Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Amaninacity]

7 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

A buddy of mine identified early on that LMG is a big company pretending to be a little one, maybe that's why the "jokey jokes" in the apology hit some people in the wrong place. LMG is not a scrappy underdog anymore, so it's harder to side with them when they pretend to be.

LTT is a content creator, and has a brand built on making those exact jokes. Honestly, the “Segue to our sponsor” jokes made me laugh. As did Yvonne shitting on dBrand. I’d say the six nines joke was a bad move, but I think it went up before the allegations of harassment came out.

Those tweets they need to address now. The toxic pace is one thing. The allegations that even minor sexual harassment was laughed off are another one entirely. And the hammer of god should be brought down on anyone they can prove acted in that manner.

[IkeaGnome]

11 hours ago, Drazil100 said:

Please read this. 

They wanted it back until it was gone. They wanted it back until waiting for it would cost them more than it would to remake it. 
 

Think of it this way. Your car gets stolen. Insurance buys you a new one to replace the stolen car. Do you want your old car back or do you say you don’t want the old car back but want the memories in that car back?

[AbsoluteWoo]

The more I watch of GN's video, the more I spot Steve's incredible hypocrisy. He's complaining saying LMG don't give companies the chance to respond and leave videos up that have errors in them, all the while he's posted a hit piece which could easily have been private which contains a lot of out-of-context quotes, incorrect/inflated stats and wildly inaccurate assumptions.

[McGherkin]

6 minutes ago, EchoBravo498 said:

Does anyone actually know if they lost floatplane subscribers over this? I saw someone posting this in the chat but didn't know if they were just trolling or not.

https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-2d&to=now

[VisibleXela]

6 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

I think it went up before the allegations of harassment came out.

It did not, but it was an incredibly tight turnaround. Hours. Someone at LTT absolutely should have caught it and pulled the video before it went live, but I also understand why the video didn't address the claims.

 

6 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

LTT is a content creator, and has a brand built on making those exact jokes.

Yeah, I understand that, but a lot of people are bothered by them in this specific instance and I'm trying to explore why. Shit is getting really real right now, we've gone from "you goofed some graphs" to "allegations of a hostile work environment" with everything in-between those two stops, and regardless of where this video was posted in that spectrum it's not a great look to be making goofs about it. Especially if Linus & Co. want us to believe they're taking this shit seriously.

[Karon]

I want to point out that Linus in his segment does not apologize for lying and gas lighting us with his post. He acknowledged that he made things worse, but doesn't apologize. Guess he can't look back and has to move forward.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, McGherkin said:

https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-2d&to=now

It started at over 41k, so about 4000 subs lost and it's still going.

[UTiii]

5 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

The more I watch of GN's video, the more I spot Steve's incredible hypocrisy. He's complaining saying LMG don't give companies the chance to respond and leave videos up that have errors in them, all the while he's posted a hit piece which could easily have been private which contains a lot of out-of-context quotes, incorrect/inflated stats and wildly inaccurate assumptions.

Indeed it was a hit piece. I hope Steve is happy with his pound of flesh.

 

anyhow good response from LTT.

[SimonShipperd]

3 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Not just the LTT subreddit, the targeting of a younger audience is done with videos as well, the bright flashy thumbnails, making ridiculous things like a game controller out of gold.

I'm sure his fans like that he runs on his personal feelings, but from this thread and the apology video thread, people are tired of Linus taking criticism and told to better as a personal offense. Linus needs to separate his feeling from how he runs a business.

I think you misunderstood me. I meant that the subreddit was actually bringing Linus' kids into the conversation, and that's one step beyond. The flashy thumbnails, that's something that every youtuber does. Take a look at GN's thumbnails, same story there. Cause they still have to play the game in order to attract viewers. I don't see anything in the video stating that he took it as a personal offense when pointed out to bad graphs. This is something he even addressed himself last WAN show.

But when people start calling you a thief, yeah how else can you take that besides a personal offense?

 

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Because it seem more of a "whoops we got caught but hey buy our mech" sort of video.

GN picked points that have been a problem with LMG videos for a while now, that doesn't take a ton fo planning to do.

Also not making a video for a week doesn't mean much IMO, I'll belive their claims if they make changes to improve. But I'm sure the fans that expect a daily video would be disappointment.

When you have such a complicated pipeline to produce video's, you cant expect change to happen in the span of 24 hours. They even hired somebody whose sole job is to look over the graphs and make sure the info is correct. I mean, how many other channels have a dedicated graphs guy/girl?

 

7 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Linus is wearing a LTX shirt in the video, thats still plugging their merch, although thats not nearly as bad as doing a LTT store plug in the video.

Oh come on now, now you're just splitting hairs. If you want to be even more precise, he's wearing merch that people can't even buy since it was LTX exclusive. It's a known fact that Linus dresses like a cartoon character and only has 1 kind of pants and LTT merch. I don't see any difference with Steve wearing his merch during his video?

 

9 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It takes away from the message that it seems like LMG cares more about money than they do offering a genuine apology.

Why should both be mutually exclusive? As if you can't be genuinely sorry just because there are some links below the video? I can understand why people would think that, but I honestly don't see the issue here.

 

12 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It's clearly a sexual joke, not very appropriate for what should be a serious video.

I know why they did it though, because his fans probably can't sit through a video without getting a few jokes.

It's a serious video, but it's still an LTT video. It hem showing that they can still be themselves, it doesn't take anything away from the actual message of the video and the steps that are going to be taken. I thought that that was all that really counted for the people? That they would take action, but apparently that's not the case.

 

14 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

People aren't satisfied because again it seems like they didn't really want apologize, the merch store plug and jokes of sponsorships only made it worse. Saying that people want LMG shut down is a kneejerk reaction to valid critisms people have here

I used to enjoy LTT videos but I haven't been interested in most videos they make do the quantity over quality, I want them to do better as it would help the community overall if LMG can product accurate videos.

Did you miss the part where Yvonne was basically on the brink of crying? Did you miss Colton's apology and explanation regarding the Billet incident? And like I said, each department head outlining the steps they are planning to take. Even making systems open source. Do people actually know what they want themselves? If it would have been a pure apology and nothing else video, there would be complaints that there was nothing stated on how they will address the issues going onward.

 

Like I said, I can see why some parts of the video might rub people the wrong way. But I also believe that some people are just trying to find flaw just for the sake of flaw.

[Potato_Waffles]

Hey LTT,

 

It is sad to see so much bad be brought to light all of a sudden. I am no expert in video making, youtube management or company leading, but from what I've seen and experienced in different fields, prioritising quantity over quality usually leads to a decrease in trust and sattisfaction, which leads to decrease in value and desirability.

It is well known to everyone that LTT is build upon the "jank" and quirkiness of the content, but serious mistakes about the representation of products slipping by QC is not something to be brushed aside as "jank". LTT is not anymore a small company lead by two overworked people, you are a big team with milions of consumer eyes on you. You all are providing vital infomation to consumers, not just entertainment. And by making mistakes in the performance and representation of products, you are loosing the trust of the comunity and the viewers. And without those, no matter how many videos get pushed out in a week, their value will be very low.

 

If the focus of LMG is to be more of a goofy clown show showing off cool tech to entertain people, it will be best to keep reviews and oppinions out of the videos then. If however it is to be a serious tech review channel, rushing content for the sake of having content is not ideal. Especially when we talk about comparing extra hours to make something work as specified and as janked together by Linus. Sometimes extra production cost saves costs in the long run.

 

I am not sure if this overproduction and rushing is because of greed for money or serious financial problems or just mismanagement, but it will start to hurt soon or later. Either people not viewing the content out of fear it will be wrong, or because of staff burnout.

 

There are many more fishy things going on (like the suspiciously positive review of the garbage RTX 4060 or positive coments on bad companies like ASUS), but that is a whole nother can of worms for another time.

 

Wishing a nice everning/day,

Potato_Waffles

[Karon]

4 minutes ago, UTiii said:

Indeed it was a hit piece. I hope Steve is happy with his pound of flesh.

 

anyhow good response from LTT.

Thanks to Steve's "hit piece" there will be massive changes to the internal affairs at LMG and a potential victim of sexual and verbal abuse among other things found the strength/opportunity to finally call them out. 

 

If you hate this, please link to your posts under secret shopper videos. Because that's exactly the same fucking thing. 

[Amaninacity]

5 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

It did not, but it was an incredibly tight turnaround. Hours. Someone at LTT absolutely should have caught it and pulled the video before it went live, but I also understand why the video didn't address the claims.

 

Yeah, I understand that, but a lot of people are bothered by them in this specific instance and I'm trying to explore why. Shit is getting really real right now, we've gone from "you goofed some graphs" to "allegations of a hostile work environment" with everything in-between those two stops, and regardless of where this video was posted in that spectrum it's not a great look to be making goofs about it. Especially if Linus & Co. want us to believe they're taking this shit seriously.

I dunno. They’re making goofs about the regular running jokes in their videos, not about the situation. Again, the 69 joke was definitely out of place. The other stuff was just them presenting the apology in their style. I was fine with it, but I guess I can see why it might upset some people.

[AbsoluteWoo]

Regarding the Pwnage mouse issues. Steve completely misses the mark here. Short Circuit is an unboxing channel, they are not doing a deep dive into the product, so something easy to miss (thus purchasers would also miss) should absolutely be reflected in the impressions of the product. He's really clutching at straws here.

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, bxxr said:

It started at over 41k, so about 4000 subs lost and it's still going.

It’s actually unfortunate that Luke and his team are probably going to bear the brunt of the issues, in basically all of the supposed/verified events, Luke and his team have been forthcoming and essentially not the focus of the issue. Aside from maybe changing some inventory software parameters, there’s not a whole lot the Floatplane/dev team can be included in these events. 

[TexZeTech]

2 minutes ago, UTiii said:

Indeed it was a hit piece. I hope Steve is happy with his pound of flesh.

 

anyhow good response from LTT.

This is a bad take, I do not believe this was Steve's intent and I doubly think he wouldn't be happy about it. The general view of Steve (what I hear effectively in his video) is "Can you just do better please?"

[Amaninacity]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Regarding the Pwnage mouse issues. Steve completely misses the mark here. Short Circuit is an unboxing channel, they are not doing a deep dive into the product, so something easy to miss (thus purchasers would also miss) should absolutely be reflected in the impressions of the product. He's really clutching at straws here.

I’ve been pretty critical of Steve’s whole thing, but I think he’s on the money about the short circuit thing. If it’s not a review, you should not be making recommendations about whether someone should buy the product. If you are making a recommendation, it’s a review whether you like it or not.

[RLP]

Seems like a lot of people are questioning GN a lot, and while its completely fair to do so, I would point out that while a source of information can be flawed, it doesn't specifically make the conduct OK.

 

 

[atxcyclist]

1 minute ago, TexZeTech said:

This is a bad take, I do not believe this was Steve's intent and I doubly think he wouldn't be happy about it. The general view of Steve (what I hear effectively in his video) is "Can you just do better please?"

Making an hour’s worth of content, flaming another YouTuber, and disregard your own (Steve’s) process of contacting companies he does a video like this on, does not display a ‘just do better’ mentality. I won’t speculate why Steve basically ignored his own process and refused to contact LMG, he’s visibly perturbed when he explains about not being required to, but I do have some ideas about it.

 

Steve would have made contact if he wanted to tell LMG to ‘do better’, his motives here are something else.

[Raze1990]

@LinusTech

After the points GN brought up i had hoped for a good response, your earlier forum post rubbed me the wrong way a bit and was a disappointment. im glad LMG chose to release a vid addressing the issues and taking valid feedback from the community and other content creators to heart and will strive to improve. from my part all is forgiven and no trust is lost. been a loyal viewer since the early days and will continue to be one in the future. i understand we are all humans with emotions and humans make mistakes. i feel a bit bad for you with some of the community being overly harsh with you, but hey thats just the internet i guess, in the end calmer minds will prevail. again kudos for the vid and best of luck to LMG with the improvements. we love you linus and want to see you continue to succeed hope you feel better soon!

[AbsoluteWoo]

Just now, Amaninacity said:

I’ve been pretty critical of Steve’s whole thing, but I think he’s on the money about the short circuit thing. If it’s not a review, you should not be making recommendations about whether someone should buy the product. If you are making a recommendation, it’s a review whether you like it or not.

But based on the fact the film is easy to miss and a lot of potential buyers could also miss the film, they are right to recommend against the product. You can only blame Pwnage for this as it is their product.

 

I'll reiterate what I said in another comment, if people are interested in a product and 1 video completely puts them off and they refuse to do other research into product, that is their issue.

[Karon]

16 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

he’s visibly perturbed when he explains about not being required to, but I do have some ideas about it.

Maybe because linus' response was so batshit insane that Steve was flabbergasted?

[DeatheTech]

1 hour ago, Amaninacity said:

The performance of the motherboard is not being tested. The CPU manufacturer is not claiming that their CPU will improve the performance on the motherboard. Also, there are good reasons you might be forced to use such a board when performing an embargoed review (such as the boards not being commercially available, or requiring unreleased bios updates).

The card performance isn't being tested on a cooler review either. The cooler is. You literally have no idea what you are talking about at this point.

[DayJBDay]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:25 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.

lets be honest. it doesnt matter if you sold or auctioned the piece for charity - at the end of the day IT WAS STILL SOLD when you told the people they were sending it back. And the rest of this essay does nothing but seem like an excuse. Yes, we know no one is perfect, but to consistently make mistakes and NOT draw them back or re make the vidoes, or to just cut the "wrong" segment out and leave the video as is because you dont want to lose views is them being lazy. Laziness is not an excuse.
 

Being wrong in a test and just saying "meh, this wouldnt have impacted my conclusion" also isnt an excuse. Do. your. damn. job. At the end of the day, a review of a product is for US as the consumer to decide, based on FACTUAL information. IF you do stuff wrong or leave stuff out, thats not honest. SHOW US how its not viable instead of making mistakes and then blaming it on the product.  

 

At the end of the day, its not GN's or our job to do any "due diligence" and for Linus to even say that is hypocritical. If you did your due diligence on your videos, we wouldnt have multiple examples of these mistakes happening. We shouldnt have to get your side of the story on WHY or HOW you messed up.... you messed up and didnt fix it. Period. Welcome to life on the internet.

[Amaninacity]

15 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

The more I watch of GN's video, the more I spot Steve's incredible hypocrisy. He's complaining saying LMG don't give companies the chance to respond and leave videos up that have errors in them, all the while he's posted a hit piece which could easily have been private which contains a lot of out-of-context quotes, incorrect/inflated stats and wildly inaccurate assumptions.

I don’t take issue with him doing this in public. But his failure to request comment or provide a compelling explanation for why he couldn’t was pretty shitty. He’s previously been very hard line on getting comment, and he conspicuously avoid it here. While there are circumstances where journalistic ethics don’t require you to get comment, they do still require you to acknowledge and explain why you felt you couldn’t. Especially when breaking non-public allegations. 
 

his criticism of Linus’ belief that this should all be handled in private was on point. But Linus’ criticism that he didn’t follow standard practice is valid. It would not be if Steve said “I didn’t reach out for comment because I feared x, y, or z.” Or “Nobody responded.” He didn’t do that, and it was shitty.

[VisibleXela]

21 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

They wanted it back until waiting for it would cost them more than it would to remake it.

Yes. This is fair and reasonable.

 

21 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

Think of it this way. Your car gets stolen. Insurance buys you a new one to replace the stolen car. Do you want your old car back or do you say you don’t want the old car back but want the memories in that car back?

Let's make this more accurate to the situation.

 

I borrowed your car, promising to give it back by the end of the month. 2 months go by and I won't even answer your calls. I come to you and admit that I don't have your car anymore but I'm willing to give it back to you or pay you back the full value of it, somewhere around $2000 - not chump change to your wallet necessarily, but it was an old beater of a thing so it's probably not worth much (let's be real, the money LMG paid to Billet is chump change in terms of overall revenue of even a small business, the payment is more symbolic than anything).

 

After the whole shitfit between us, you have no idea where the car has been or what I've done with it. You may have to give it a nice wash, you may have to get the whole thing detailed. It might need repairs. Did I bother to change the oil? Are the tires in good condition? Does it even have the gas to make it back home? Did I use it as a bathroom? Meanwhile, your day job is Doordash, so you couldn't exactly sit around waiting for it and are now 2 weeks into a fresh new car loan. Having a second car wouldn't do you much good - especially if you don't know the state of the first one. I guess you could probably still call your new car loan off by now, but god knows how that conversation would go or, given how long it's taken me to even contact you, when I'm even going to give the car back as promised. It'd be nice to have it back for sentimental reasons, but it's not really important to you or your business.

 

In that situation I sure as hell would take the money.