Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[manikyath]

Just now, Drone971 said:

I made account here just to tell you how EXTREMLY angered i am by all of this. If only 10% of what GN claims is correct (and i presume most of it if not all actually is) this will be one of the biggest f-ups in the industry. I will wait for wanshow and if linus does not explains 90% of this stuff i am unsubscribing. I am  angered beyond belive. This is just insulting

you know.. this is exactly the wrong way to go at it.

the majority of what steve said is probably correct to some degree.. but "some degree" is the problem here.

 

also.. anger is the wrong emotion here, and dont expect linus to explain 90% of this because that would make a 20 hour WAN show.. to actually provide a full story explanation about every (occasionally unproven) claim steve made in the video.

 

if you feel like this piece makes you unable to trust LMG anymore.. by any means, unsubscribe, i'd be the same. but if there turns out to be a lot of misinformation in steve's video (wether intentional or not, i'll leave that in the middle..) will you be unsubscribing from GN as well? because i damn well guarantee you a not insignificant portion of that video will be debunked at some point.

 

1 minute ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility". Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

so.. this applies to GamersNexus too then?

[Rarity]

this is gonna be an intresting topic for sure ..GN`s vid title caught me by surprise though 

[coonwhiz]

1 minute ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Some do. It is bad from a public standpoint looking in to know he has financial gains to be had if a competitor laptop say from HP or Dell were bad and compared it against a framework and drive sales to framework. He has a time or 2 used the framework if memory is correct as the "control" laptop to test against. 

IMO any laptop reviews (or other possible conflicts) should be:

1. Hosted by a non-Linus host; and

2. Have the script reviewed and approved by someone other than Linus, essentially skipping Linus in the process.

[Agall]

3 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Some do. It is bad from a public standpoint looking in to know he has financial gains to be had if a competitor laptop say from HP or Dell were bad and compared it against a framework and drive sales to framework. He has a time or 2 used the framework if memory is correct as the "control" laptop to test against. 

I believe he discloses every time he does a laptop review that he's personally invested into Framework?

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Ultraforce said:

Different people can have differing opinions though I would argue that yes. It does matter, if the content produced by Linus Media Group is designed to help guide purchasing practices I think that the least that can be done is stating that the primary shareholder is invested in a company that has a product in that field. Even if that shareholder's intention with the investment was to lose money to omit that I think isn't great. Since relying on assumption of not impacting peoples judgement is really not a great idea for a business to do.

I might trust Alex to be honest about his taste in laptops. At the same time I could say that it would be easier to trust him if he purchased all the laptops for review rather than was an employee of a company that is regularly sponsored by laptop manufacturers and was given the laptops by the companies, as well as the owner and one of the C suite executives has shares in a laptop company.

Personally and I understand that Linus responded to people asking and said why he couldn't but I still hold the position that it would have been better if Linus had donated the money to Framework instead of becoming an investor.

but, would that change if there was no financial investment, just a strong public opinion on said shareholder's part? wouldnt the opinion be more damaging than the cash? i mean.. that's where 'unbiased' review comes from, isnt it?

[Ultraforce]

2 minutes ago, NorKris said:

holy crap is this bad .. dammmn 

I will say most of this isn't super bad and is more of a case of at least from when I started watching LMG videos kind of the accepted level of requiring quantity to a degree that means that quality is not always going to be high level.

The BilletLabs though is quite bad.

[Taf the Ghost]

I've watched the video. Some of these issues have been around for a while. A lot of them seemed to be "Sleep deprived Anthony" issues for fast turn around reviews. 

 

The issue with the Labs automated GPU / CPU testing was always going to be a problem. Ian Cuttress did for years for Anandtech and there was always issues he was constantly dealing with. (DX9 testing loved to randomly get weird.) Realistically, it doesn't work for products well. At least for Gaming. Productivity testing is very different and lends itself to it.

 

But the one part of the video that really matters is that Billet CPU Cooler. LMG is likely needs to get a hold of their attorneys. Because I see both Civil & Criminal Liability just from what has been said.  This is not a small issue if they gave away a R&D product, even for charity, after agreeing to return it. That's a massive, massive issue.

 

Edit: it seems LMG and Billet have come to an understanding/settlement. Which is good. The fact it happened requires a pretty massive introspective effort.

[Drone971]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

you know.. this is exactly the wrong way to go at it.

the majority of what steve said is probably correct to some degree.. but "some degree" is the problem here.

 

also.. anger is the wrong emotion here, and dont expect linus to explain 90% of this because that would make a 20 hour WAN show.. to actually provide a full story explanation about every (occasionally unproven) claim steve made in the video.

 

if you feel like this piece makes you unable to trust LMG anymore.. by any means, unsubscribe, i'd be the same. but if there turns out to be a lot of misinformation in steve's video (wether intentional or not, i'll leave that in the middle..) will you be unsubscribing from GN as well? because i damn well guarantee you a not insignificant portion of that video will be debunked at some point.

 

so.. this applies to GamersNexus too then?

yeah i would be unsubscribing from one or the other. There is something rotten. Either at lmg side or gn side. Also it would not be 20hour show, gn made it into 44 minute video, 44 minute response should be doable

[coonwhiz]

Just now, Agall said:

Does he disclose every time he does a laptop review that he's personally invested into Framework?

IIRC it's only when he's the host. When it's a Short Circuit video hosted by Alex or another host, the investment in Framework is not mentioned in the video. I can't recall if it's in the video description, but since Linus is the controlling entity over LMG and IIRC reviews most scripts, it's still concerning.

[Middcore]

If what's alleged here about the Billet Labs prototype is true that's egregious by LMG. 

[ARitz Cracker]

While I have been sufficiently entertained by LTT, I really do agree that the content is seemingly rushed, and there is a general lack of attention-to-detail that is leading to all these issues. I hope that a callout like this will get the conversation started to allow for videos to spend more time in production. Even the fun "janky" projects have felt very rushed and half-baked, and the constant "*" everywhere is pretty jarring. If it means that their video output should be halved, so be it. Make it a video that I will be more likely to watch multiple times.

 

Sidenote: Yeah, selling a startup's best prototype is... wow... I really hope there's some sort of resolution to this. I know that if LTT fucked my startup that hard, I'd be out for blood.

[YoungBlade]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if you feel like this piece makes you unable to trust LMG anymore.. by any means, unsubscribe, i'd be the same. but if there turns out to be a lot of misinformation in steve's video (wether intentional or not, i'll leave that in the middle..) will you be unsubscribing from GN as well? because i damn well guarantee you a not insignificant portion of that video will be debunked at some point.

What in the video is going to be "debunked" at some point? Steve came with receipts. He didn't say anything where he didn't have a screenshot or clip to back it up.

 

About the only thing that I could see being "debunked" is what happened with the waterblock that was sold at auction at LTX. Maybe there is an alternative explanation for what happened there and the public is missing some important details that happened behind the scenes. But other than that, LTT did make the mistakes Steve pointed out - I remember almost all of them, and for a few the videos are still up in their original state. Linus did say all of the things that Steve pointed out - I remember some of those as well, and the respective WAN Shows where they happened should still be available for viewing.

 

What is there to "debunk" in the video? You can disagree with the severity of the issues, but I don't see anything that will later be shown to be factually incorrect. (Except perhaps that aforementioned auction situation)

[Geneleco]

This is good, i hope LTT takes some of the criticism onboard. This type of criticism should be welcomed, it will only improve LTT's content!

[jamaniek]

I'm gonna copy my YouTube comment:

 

"That's the way I feel about LMG recently. I'm a long time LTT viewer but currently I only watch it for entertainment value. I pretty much skip all of their CPU/GPU/cooler reviews. They're not reliable.

 

And that copper cooler review...man...that was outrageous. They specifically tested it with the wrong card on a premise that it might work and when it didn't they just said "Eh, it is what it is. It sucks". That's not what a journalist does. And the fact that LMG auctioned the cooler without permission is borderline illegal in my opinion."

 

Steve summed up what I've been feeling about LMG and more. I'm still gonna watch the WAN Show and probably most of the LTT videos but the company needs to get their s**t together. At the size of LMG (as much as Linus wants to call it small company) some things are not acceptable.

[Ultraforce]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

but, would that change if there was no financial investment, just a strong public opinion on said shareholder's part? wouldnt the opinion be more damaging than the cash? i mean.. that's where 'unbiased' review comes from, isnt it?

I think that in all likelihood there wouldn't be much of a change in reality, though from an ethics and accountability perspective it could be preferable.

I will say from the a bit less than two years of watching more generic tech youtube rather than specifically some gaming related stuff I think that there are elements of the industry which makes the concept of the level of ethics, integrity and accountability one would hope to find in an industry more difficult, though these other fields often do themselves struggle to hold up the archetypical ideas of ethics and integrity one would hope for.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Drone971 said:

yeah i would be unsubscribing from one or the other. There is something rotten. Either at lmg side or gn side. Also it would not be 20hour show, gn made it into 44 minute video, 44 minute response should be doable

but.. let me ask you this another way.

do you actually have skin in this game, or could you just assume this to be more free entertainment? because that's the way i usually treat this PvP youtube drama.

 

also - a 44 minute response video would be doable, but it would also be severely lacking in facts to undermine claims made.. which will only increase the heat of the conflict.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, hassam222 said:

I don't actually have any problem with the Framework investment and do like Linus supported something that champions repairablity. I was simpling pointing out that the distinction of if it's Linus's or LMG's money is irrelevant to the average viewer. 

Only if you don't consider that many business owners that are successful often have investments in quite a lot of things. Sure it's not common for a YouTube tech channel since few are as successful as LTT but make sure you consider that many other established media and review companies are owned by and can have quite direct involvement from the business owner who has vested interests outside their business and in areas they are critiquing and reviewing and very rarely is that made all that public.

 

I don't think it matters that much, it's more a situation of not being used to it and also not being used to being told so directly that it exists by the person doing it.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

 

What is there to "debunk" in the video? You can disagree with the severity of the issues, but I don't see anything that will later be shown to be factually incorrect. (Except perhaps that aforementioned auction situation)

the severity of the issues is the problem. he's making it seem like LMG is purposefully inaccurate for the sake of lining their own pockets. no one here is arguing that the issues dont exist, the point is that if the way GN is making them out to be is in any way accurate to the real situation.

[rcmaehl]

26 minutes ago, rockyroller said:

if the cap fits, and you don't like the style, you change the cap don't you

If the shoe fits, make sure it's clean

[DurkCarter]

I think the main issue to focus on is the Billet Labs prototype. Labs & the inaccuracies in testing can be understood. I just hope we get a proper response with Terren on board not just Linus going haywire.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, osgalaxy said:

sometimes it feels like they are disingenuous and create a narrative that does not resonate with what I see from LMG.

IMO, GN aren't being disingenuous, LMG is known to make funny content for entertainment, their content is edutainment at best. Also possibly a hot take, I think LMG's "labs" seems more of a way for Linus to feel like their content is more professional by saying they had their "labs" run a bunch of benchmarks, even though LTT still manages to get their info wrong because they'd rather rush out content than focus on accuracy.

[Tony1337]

LTT actually screwed over billet by auctioning off the block...

[Agall]

10 minutes ago, coonwhiz said:

IIRC it's only when he's the host. When it's a Short Circuit video hosted by Alex or another host, the investment in Framework is not mentioned in the video. I can't recall if it's in the video description, but since Linus is the controlling entity over LMG and IIRC reviews most scripts, it's still concerning.

Technically he's not the CEO anymore, yeah? He's a creative director now IIRC.

[swimtome]

Overall mostly agree with Steve, I think he left out some context at some points.  A couple examples:

• My main ugh was the WAN show clip on the block results - Linus sharing his thoughts unfiltered every week is a part of the reason we trust him.  Without context it just sounds like him telling BIllet labs to jump in the lake you can't touch me.  While the end result is indeed that's what Billet Labs probably heard, I doubt that's what Linus's intention was.
• Also the labs tour - I still haven't gotten clear what exactly happened but it's obvious the host of the tour (Tim) isn't used to speaking and IMHO did not even intend to speak for LTT - he sounded just genuinely excited to be a part of LTT and seemed to misspeak.  ^{(Terren's first decree, the usual corporate statement of these views are my own and aren't necessarily the opinion of LTT}).
• In general he should have asked LTT for comment, especially on the Billet Labs, no?
• Labs is obviously in Alpha and should just get better, Linus has repeatedly mentioned that he knows there are growing pains as they figure out a system.

But overall these don't change the end result and general vibe:

• The amount of corrections needed lately and miscommunications is definitely increasing and it seems fair for GN to say enough is enough.
• Asterisks everywhere is annoying, but IMHO there is ZERO excuse that something like techquickie should have ANY asterisks.  It's short and its literally branded as purely educational.  There are several posts on Reddit of Professors using it.
• Steve really hand picked solid examples, a big kudos.  Not (IMHO) medium hanging fruit like ASUS customer service or reaching backwards to LTT store warranty.

This all feels like the same category of Linus still not bothering to add proper subtitles to videos - we're too fast paced to do it properly.  While I think most of us treat LTT as entertainment, Steve is very accurate that Linus, you just can't remotely act like that anymore.  LTT needs to make accuracy (and accessibility) their main priority, full stop.

 

(@LinusTech if you read this, we are still fans and mean this as constructive criticism.  We want LTT Labs to be a smashing success and the channel to only get better.  We're sure nothing here is malicious, and hopefully your new role as not-CEO will allow for more immediate quality control.)

[ARitz Cracker]

1 minute ago, Tony1337 said:

LTT actually screwed over billet by auctioning off the block...

I'm surprised that BIllet labs isn't suing, if they can't afford to sue, then that's even more sad.