Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[AbsoluteWoo]

2 minutes ago, plane_ said:

So let me ask, is this the "independent tech journalism" they strived for? To act like every other corporation and ignore potential abuse in their workplace? 

 

I do have real world experience, and yes, I still expect them to. There is no justification for not acknowledging it. If consulting with lawyers and interal members, even settling and contacting Madison privately is necessary, so be it. But allow there to be an acknowledgement of "Our processes were reviewed, and we found-". 

 

You can try and belittle me by saying "Muh, you clearly have absolutely zero real world experience..." but all I see when you type garbage like this is "I must protect this corporation!!!" as the 400lb+ reddit junkie leaps to protect their oh so pure and victimized million dollar corporation.

Grow up mate. Seriously.

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, Amaninacity said:

This is the least toxic response I have received to my nuanced views of what has happened here that I have received. Good reply!

IMO the ideal response is this:

WAN show on Friday: "We are dealing with the Madison situation internally, but will make no public comment at this time because Linus has done enough damage already and these are serious allegations with legal consequenses"

A few weeks (months if there's legal action?) down the line, when the situation is stable, LMG needs to release a statement with their version of events, ideally demonstrating proof (there *must* be emails or teams messages generated from the number of complaints Madison made, even if many agreements were verbal -- these must be found and shown to the public if LMG is to maintain credibility). Whatever mismanagement happened, LMG needs to take full accountability for. If heads need to roll, so be it. Zero-tolerance means zero-tolerance. Even if it means losing multiple otherwise very talented writers/editors/etc., it's necessary for LMG to maintain integirty.

[Wintyr]

1 minute ago, throwawayManMode said:

Now that the apology video is out, all the Linus defenders are out today I see.

just let them know floatplan is down 5k subs at a min lose of aprox 300k revenue a year I assume some other sources of monitization will be hit as well 

[plane_]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Grow up mate. Seriously.

There's a lot of comments and threads left, friend. Gotta get to shillin'!

 

[AbsoluteWoo]

1 minute ago, plane_ said:

There's a lot of comments and threads left, friend. Gotta get to shillin'!

 

I don't even know what you're getting at here, but feel free to stalk my profile as much as you like.

 

If you had scrolled a little further you'd have found me posting my legitimate issues I have with the channel, but that doesn't suit your agenda does it?

[Mbmm]

29 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

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.

Well, if I recall correctly Steve doesn't always reach out for comment especially when information just hits. Second when people create publications / news it does not prevent people from reporting on what has happened, and then proceed to seek out further comment and information.

 

Someone has said this before but if you go to a store and have a less than stellar experience do you immediately ask to speak their manager or do you write a review about it? What if this is a repeat time of a less than stellar experience? Do you still ask for the same manager who potentially apologized earlier? LTT has essentially established a history of bungling something up, refusing to apologize, doubling down, "realizing they are wrong", and making an apology about it later. This doesn't even account to the hypocritical nature regarding adblocks/pirating. Steve is beyond perfect, but I will say just like Coffeezilla he does shed light on people doing wrong and wants them to correct the behavior.

 

I thinking reaching out to LTT in this instance would have just swept everything under the rug and they would have learned nothing. Heck, there isn't even proof that they learned anything even after this. I'd almost bet good money they have another mass issue so long as Linus refuses to go through a PR person.

[Mongobit]

This was typed up last night but i was tired and wanted to give it another once over after i had gotten some sleep before posting it. i wake up today and find a new LMG video that seems to go along with what i was thinking last night. i am glad that it appears Linus recognized the issue and seems to be turning in the right direction and avoided his Noah or Stocton moment(se below). How they execute on the plan laid out in the Where do we go from here video is yet to be determined.

 

Below is what I had typed up last night apart from some typos and finishing a few thoughts left hanging when my sleep addled brain had a "SQUIRREEL!" moment on something else. yes its fairly pointless to post after the new LMG vid went live but i just want to air my thoughts. i honestly was not expecting any updates to the situation from LMG till WAN show even though Linus said it would not be on there. there is no way this would not have come up and if it didn't it likely would have had more of the audience heading for the exits:

 

Having thought this over the last few days I will say this.

 

The rushed nature of the videos is a problem (Employees are on record that this is so). An employee who a few months back complained that they wished they were not so rushed to get content out the door then face-plants in reviewing a product is in fact a face-plant for LMG as a whole. The number of inaccuracies in the videos and the lack luster corrections is a major problem in the manufacturing world we would call those process indicators (indicating an underlying problem that needs to be addressed before it gets worse and affects the quality of the resulting product). The incompetent testing of the Billet Labs cooler is a MAJOR problem. The auctioning of said cooler and the resulting likely loss of access to new tech hardware specifically pre-production review samples is possibly a fatal problem for LMG as a whole.  Who is going to trust them with prototypes now? 

 

Linus's response wall of text to these legitimate issues currently is giving me Noah Katz and or Stockton Rush vibes. Obviously not good. Can LMG be pulled back from the pit of irrelevance it seems to be target locked on? I think so but that is going to require MAJOR work.

 

LMG needs to realize the honeymoon from the Hackening is over. These precipitous drop in accuracy and snobbish attitude expressed in the responses so far have burned up massive amounts of good will among your audience and they are starting to go elsewhere. i myself am wondering if i will be renewing my annual Floatplane membership this year

  

When Labs was first announced it was framed as getting back to basics and really putting tech products through their paces and give an honest and competent assessment of consumer goods. Getting back to the in depth independent testing and validation that has slowly disappears from the consumer electronics market over the last decade and a half. with realistic objective data comparing consumer hardware in order to help inform the public about what claims made by OEM's marketing campaigns are legit and what are complete hyped up garbage. Applying scientific rigor to these tests so others if they so choose can replicate the test conditions and get within a reasonable margin of error (for unaccountable test condition variances) was the goal I got from the original labs video at the first labs facility.  The fact that they needed to up size the building they were going to do it in once they started trying to lay things out should have been an indication to them that they had dramatically underestimated the scope of the undertaking. It is becoming clear that the testing methodology being used, the lack of time to properly test and validate data and rundown outliers and root cause them, the lack of post shoot feedback and re-shoot or even voice-over to correct what should be the very few errors that will slip through even the most stringent testing. 

 

Some thought I have on how to go about this.

• LMG needs to do a quality shutdown for 1-2 weeks. Don't shoot any vids requiring testing or deep review (yes I know that severely limits their options but it is needed). Maybe make the only vids those weeks be WAN, Techlinked and Gamelinked. Surface level stuff with easily validated information while you work out the kinks in your analysis methods. Show details of  what was done, what problems you have found and what mitigations or process changes are being implemented or that you are exploring what to do in cases you have not found a path forward on said problem. solicit feedback from the community. you have over 100 people on staff. you have several million that watch you and can point out blind spots they see in your coverage or provide an idea or perspective that you have not explored. I myself have over 20 years experience in manufacturing,testing, and troubleshooting electronics from system down to component level. it is rare that i see a soldering iron picked up in a vid without rolling my eyes.
• Labs is not ready for prime-time yet it is still in its infancy as for as process and procedures needs at least a few more months of testing, trialing, process development and validation before anything coming out of there can be considered valid and reliable. Take the time needed to do a thorough review and update on policies, plans, procedures, methodology, capability, quality control, technical data review and validation.  Be able to point to where every data-point or spec displayed or called out in the video came from.
• Identify and start to build out a dedicated off camera Quality control team. This team will dig deeper into the OEM claims and or testing data from other sources. they will review all data used or generated by Labs and analyze it to spot errors like the 300% performance boost from 1 GPU Gen to Another that featured prominently in the GN and Chris Titus Tech vid. The current system is obviously not working anymore.
• i seem to remember something from the labs announcement vid about making all data publicly available. that needs to happen NOW! treat it as a scientific investigation. list the product, list the claims being investigated, list the testing methodology including tools used and the raw data resulting from that testing heck even through in the cal dates on the calibrated equipment used, the data analysis methodology used to draw conclusions from that data.

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, Mongobit said:

This was typed up last night but i was tired and wanted to give it another once over after i had gotten some sleep before posting it. i wake up today and find a new LMG video that seems to go along with what i was thinking last night. i am glad that it appears Linus recognized the issue and seems to be turning in the right direction and avoided his Noah or Stocton moment(se below). How they execute on the plan laid out in the Where do we go from here video is yet to be determined.

 

~snip

Curious: What do you think of Madison's experience at LMG? Does this change your prespective?

[Amaninacity]

2 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

IMO the ideal response is this:

WAN show on Friday: "We are dealing with the Madison situation internally, but will make no public comment at this time because Linus has done enough damage already and these are serious allegations with legal consequenses"

A few weeks (months if there's legal action?) down the line, when the situation is stable, LMG needs to release a statement with their version of events, ideally demonstrating proof (there *must* be emails or teams messages generated from the number of complaints Madison made, even if many agreements were verbal -- these must be found and shown to the public if LMG is to maintain credibility). Whatever mismanagement happened, LMG needs to take full accountability for. If heads need to roll, so be it. Zero-tolerance means zero-tolerance. Even if it means losing multiple otherwise very talented writers/editors/etc., it's necessary for LMG to maintain integirty.

Agreed. They need to publicly acknowledge that the accusations were made and promise to provide more information if and when they are legally able (for instance, they may end up bound by their settlement to not discuss details if there is something that might embarrass Madison. Which I don’t mean to suggest there is, or that it would make whatever abuse she suffered ok. It’s just a foreseeable reason they may not be allowed to comment.)

 

But they absolutely cannot apologize to her if there is any possibility of future legal action, because an apology can be used as an admission. If the allegations are not totally accurate, they could lose a legal case even though they didn’t do what they were accused of. It sucks, but if they find they fucked up they should settle and apologize and fire the bad actors without delay.

[AbsoluteWoo]

1 minute ago, Mbmm said:

Well, if I recall correctly Steve doesn't always reach out for comment especially when information just hits. Second when people create publications / news it does not prevent people from reporting on what has happened, and then proceed to seek out further comment and information.

 

Someone has said this before but if you go to a store and have a less than stellar experience do you immediately ask to speak their manager or do you write a review about it? What if this is a repeat time of a less than stellar experience? Do you still ask for the same manager who potentially apologized earlier? LTT has essentially established a history of bungling something up, refusing to apologize, doubling down, "realizing they are wrong", and making an apology about it later. This doesn't even account to the hypocritical nature regarding adblocks/pirating. Steve is beyond perfect, but I will say just like Coffeezilla he does shed light on people doing wrong and wants them to correct the behavior.

 

I thinking reaching out to LTT in this instance would have just swept everything under the rug and they would have learned nothing. Heck, there isn't even proof that they learned anything even after this. I'd almost bet good money they have another mass issue so long as Linus refuses to go through a PR person.

Leaving a review of a purchase doesn't make you a journalist though does it?

 

LMG has well documented screw ups and Linus constantly makes himself seem like an out of touch cretin, but tbf he usually comes out with his hands up.

 

Steve here is acting like a god of all YouTube and hasn't bothered to follow any proper journalistic practises the 1 time he does a deep dive into a competitor. He even acknowledges himself that he didn't want to get any response from LMG as that would undermine his findings.

[TexZeTech]

27 minutes ago, TheSilverSpade said:

I really wished Linus talked more on his childish and immature response. He clearly wasn’t sorry.

it has been what 48hrs? since GN posted that video, the internet has literally been screaming at Linus. I think he is in the stage of "I know I fucked up" and this weekend will smack him hard with emotions. We know Linus is ADHD it takes time for him to process the everything (I say this because I know how I function)

As for you wanting him to talk more about him being childish and immature frankly, I think no matter what he said someone is going to find fault with anything he said in that video. I want to see action and fewer words That will be the best apology.

[emcue]

Just posting hundreds of pages in... I really don't see the hooplah's everyone's getting. The only real issue is the auctioning of the Billet labs block. I'm totally with the "It's a waste to retest with a 3090" stuff -- the product had  no niche, with its price and whatnot, no matter the actual performance.

 

But I am glad to see the company taking some time to have a "let's regroup" vacation, so what's good there. I just don't get any of the harsh community backlash... I really don't.

[WallacEngineering]

11 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

I disagree with you, and I am not the only one that disagrees with you either. I’m simply reminding people of what Steve himself claimed were his standards in these instances, and pointing-out that he changed his process for this video.

 

Except that Steve has reached out several times over the years with no success and that others have tried to reach out several times recently over this very subject.

 

...Guess you missed that part...

[Godiwa]

1 hour ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

The BilletLabs stuff is bad, but big mistakes happen and anyone who thinks LMG did it on purpose are moronic.

 

I believe it was pure accident that "someone" saw that in their eyes "piece of junk" and thought he lets sell this for the charity... that I can accept...

I can't accept that they LOST the 3090 Ti that came with the cooler
I can't accept that they didn't send it back promptly
I can't accept that they after promising to send it back TWICE still hadn't done so
I can't accept that they say "it will be send off sometime next week" after already been promised TWICE to be sent off... and then it gets misplaced so someone snatches it up for auction
I can't accept that they don't do a proper review on the real card they were even provided...

there where so many "wtf is going on here" problems... it wasn't just a minor mistake but massive incompetence in a massive string of events...

[QuantumSingularity]

I just watched the latest video from the LTT team and Luke and for the most part it's addressed the right way. Admitting "Yes. we fucked up, we are sorry. We will own it and work hard to correct it" is the right tone in that situation. Looks like the everyone acknowledges the mistakes that have been made here aren't isolated to a single person or team or department. They are company-wise. 

 

As for Linus's responses - i am actually used to his rushed emotional responses and i knew that once he steps back, takes a look at the broader picture, he will see that he has dug up even a more massive hole and was actually wrong to react so fast and emotional. It's not the first time. There should be someone there who will physically prevent him from speaking/writing/answering too soon, before thinking over everything and taking a look at the situation from all the angles. I would've applied for that job free of charge, unfortunately i am over 9000km away.

[djenson]

37 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

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).

 

 

Yes, Lets make it more accurate

You give me a new "prototype" supercar, with nothing other than please make a review. I put 87 octane fuel in instead of 93 and make a review criticizing its value and not recommending it. Suddenly, you want the car back. I agree to give you the car back, but my bad processes make this a delayed fashion. I then realize than one of my employees has sold the vehicle. I explain this to you and offer to give you money compensation. I then manage to get this rare and one of a kind supercar back, but you still want the monetary value, even though you claim that not having it has caused your production like to "stall" even though you were happy to let me keep it earlier. 

Billet labs story is inconsistent at best, and a bit dodgy at worse. LTT fucked up, but it was not with malice. It's that the head wasn't talking to the tail.

[RadiatingLight]

3 minutes ago, emcue said:

Just posting hundreds of pages in... I really don't see the hooplah's everyone's getting. The only real issue is the auctioning of the Billet labs block. I'm totally with the "It's a waste to retest with a 3090" stuff -- the product had  no niche, with its price and whatnot, no matter the actual performance.

 

But I am glad to see the company taking some time to have a "let's regroup" vacation, so what's good there. I just don't get any of the harsh community backlash... I really don't.

Backlash is intensified by:

1. Linus' original response, which presented a misleading-at-best version of the timeline of when communications happened between Billet and LMG.

2. The apology video being incredibly tone-deaf

3. (most important for me) Madison's experience as an employee of LMG, which seems to indicate much deeper problems.

[NullValid]

17 minutes ago, jordank195 said:

Can't help but notice GN has gained >60K subscribers after posting that video. https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/gamers_nexus/monthly (notice how he normally goes up by 10-20k a month)

 

Sure he disabled monetization, but you can't deny any there are any ulterior motives here...

He did monetise this though to be clear as well. 
 

Not on the original video mind, but in his secondary video on it which still has a higher than average view count. 

[AbsoluteWoo]

2 minutes ago, Godiwa said:

I believe it was pure accident that "someone" saw that in their eyes "piece of junk" and thought he lets sell this for the charity... that I can accept...

I can't accept that they LOST the 3090 Ti that came with the cooler
I can't accept that they didn't send it back promptly
I can't accept that they after promising to send it back TWICE still hadn't done so
I can't accept that they say "it will be send off sometime next week" after already been promised TWICE to be sent off... and then it gets misplaced so someone snatches it up for auction
I can't accept that they don't do a proper review on the real card they were even provided...

there where so many "wtf is going on here" problems... it wasn't just a minor mistake but massive incompetence in a massive string of events...

Yeah it was a massive string of incompetence. Have you never worked for/had experiences with a medium+ sized company? Happens all the time everywhere. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Meta, Netflix, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, etc. They will have massive monumental screw-ups all the time.

[Cl0udK1ller]

3 minutes ago, emcue said:

Just posting hundreds of pages in... I really don't see the hooplah's everyone's getting. The only real issue is the auctioning of the Billet labs block. I'm totally with the "It's a waste to retest with a 3090" stuff -- the product had  no niche, with its price and whatnot, no matter the actual performance.

 

But I am glad to see the company taking some time to have a "let's regroup" vacation, so what's good there. I just don't get any of the harsh community backlash... I really don't.

Explain to me why it doesn't have a niche.  I am really curious about what you have to say.   $800 is a lot but I would easily spend that much money on a heatsink and i know there others that would as well.  

[ZombieMan762]

20 minutes ago, jordank195 said:

Can't help but notice GN has gained >60K subscribers after posting that video. https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/gamers_nexus/monthly (notice how he normally goes up by 10-20k a month)

 

Sure he disabled monetization, but you can't deny any there are any ulterior motives here...

 

Steve can't control if someone subscribes to his channel and of course that video is going to get him attention.

 

He was also the first person to call Linus and get his attention when the LMG channels got hacked. I really don't think his intent was hurt Linus in a personal way.

 

The wake up call he gave them helped the company make the decision to take a week off from putting videos out and give employees time to actually work on improving their processes. 

 

I am sure they will be on friendly terms in the future. 

[Amaninacity]

Just now, WallacEngineering said:

 

Except that Steve has reached out several times over the years with no success and that others have tried to reach out several times recently over this very subject.

 

...Guess you missed that part...

And the failure to request comment for the general inaccuracies is not a big deal. The information is publicly available and the criticisms cite their sources. You don’t have to reach out for comment when reporting information in the public record, though it’s still good practice.

 

Failing to request comment on the Billet Labs allegations is a big deal, though. It was airing non-public, serious allegations. Unless there is some reason you expect that the request for comment endangers you or will result in the story being blocked, you should be getting comment there. And you should acknowledge and explain if that is what you determine is best.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

7 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Leaving a review of a purchase doesn't make you a journalist though does it?

 

LMG has well documented screw ups and Linus constantly makes himself seem like an out of touch cretin, but tbf he usually comes out with his hands up.

 

Steve here is acting like a god of all YouTube and hasn't bothered to follow any proper journalistic practises the 1 time he does a deep dive into a competitor. He even acknowledges himself that he didn't want to get any response from LMG as that would undermine his findings.

Gonna quote the cartoon horse show here.

 

"Oh great, of course! Here it comes! You can't keep doing this! You can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better!"

 

That's how I feel about LTT right now.

[AHPanda]

1 minute ago, NullValid said:

He did monetise this though to be clear as well. 
 

Not on the original video mind, but in his secondary video on it which still has a higher than average view count. 

Well, the original was just him outing LTT. The response was just a part of his weekly show, which had sponsors.

[Mr. Rabbit]

Just now, AbsoluteWoo said:

Leaving a review of a purchase doesn't make you a journalist though does it?

 

LMG has well documented screw ups and Linus constantly makes himself seem like an out of touch cretin, but tbf he usually comes out with his hands up.

 

Steve here is acting like a god of all YouTube and hasn't bothered to follow any proper journalistic practises the 1 time he does a deep dive into a competitor. He even acknowledges himself that he didn't want to get any response from LMG as that would undermine his findings.

Which makes it even worse, because if he had asked about the Billet situation, he'd probably get the full picture: someone in logistics made a huge mistake, and was in the process of fixing it, and Linus had no idea it was going on (as would be expected, as he is not the one handling inventory)

 

I will say it again, LLT fucked up, a lot. Small mistakes adding up, and this was coming sooner or later.

But Steve can cry all he wants about "being objective" and treating LTT as a company, because he wasn't when he decided to not contact them, as he did in the past with other companies.

This was nothing but taking the chance to ruin the credibility of a direct competitor under the guise of "journalism"

 

That being said, the issues he points aren't fabricated. And have been getting worse.
The apology video is the beginning, but now LTT needs to follow on that and show that they really are fixing stuff.

 

As for the Maddison situation, there are some serious accusations there relating to sexual harassment (which need to be addressed publicly, calmly, seriously, and when they have the full picture of the situation), together with "I was hired to do work, and reprimanded when it wasn't properly done, so I'm mad" (which I kinda get her point, as it ties with the issues of LTT moving to having a lot of content in a week, leaving no space for anyone to breathe).

 

Let's see what the future brings us, I hope they can fix these issues, because I love the channel, but I've been feeling let down by the constant rushed content lately.