Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[VisibleXela]

4 hours ago, LinusTech said:

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece.

Putting aside how journalistically bankrupt this sentence is for a second - I betcha the Monoblock folks are glad he didn't.

[K007]

14 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

you think steve is some good guy and looking out for the little guy

 

hes not hes a egotesitical douche nozzel that can't stand to see somebody other then him succed 

GN has always looked at consumers first, the content they put out is always facts, and they never take shortcuts just to get a video out. 

[batezippi]

Just now, Leksi T said:

I fear that because the LMG team/Linus are still dealing with time issues, self-imposed or not, t"

Are you saying someone has a gun to Linus' head forcing him to make the amount of video they are making?

[Drazil100]

3 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

non-sense its very clear given steves recent posting history that all he cares about is finger wagging at corperations bigger them him

its become a pattern for him find something to be mad about and then whip it into a storm and sick his audience on who ever he doesn't like or thinks has done something wrong. 

 

you want proof of this?: why didn't he reachout to LTT. O thats right because linus would have handled it profesionally and not given him anything to whip into a storm

 

 

hes come right out and said hes not intrested in being a journalist ( I can not for the life of me find the video in question but I will find it later) 

I agree that his channel has become very finger wagging as of late. I 100% agree that this is the type of content he makes.

 

The part that's a baseless accusation is trying to claim his motives are purely view based. There is a very strong chance that he actually legitimately cares and thinks it's his purpose to call out big cooperations. I don't watch his content much, but I do get the sense his videos come from a good place.

[stayupthetree]

23 minutes ago, ZombieMan762 said:

 

This is lost on people who don't want a lot of GN content. They have stated in the past they are going to treat LMG like an industry member not just another YouTuber. I don't see anything wrong with that with the direction Linus has taken LMG. They are not just another YouTube channel putting out a couple videos a week. 

My problem with this that GN does this while pretending that they themselves aren't an industry member. Like they are some sort of outlier above the fray.

[HaughtonBothered]

5 minutes ago, jpsulisz said:

'does not reflect LMG as a whole', while I am sure this is true - many people must've combed through this video before they released it. Maybe not enough people reviewed it as seen with stringent workloads?

Correct me if I am wrong, do you think this was an LTT video? The clip of Tim saying that stuff about GN and Hardware Unboxed was from someone who visited LTX and filmed the walkthrough tour. 

 

If that isn't the case, I might just be misunderstanding your argument.

[zombiekiller5072]

While I think Steve had valid points, such as the Billet water block being auctioned off when it was supposed to be returned is really bad, I'm not going to stop watching LMG for the time being. If serious allegations come out about Linus, like him mistreating employees or anything like that, then yeah, I'd probably stop watching. But this is all stuff that could be fixed. I don't entirely think that LMG is in the wrong, but they definitely can improve on some things, like any content creator.

[VisibleXela]

Whatever the context may be, it's incredibly shady for LMG to keep a prototype, keep quiet about it, only pay the company back after getting called out publicly for it, only for their founder to cry about how this should have been handled quietly behind closed doors - y'know, so LMG wouldn't have to fix its mistake because nobody would know about it.

[Emperor Numerius]

6 minutes ago, divito said:

Pasting my Youtube comment here:

I unsubscribed to GN in of August 2022 and this video highlights precisely the reason I stopped watching this channel.

While GN could be appreciated for being an enthusiast-level perspective and calling things as they saw them in the past, the majority of their content comes off as pedantic and it was increasingly hard to take them seriously. Their antics come off as disingenuous and holier-than-thou, and I simply don't have patience with that type of attitude and superiority complex, and why I've culled many tech channels in the past year.

Doing a GN impression:
- Steve calls yellow as orange, inaccurate.
- Criticizes it's "not proper to just blame the product because you don't want to control your test environment, and you don't want to use it the way it's designed." All one has to do is watch prior GN videos to see this in action.

I had more, but this post got large, and I can't even take myself seriously presenting them all.

I think the other problem is that people are conflating the LTT/ShortCircuit channels with Labs. I'm not sure how many people watching or commenting have experience in certain production environments with teams of people and specialist equipment, but things like that aren't just turn-key, especially when their application is quite customized and they're developing a personalized workflow with some brand new team members.

Labs' genesis and partial inclusion in LTT/SC videos as they refine things, before becoming what Linus seems to envision it will be as a compendium, is going to have warts. It's out of touch and naïve to think otherwise.

Ultimately, I am disappointed in this video, and again in this channel.

This video could have been a personal message between tech Youtubers, an outreach, a wellness check, if one was truly concerned; but instead, we have this wannabe-exposé that literally could have been a compilation of errors across all tech Youtube channels, as LMG is far from alone. GN itself has been the subject of methodology and conclusion issues in the past, outside of other errors that make it through editing. Jay has had errors in his videos, typos, misspeaking issues, as has Wendel, Paul, Hardware Unboxed, HardwareCanucks, Unbox Therapy, etc... Sometimes they're addressed in post or in future videos, and sometimes the errors persist into the Youtube ether. Presenting LMG singularly, while ignoring the host of errors with tech Youtube in general, speaks to a different psychological issue behind the posting of this video.

LMG's production timelines and schedules are definitely an issue, and the staff is likely overextended, this has been said for awhile. But this video is a cold, impersonal, inhumane perspective that seems intent on being the antithesis to community-driven; it's divisive and pompous, rather than inclusive and collaborative. Behind every channel are real people, with real struggles, doing real things and putting it out there for the world in the best way they can in their job.

Videos are so much more entertaining when there are collaborations, crossovers, where specialties and personalities merge to create something fresh and new. We are stronger as a community; I'm sure viewers and readers alike have seen the levels that tech enthusiasts, gamers, 'the internet' can reach when we're all working together. My hope is that GN can learn to share this outlook in the future, and shake this adversarial outlook that has morphed into a compulsion to be seen as always correct or superior.

I agree with this!!!

when starting something new you are going to have problems that arise

nobody is perfect not even the highest youtubers.

why should we attack and hurt other communities when we can all get along and collabarate

Youtube Collabs are some of the best things. like one of my favorite LTT videos is Fire cooled pc with Hacksmith Industries. 

no

[xg32]

1 minute ago, batezippi said:

Are you saying someone has a gun to Linus' head forcing him to make the amount of video they are making?

it's the youtube algo, they likely cannot and will not cut down on the main channel, but can rethink the total amount including the side channels.

[Leksi T]

4 minutes ago, batezippi said:

Are you saying someone has a gun to Linus' head forcing him to make the amount of video they are making?

I'm saying that I don't believe I have a good enough handle on the situation to assume everything that was said is true.

 

EDIT: Ugh that was kneejerk.  GN's prolly not entirely wrong about the whole self-imposed schedule thing, but then again, I can't assume LMG doesn't have good reasons for making such a decision.

[WanderingNebo]

You know what, I don’t have anything to add that everyone else hasn’t already stated. I do think listening at this stage will be useful..

That said, I do feel for everyone involved. YouTube drama can seem so removed from reality, but I know that everyone involved is going to have a shitty few days and feel absolute rubbish. I know from the tech world that when people pile on it can feel absolutely crushing; so you know what - virtual hugs to the LTT team (and really everyone who is involved in what is a shitty situation).

[ThousandBlade]

6 hours ago, Ekin said:

I also stopped watching ShortCircut some weeks ago, because I felt like the content was just useless. It is to long and has to many opinions for an unboxing but is not accurate enough to be review. I also felt misled with a ShortCirut representation of a product, after buing it myself.

I was very excited for ShortCircut content when they first announced it. I thought it was going to be like the old school unboxings. After noticing I don't enjoy those videos as much as i thought i would, I never really had a clear grasp of why that is the case until now.
But this, this sums up how I feel about ShortCircut perfectly. 

[McCarthy]

1 minute ago, batezippi said:

Are you saying someone has a gun to Linus' head forcing him to make the amount of video they are making?

Yes, the current YT algo.

 

If you don't push almost daily content, you will be flushed out like so many other longstanding creators with 1 M plus subs and some 30k views on recent uploads.

[Droz_]

3 hours ago, 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.

@LinusTech I think the main thing here is that you're still beating around the bush and not really addressing things. 

1. Are you going to slow down with testing to get things right
2. Are you going to start addressing things in post properly? 

 Regardless of who is CEO then, now or in the future.  You and Terren the CEO need to discuss this and you both address your community together. 

This is clearly something that as the major driving force behind LTT (Linus) and Terren both need to be on the same page about. Even if that means terren over rides you. Because he's inheriting what you built and what you have done in the past. As CEO Terren should be address this as he is not the one responsible for the direction, integrity of what goes on at LTT. Not you

What I think you, Terren and LTT at large should be conveying to your community is something along the lines of "we have been f**king up, we can do better. We will be addressing all the issues and updating our documentation, processes and training staff to get testing done right. If we get anomalous data, we will retest properly. Even if that means pushing back a video release. 

Also, Steve at Gamer's Nexus absolutely did the right thing by not contacting you about this. He is not LTT, he's more like the New York Times.  He did all his homework and it showed in the video. He pointed out everything that was erroneous, its all from your videos! So don't go saying that you're doing what you're doing and not going to apologize for it.

Whatever changes are made at the direction of Terren (since you're not the CEO anymore) should be documented and release to the public for scrutiny and feedback. Because ultimately. LTT isn't doing anything that anyone of can do for testing. 

Do better. Be better. 

[jitteryzeitgeist]

1 minute ago, zombiekiller5072 said:

While I think Steve had valid points, such as the Billet water block being auctioned off when it was supposed to be returned is really bad, I'm not going to stop watching LMG for the time being. If serious allegations come out about Linus, like him mistreating employees or anything like that, then yeah, I'd probably stop watching. But this is all stuff that could be fixed. I don't entirely think that LMG is in the wrong, but they definitely can improve on some things, like any content creator.

How about them putting out bad data, which can lead to poor purchases?

[Reclus]

3 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

non-sense its very clear given steves recent posting history that all he cares about is finger wagging at corporations bigger them him

 

its become a pattern for him find something to be mad about and then whip it into a storm and sick his audience on who ever he doesn't like or thinks has done something wrong. 

 

you want proof of this?: why didn't he reachout to LTT. O thats right because linus would have handled it profesionally and not given him anything to whip into a storm

 

ethics and intergrity ? where are Steves nobody with either of those things would post such a hightly opininonated and charged video without reaching out? 

I guess steve thinks hes above practicing what he preaches 

 

 

hes come right out and said hes not intrested in being a journalist ( I can not for the life of me find the video in question but I will find it later) 

Have you lost your mind somewhere along the way?

It is literally his job to wiggle his finger at big corpos!

Reaching out to Linus would defeat the entire purpose of being a professional  at what he does. Things like this can't be swept under the carpet on private calls!

There is no Linus anymore. There is only LTT. 

You are not dealing with a small youtuber from 2010. You are dealing with a 100 mil corporation. And you are being taken for a ride because the previous CEO was your online "friend"

[VisibleXela]

3 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Getting all the details before publication is *NOT* the opposite of journalistic integrity.

This isn't about being on a side... There's no war. You don't need to fight. You need to slow down and think.... 

 

If a bad product is actively on store shelves, actively causing problems by fooling gullible customers, does LMG wait until the company responsible gives full context before a review is published? If that's the policy at LMG I need to start avoiding LTT videos.

[LinusTech]

Just now, Nodachi said:

 

I appreciate you taking ownership of some of your mistakes, but you failed to address the primary concern of GN's video. Which was you're sacrificing accuracy for volume.

I watch because I trust LMG to do their due diligence BEFORE posting, and make quick corrections when they discover errors. However, if the frequency and scope of errors becomes too much; then I as the consumer have no reason to stay. Quite a few of the mistakes he mentioned were just blatant negligence. Expansion is exciting. The end goal is amazing, but it's all pointless if the people you're building all of this for can't trust your content. slow down. We can go a day or two without a video if it means what we are watching remains accurate. I also BEG you to dedicate a good chunk of the WAN Show to this. Because the defensiveness of your response to this has left me completely unconvinced that we'll be seeing any meaningful change.

If you're new to the channel, I understand why you might not know this, but we are extremely committed to improving our accuracy to the point where we are building out a $10M+ facility jam-packed full of equipment and engineering know-how. It's taking time, and this kind of aggressive expansion has been a learning curve for us, but to frame our recent actions as "sacrificing accuracy" is misleading at best. 

We need to make a lot of process changes to get to the point where everything is water-tight. That's a big part of why we added our new CEO Terren to our leadership team, but once again... things take time. He's been full time on the job for less than a single quarter and he's getting up to speed on all the things we are doing right... and yes... all the things we are doing wrong.

 

Trust me, we know. But we are making major investments in improving all of this and we won't stop.

[suits]

As not a GN fan at all, he has some valid points. I hope this doesn't get thrown in the garbage bin.

 

As the head of a business about half the size of LTT, I also have a little bit of an understanding of how wanting and even trying to do things doesn't always work. Seriously... I said a project that hasn't even started yet was priority a month ago...

 

At some point these things need to get fixed, the communication layers need to get better, or something major has to change.

 

Hope you guys keep growing, keep improving, and keep being you.

[ContentCrafterHQ]

GN/Steve was so in the wrong to not give Linus the common courtesy of a phone call for his response about the water block. 
As for the LTT review of the water block, well, I have my own opinion of it. Is it well over priced for what it is, yes! Was LTT the one that should have reviewed a water block. heck no. That should have been sent to @JayzTwoCents but I'd put money they tried to and he turned them down. Is it a commercially viable product? Given that it's over 1000$ Canadian I'd expect not. 

Here's the thing with reviews, they are an opinion. This wasn't a sponsored video. They sent him the product, asked for him to check it out and give his thoughts on it. 

If it's a bad product, or not. It's his opinion. 

 

That being said, I'm neither a fan of GN or LTT. Do I watch LTT sure, I don't GN though. GN/Steve tries way too hard to push Drama. His Video Titles just prove that alone. Steve obviously had an angle in doing the video. Same as he does with any of his Drama videos. But hey Drama and sex still sell. 

[Legitsu]

1 minute ago, Reclus said:

Have you lost your mind somewhere along the way?

It is literally his job to wiggle his finger at big corpos!

Reaching out to Linus would defeat the entire purpose of being a professional  at what he does. Things like this can't be swept under the carpet on private calls!

There is no Linus anymore. There is only LTT. 

You are not dealing with a small youtuber from 2010. You are dealing with a 100 mil corporation. And you are being taken for a ride because the previous CEO was your online "friend"

friend? what because he replied to one of my posts Once on a forum?

 

way to make my point for me

who the hell does steve think he is? what gives him the right to point and say "naughty naughtly"

get off your high horse

 

 

[jitteryzeitgeist]

1 minute ago, suits said:

As not a GN fan at all, he has some valid points. I hope this doesn't get thrown in the garbage bin.

 

As the head of a business about half the size of LTT, I also have a little bit of an understanding of how wanting and even trying to do things doesn't always work.

 

At some point these things need to get fixed, the communication layers need to get better, or something major has to change.

The problem here is the business model is making them bad at their stated corporate mission.

[Bleda412]

If you look at Linus' post, you will notice that he completely ignored the conflicts of interest raised by Gamers Nexus.

[VisibleXela]

Just now, Legitsu said:

friend? what because he replied to one of my posts Once on a forum?

 

way to make my point for me

who the hell does steve think he is? what gives him the right to point and say "naughty naughtly"

get off your high horse

 

 

Isn't pointing at products and saying "naughty naughty" literally the entire goal of Linus Tech Tips?