are scared they will loose their job if they speak up? How many times have we seen employees at our own jobs f*** up and even though they feel genuinely bad about it, they have no choice but to cover it up as otherwise they could loose their job? I know Ive seen it several times, and I wouldn't rat my co-worker out and risk their livelihood just to be a brown-noser.

 

@LinusTech Look man if there is anything you need to do do right now its this: Firstly stop deflecting, we are fully aware of whats going on so just don't even bother. But most importantly take this time to slow down video production. I know this is an expensive ass company and you need more videos to turn a profit, I get it. But 5 a day is simply way too much, that means ur uploading a new video every 5 hours, thats completely insane and you know it.

 

You already know its the main reason why all of this happened. You guys fell head first into running a big company and took off like an F-15 with full afterburner and you guys ended up eating s***. It should be quite obvious what needs to be done. My suggestion? 3 Videos per day maximum, and slow it to 2 or even sometimes 1 when necessary. It would still net you guys a massive 15-ish videos per week average (if you don't work weekends) which I still think is probably the most for any creator that isn't just filling up their channel with fluff.

 

Theres no way in hell you guys can't profit with 15 videos per week, there is just no way you need more than that.

 

How much do you wanna bet that if LMG simply heeded this above^ advice, that almost every single issue would be almost completely resolved very quickly. What was the LMG staff's #1 complaint in their personal interviews? "I wish we had more time for our projects." I mean, how much clearer do you need it to be? The answer is staring you right in the face so for the sake of LMG as a whole I hope you listen to it.

[mMontana]

I can't see a screenshot of that in recent 40 pages.

My personal opinion is to keep it pinned.

[Godiwa]

10 minutes ago, 1982 Original said:

 

Both of you are only here to troll. Your responses mean very little. 

sorry can't take your non-comment serious, only troll here is you... apparently you didn't read what I wrote...

[EchoBravo498]

2 minutes ago, Aiken Drum said:

See, I don't think Linus is taking this as a humbling experience. I think Linus is reluctantly cowed by the storm of bad feedback from both the audience and the other players on the stage, but at the end he is still being very obviously defensive.

 

Being defensive literally means to defend, to act like the victim and to deflect attacks and try to strengthen one's position. Being defensive is NEVER the right way to respond if you know you're in the wrong.

If you are correct then our only hope is that the leadership team around him move on in spite of rather than with Linus.

 

I've seen the "we are growing fast" excuse for so many years, have to admit I'm very tired of that one! It's still early, we shall see what the WAN show brings us. Perhaps a more humbled Linus will emerge.

[stflames01]

2 minutes ago, 1982 Original said:

They are direct competitors in both their merch store and LTT to push into the in-depth testing with their lab. 
 

Those highest viewed videos are take-down videos. They are warranted. As I said, Steve’s criticisms weren’t lies in this video either, they were accurate. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t stand to personally gain from an LTT downfall. He does. 

People are making this out to be like a huge corporation against poor o Steve who is just doing God work. It's really not. But no matter what LMG says or does, it would look like they are punching down so I'm glad they won't be saying anything anymore and instead just taking the nuggets of advice out of the things Steve said and be even better than they are now.

[Pemalite]

7 hours ago, Albal_156 said:

Is the community at fault? If the communitys at fault then its on people to notice stuff better. If its on him then yeah its on him and hes just dunked on his own community/fans.

 

He shouldn't have said that at all though. Just focus on entertainment and don't put LTT Labs in the spotlight until its ready imo.

The community -is- noticing.

This thread exploding being the latest example, Youtube being a comedy fun day ripping Linus a new one.

You don't get to:
1) Blame other Youtube outlets.
2) Falsify data.
3) Give incorrect data.
4) Auction off someone elses property.

And think all is okay while blaming the community.

[Rex Hite]

Maybe 'slip-shod' and 'ad-hoc' should be an acceptable standard for YouTube consumer product reviews. Nothing of importance is being done and no product of importance is being examined by the reviewer or sought by the audience.Perhaps a disclaimer before each video along the lines of; "these are toys and their accessories...we're looking at toys with clicky buttons that make cartoons move on a screen. If you need advice on doing productive work, look elsewhere because that's not what we do unless to show how jank we are..."

 

After a disclaimer like that, you're golden.

 

 

 

 

[Vexenar]

4 minutes ago, Aiken Drum said:

See, I don't think Linus is taking this as a humbling experience. I think Linus is reluctantly cowed by the storm of bad feedback from both the audience and the other players on the stage, but at the end he is still being very obviously defensive.

 

Being defensive literally means to defend, to act like the victim and to deflect attacks and try to strengthen one's position. Being defensive is NEVER the right way to respond if you know you're in the wrong.

This is my take on the video response as well. 
As we're used by now Linus his initial reply was to deflect blame, take the criticism on the video personally and went as far during the WAN show to say that he did not feel like he had to apologize for not testing the prototype properly. 

Furthermore after Steve's video went live he went full deflection mode and dug his heels in the sand and still kept deflecting the key issues, and after two days of community backlash and other hardware/game channels reporting on it we see some form of apology. 

It's disingenious. 
 

[Shlouski]