Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Majestic12]

6 minutes ago, harls said:

The question is did Billit withhold information from GN or did GN withhold the information from us?  It is hard to tell Billit was pissed,  and rightfully so.  GN told us he didn't care about evidence because he knows LMG is bad which makes it hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

GN is at least partially guilty by not letting Linus say his side of things. It's one thing to report on factual mistakes like the benchmarks, it's very much another to accuse Linus of malicious conduct without asking his side of the story. Steve fucked up, full stop. The difference is that Steve is even more stubborn than Linus and always doubles down and waves away criticism which is  quite ironic since he accuses Linus of exactly the same thing.

[ninefruit]

1 hour ago, SuperGnu said:

So selling something that you said you would return is not stealing it? Okay mate. And getting something on condition where you keep it for future use is not the same as getting something so you can sell it. And thus not yours.

Wait, wait  Now they (as you say) "got it so" they "could sell it"?? They didn't get it to review it? They got it SO they could sell it?? 

Something tells me that if someone gave you something so you could look it over and then your spouse or brother or mom put it in a garage sale along with a bunch of other stuff to raise money for a friend, and then someone said you "got it so you could sell it" and that you "stole" it... SOMETHING tells me you would want to defend yourself from those accusations. Or maybe you would just let it slide...?

[Arneun]

In my opinion Linus was kinda right in one thing when he did rampaged through the forum (not in the method he did so though).
GN did violated journalistic integrity and ethics.

At first I thought that it was only my country, but today, after watching podcast from Hardware Unboxed something struck me to check what actually those ethics are in US. Quick google away I've found that wikipedia states:
 

Quote

One of the leading voices in the U.S. on the subject of journalistic standards and ethics is the Society of Professional Journalists.

I went to their website, and found this article: http://spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
In which, they stated:

Quote

Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing

Which is further expressed as:

Quote

The NYU Journalism Handbook for Students offers advice on how to approach human sources, including allowing them to respond to allegations and criticism. In general, the information in a news story should never be a surprise to the subjects, because a journalist should confront them with allegations and information.

In the internet I'm basically nobody, and I'm torn up between spamming journalists that have prominence on a platform to make a content piece about this (with journalistic integrity this time), emailing Gamers Nexus asking for comment, and paying one time fee on their patreon and asking on their discord why they choose to violate this.
In my opinion just for this alone Linus is owed public apology.

[Guest]

You people really want to hit 400 pages...

[Loopers]

Poll and Feedback Results + WAN Show Update – Floatplane

 

Update on FP

 

No WAN show

 

 

[Erioch]

Just now, Loopers said:

Poll and Feedback Results + WAN Show Update – Floatplane

 

Update on FP

This was a good decision.

[mikaelus]

2 hours ago, Slizzo said:

I was initially skeptical at first as well, but then Colin corroborated much of what she's said already. And Emily has also not flat out denied that any of what Madison has said is untruthful.

 

He didn't corroborate anything. He just said she told him the same story before. It's not like he was a witness.

[Vexenar]

8 minutes ago, Erioch said:

This was a good decision.

Best decision they could have made. 

[Annie.exe]

Bummed about no WAN show. I thought maybe unscripted chatter between Linus and Luke could help make a lot of this feel better. 

[itchie]

1 hour ago, WallacEngineering said:

 

Ahaha Its funny sure Ill delete my account on your behalf whatever

 

I literally said if it turns out to be true despite the very low chance, LMG will loose all my respect.

 

Maybe read things before responding

 

As if I would ever do anything any of you asked, please

i don't know man, a couple guys don't like your opinion online. i think that means you HAVE to delete your account. i mean, you're not allowed to have a different opinion online and that Looper guy made his account on Monday so he's an OG hardcore oldschool user who probably has some deep connections to LTT. plus he said he knows someone who was a victim so clearly he's too powerful to fight. you can't deny that, just facts.

 

/sarcasm

[Guest]

Stupid question if you delete your account does all the posts go away? I actually said what I wanted to say. Again was never a GN or LTT fan I am just older then the internet and figured I will call out bad journalism.

[Majestic12]

13 minutes ago, Annie.exe said:

Bummed about no WAN show. I thought maybe unscripted chatter between Linus and Luke could help make a lot of this feel better. 

The chance of Steve and GN ripping anything they say to pieces is pretty damn high - I wouldn't risk it either. 

[Vexenar]

6 minutes ago, itchie said:

i mean, you're not allowed to have a different opinion online and that Looper guy made his account on Monday so he's an OG hardcore oldschool user who probably has some deep connections to LTT.

Does when he made his account actually devalue his opinion in any way? 
For all you know he has been watching Linus content for over a decade like myself, yet never felt the need to make an account on the forum unlike now. 

People keep bringing it up so apparently the time of creation is more important than what people are actually saying. 

 

6 minutes ago, itchie said:

plus he said he knows someone who was a victim so clearly he's too powerful to fight. you can't deny that, just facts.

This is just such a piss poor reply it is absolutely unreal. What is wrong with you?

I legitimately can't believe there are people like you guys who find it funny to belittle others and make fun of what their friends went through. 

[Pyrannha]

I have a handful of thoughts on this whole thing that have been churning over in my head since I started reading into it.. i guess 3 days ago now? And I feel like I should just post them someplace and they certainly don't deserve their own thread.  In no particular order:

1.       The TMB warranty is the most legit warranty there is. Full Stop. I work in automotive for a living, I’ve bought a great many “lifetime warranty” tools and what Linus has said is the exact truth. A written warranty is worth exactly as much as a company’s willingness to fulfill it. I’ve broken the tip off a screwdriver and been told that I was clearly using it wrong and they would provide no warranty – to which my answer was that I did not buy from that vendor anymore. I’ve also used a Phillips head screwdriver to punch through steel, turned the tip into a flat hunk of metal and had it replaced no questions because that vendor was more willing to just take care of me. I’ve been told that a tool won’t be warrantied because the damage was “normal wear and tear in daily use” and also that “of course that clearly abused tool would be replaced, it’s lifetime warranty!“

I’ve also had a dealership refuse to cover a clearly malfunctioning part on a brand new vehicle with under 10,000 mile son it because they claimed it wasn’t a “warrantable item” while having friends and customers alike having things covered by a manufacturer that were clearly not warrantee issues. It is up to the manufacturer to honor what they say or the consumer to take them to court. Even if a written warranty is legally binding, which in many cases it is not, a company does not have to honor it and can simply take no action even after a court case and very little can be done. I put more stock in a reputable person or company with a track record of standing behind what they do saying Trust Me Bro than I do any piece of paper. Period.

 

2.       The Billet Inc thing is dumb and still makes no sense. The final conclusion to the video was simple. Within the laws of thermodynamics, no matter what the result of the testing may or may not have been they couldn’t justify the price. He said the exact same thing in the WAN show. Yeah they didn’t test it right and got shit results, they should have retested it but it wasn’t worth doing at any price – at a hundred bucks it wasn’t worth doing, the result didn’t change. It looked cool but from a performance standpoint it did not matter. It was too expensive for what it did to make sense. It’s 800 bucks for a GPU water block, if it dropped your temperatures to exactly room temperature and totally ignored all laws of physics that would still be a hard sell. You can do chilled water or exotic cooling with a cooling SYSTEM that costs less than that – it’s about the value proposition, at 800 dollars it’s not a product worth buying, if it had cost 10 bucks to reshoot the test it wouldn’t have mattered, the product isn’t worth the cost.

As for auctioning off the block, if you as a company send someone your stuff and do not have In writing what you expect done with it after they are done with it, its 1000% your fault that what you wanted to have happen to it didn’t happen. Yes they COULD have handled it better but they didn’t see any need to there was no agreement that LTT would send the block back, why shouldn’t they auction it off for charity? In hindsight, with the communications they received AFTER the auction it makes more sense but also I don’t think we know the timelines here. LTT doesn’t shoot a video the day before it goes up, who knows how long that video was done and how long that block sat on the shelf.

 

3.       Also I want to say, in response to gamers nexus, it is NOT his job to ignore personal relationships. The interpersonal relationships in an investigation are a massive part of what makes an investigation trust worthy. Saying that you have to ignore personal relationships when investigating a situation is to say that the entire idea of things like conspiracy (the legal version) collusion, aiding and abetting and insider trading among others are simply your job to ignore. That’s idiotic at best. And then he goes on to spend about half the video to dig at interpersonal relationships, a lot of this video doesn’t make a lot of sense as far as what he’s picking at and trying to claim.

 

4.       As far as the pwnage mouse I’m not sure how it matters that something was given as a whale prize but also not recommended? That’s sponsorship. Someone could have said hey, we’ll give all your whales a free year subscription to amazon prime, doesn’t mean that they are saying that it should be something you buy if you have the option or even use if you get it. There’s very strange logic leaps here that make no sense. How many people do we, as tech people, know that still have some sort of factory cover/shield/protector/plastic on a device they use every day because the don’t know it’s there? I know a good few and those are easy to see.

 

5.       Lasty the whole Madison situation. This is the muddiest one and I think there’s a lot of things at play. I think a HUGE portion of it is Madison’s original, pre-hire, metal health state. I don’t think she’s lying, I don’t think she’s making anything up, I think she saw what she saw and felt how she felt about the situation. I think she was pushed harder than she could handle in a role she wasn’t qualified for and she broke and I think for some of it, a different person would have seen what was going on VERY differently. It does sound like there are some things that happened that are 100% not okay and are definitely hostile workplace/workplace harassment/sexual harassment issues that I would expect the person(s) responsible for to be fired over. I also do not see how you can lay the blame of a person being so ill as to harm themselves to the point of needing to go to the ER at the feet of the company they work for and particularly on that 100+ employee company’s CEO. Her claims sound like a person that was not in good health to begin with or had underlying issues that were brought forward due to the ways she was pushed. I also personally think that her coming out and saying that a statement of “put on your big girl pants” as catastrophic, damaging, sexist, harassment etc., etc. is quite the reach. Depending on the persons, maybe it’s not in good taste but sometimes the push you need, when you’re floundering, is to be told to put on those big girl/boy pants and get to work. And if you can’t do that, you leave.

What’s actually bothers me about her thread was the timing. She can post twitter threads any time, LTT can’t publish videos in an instant and according to my notifications, within about an hour of the break video going live is when she started her middle of the night twitter dump. She’s an old employee, she’s been gone a while, she was holding onto all this and waiting until the time she could do the most damage. It doesn’t take away from how she feels she was treated but, for me, it changes the tone of the conversation. It doesn’t make it sound nearly as much like someone who got out of a situation and wanted to set things straight, it sounds like someone with a vendetta taking their time to find the most damaging time/place to accuse.

 

Take all this for what you will, it’s just my opinion on things and maybe it doesn’t add to the conversation, maybe it does. I wanted to have said it regardless.

[Zackeires]

1 hour ago, 3m3m said:

You people really want to hit 400 pages...

 

[Jayl0cked]

4 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Tim still represents LMG as a company, what he said was at the company, even though it wasn't as PR or in public I think it shouldn't have been said in a tour.

1.  Steve explained why he didn't contact Linus in the video and decided when the "trust me bro" controversy happened, Steve said he would treat LMG like any other company, he doesn't contact a company every time he makes a review, those that watched the GN videos on this, and GN's reviews show he is objective.

2.  How is Steve to blame for any of this? He didn't have to contact Linus and if he did Linus would've forced him to only talk about certain points, and I doubt the Billet labs thing would have came out at all. I'm glad it did as Billet labs got paid for the value of the product and Jayztwocents has mentioned on twitter/X he wants to review a Billet labs block.

3. It would've been nice if Steve had asked first, but why should other youtubers have to ask Linus for permission to point out mistakes they've been making for a long time now? Linus shifting the blame and complaining about ethics when they need to seriously work on their own ethics in reviews show their arrogance towards others on getting criticism.

4. LMG disclosing Framework about doesn't mean anything other than Linus essentially saying he's giving other laptops a fair review and the audience can only base that on trusting Linus. Steve is well known for providing good data driven benchmark reviews, again anyone that watches his videos knows that.

5. Steve has done videos on Asus and their issues with motherboards killing CPU's, IMO that doesn't show there is any negative bias against Asus. Reporting problems with a product isn't having a negative dispute with a company.

LMG/LTT has a clear bias towards Asus, which is against their policy of blacklisting companies that have done anti-consumer things.

 

It is because people aren't objectively criticizing GN, they're taking things out of context to throw the blame at GN, when all GN did was report on the issues that need addressing.

Steve is definitely not to blame for the errors and the actions of LMG.

Tim I don't think is to blame for his comments either i think they were valid and in light hearted jest.. it was just bad timing, also they're plan moving forward may very well be to test newly every card at every release and that's a good goal to have.
Had there not been the big billet labs thing and the other factual errors slip by QC Tim's comment probably would have just gone by the wayside and Steve probably would not have ever responded.

 

That being said I think as a viewer we have to look at Steve with a critical eye here as well..
Steve has a vested interest in posting what he did - while fully true, and accurate. It doesn't change the motive behind it.

Steve's business and viewers are somewhat threatened by Linus LABS project. They're venturing into territory and buying equipment and hiring engineers and experts that gives them a leg up over GN. IF they do venture into more written content that also threatens Steve's bottom line.

In my opinion when Steve came out with his stance during the whole trust me bro controversy which i think was a big nothing burger imo. Because i largely agree with Linus take on warranties and because the history of their Support staff making it right is there It wasn't important to me. Legalese is just that Legalese, actions are more important when it comes to product quality control. But back to Steve, his take about treating LMG like any other company again while valid comes from a more hidden motive of the fact that they're more now than ever before a direct competitor to GN. You can't tell me there isn't some motives behind taking that stance. Valid and all it may be... but LMG and Linus have unapologeticly said that well if what they're doing threatens smaller creators businesses because of their sheer size and spending power he's not all that sorry about it because he has a team to support and a business to run. It makes sense for GN to go in on LMG to sort of protect their brand from being steamrolled by LMG labs down the line. If you question the integrity and validity of their testing procedure you help hold on to your core audience. And look what it has done how many GN fanboys have been lambasting LMG going to arms over this whole thing. How many disingenuous actors are saying how they're unsubbingn unfollowing etc  none of which is actually supported by facts.  Again, to make it perfectly clear it's deserved and the criticisms are valid. But I don't discount the motives behind them as a viewer. At the end of the day they both run businesses using Youtube as the medium to generate revenue.
I just hope Steve doesn't make any glaring errors for the next while because someone is likely gonna hit back at them. Probably not LMG but his content will likely be under scrutiny as well. And there's already a smaller creator out there whose pointed out similar aspects to GN as LMG in terms of taking sponsorship talking point videos after having a somewhat favourable review of a product. So you know the saying those in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. Steve better be damn accurate for the next while.



 

[CameronP90]

16 hours ago, LukasJ said:

 

LTT LMG has a weeks pause on new videos. I assume that means all new production is stopped - you have x days of pre-filmed videos;

So when self-imposed embargo is over, why not release those videos over X days and allow yourselves to ramp-up to full/reduced production? If you push these now, the production team needs to go back to work like tomorrow to have a full slate of videos come next week?

 

Or am I missing something?

Typical, milking the floatplane garbage during a time such as this nuking. Does anyone at LTT effing care? If you do, stop this garbage. I honestly feel that this SH case turns up with the truth that this "boys club" is a mess and lots of folks need to go bye bye.

[itchie]

5 minutes ago, Vexenar said:

Does when he made his account actually devalue his opinion in any way? 
For all you know he has been watching Linus content for over a decade like myself, yet never felt the need to make an account on the forum unlike now. 

People keep bringing it up so apparently the time of creation is more important than what people are actually saying. 

 

This is just such a piss poor reply it is absolutely unreal. What is wrong with you?

I legitimately can't believe there are people like you guys who find it funny to belittle others and make fun of what their friends went through. 

im sure you spend your days finding things to say "i cant believe this!" and getting upset so im glad i could help you maintain that streak!

continue with your petulant outrage!

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Zackeires said:

 

Yea, I am old I am not going to sit here and lie about it. It is a shame to see. I recall the first ever YouTube videos it was a mess but people loved it. Now everything is serious, everything feels fake and honestly, I had enough of YouTube, Social media and all the rest of it. The computer was and is just a tool for me to get my work done. I don't see it as anything more or anything less. I value friendship, community and mutual respect. GN showed me this does not exist anymore. I registered my account to call GN out. I did that and whatever it will accomplish it will accomplish.

 

Enjoy whatever it is you enjoy. I think I am 100% done. Will be deleting my account after this post.

[Annie.exe]

13 minutes ago, Majestic12 said:

The chance of Steve and GN ripping anything they say to pieces is pretty damn high - I wouldn't risk it either. 

That makes sense. That's just the status quo now as far as I was thinking. Thought it would look good to just continue on as normal at least in one way. 

[Vexenar]

9 minutes ago, itchie said:

im sure you spend your days finding things to say "i cant believe this!" and getting upset so im glad i could help you maintain that streak!

continue with your petulant outrage!

I legitimately thought that Reddit and the Youtube comment section on LTT videos was bad and a toxic echo chamber, but I'm starting to realize that the forums are just as bad. Imagine wasting your time writing replies on the forums just to incite negative responses from other users, I'm sure your parents must be proud of what you've accomplished, because you've sure gotten me!

Also in regards to your other comment, no, I don't think it's childish outrage to expect people on a online platform to act with common decency towards one another. 
But apparently we're at the point where making fun of sexual harassment, giving people death threats and being toxic is the norm on online forums, or rather on the Linus Tech Tips forum.  

I'm not outraged, I'm disappointed that people who are at the age where they can have children act like this without any form of personal restraint. Apparently we've forgotten that there are people of flesh and blood behind the screen who have feelings. 

[IkeaGnome]

25 minutes ago, Vexenar said:

I legitimately thought that Reddit and the Youtube comment section on LTT videos was bad and a toxic echo chamber, but I'm starting to realize that the forums are just as bad. Imagine wasting your time writing replies on the forums just to incite negative responses from other users, I'm sure your parents must be proud of what you've accomplished, because you've sure gotten me!

Just like Reddit and YT comments there are bad seeds. Not everyone on the forums are that way. Controversies like this or “Trust Me Bro” and non controversies like “ROG Rig Reboot” brings those people to the forums. 
 

Yes, there are resident trolls, but most of the time this is a very chill place. Most people here out side of certain circumstances act fairly maturely. Don’t let this set your mindset on the forums. There’s plenty of us who for a long time haven’t agreed with LTT or LMG and hardly ever watch any of their content. The “core” of the forums is “come from the videos, stay for the community.” Come back in a couple weeks and the whole mood will be different when the trolls settle back down. 

[Mattumanu]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:25 PM, LinusTech said:

 

Why is this still pinned?

[McGherkin]

Just now, Mattumanu said:

Why is this still pinned?

They don’t want to be accused of trying to bury it.

[Zackeires]

51 minutes ago, 3m3m said:

Yea, I am old I am not going to sit here and lie about it. It is a shame to see. I recall the first ever YouTube videos it was a mess but people loved it. Now everything is serious, everything feels fake and honestly, I had enough of YouTube, Social media and all the rest of it. The computer was and is just a tool for me to get my work done. I don't see it as anything more or anything less. I value friendship, community and mutual respect. GN showed me this does not exist anymore. I registered my account to call GN out. I did that and whatever it will accomplish it will accomplish.

 

Enjoy whatever it is you enjoy. I think I am 100% done. Will be deleting my account after this post.