Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Elinzar]

13 minutes ago, Jeff my life said:

I don't think Linus is the kind of guy to just leave these guys high and dry after such a massive f-up. I know that's how he's being portrayed, but I genuinely don't think he would let their company go belly-up over this. They clearly have more support now than they ever have. This narrative of "will they survive?!" Is really, really silly to me. They're gonna be fine. Machining copper isn't alchemy based on whether or not Haley's comet is passing, it's reproducible manufacturing.

they have more support than ever because someone else had to come forward and inform us about it, not LTT itself, otherwise we all would be none the wiser 

[RasmusDC]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

I agree in relation to the clips. But not for the rest. It's clear that it is a debate topic, not reporting. Asked for your opinion on something doesn't require you to phone everyone before you answer. 

Writing an article on the subject, where actual research goes into it and where you have time to do it does. 

So okay.. i sit in a big company, i can just do a podcast going into the press finding every reddit thread that is talking garbage about a company i am either in direct competition with, or that i don´t like, then "amplify" that in my podcast, with false optionions.. or ideas.. and that is OKAY because it is a podcast. and "only" opinions..

 

i think it is a fine line.

 

I also think the WAN show is a GIANT risk for Linus to be a part of.. this is where i feel like you see the worst of him. 

[borus87]

7 hours ago, LinusTech said:

I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... 

Good thing that a huge company as Billet sent also (with their prototype) a 3090 Ti for a small company as you. I know how hard it must be for a small YT creator like LTT to get a hand on 3090 Ti so cudos to Billet for willing to give a small youtuber a hand on this. 

[bandainamcofan]

6 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

Do you not watch his content? He has talked himself up and patted his own back for years about how he deals with companies, making contact with them to deal with grievances. He has literally set these standards for himself/Gamer's Nexus, but absolutely ignored them in this instance. 

I'm asking you for a specific place where these statements were made.

 

All this is coming off as a way to minimize perfectly valid points. From IPSO, which has been linked here before: 

 

Quote

This is because the Editors’ Code of Practice, the set of rules which IPSO enforces, does not state that journalists must contact every individual or company before publication of every story.

If the article is reporting on factual information that is already in the public domain, such as a recent court case or comments made publicly on social media, not contacting someone before the article is published is highly unlikely to be a breach of our rules.

Steve is doing exactly that, responding to something from social media. (edit for missed word)

[JoshuaScholar]

It sounds like Linus allowed himself to be baited by the YouTube algorithm into getting maximum profit from it by giving it what it wants - videos as fast as possible.

 

It's not possible to maintain quality and ethics while absolutely maximizing production speed.  And Linus was allowed to pick that as a goal.

And no one at LMG was willing or able to confront Linus and stop him.

 

And Linus fooled himself into thinking that his goal was defensible, even while screwing over companies like Billet labs to achieve it.

 

Also Linus doesn't have as good technical perspective as he thinks he has, if he managed to convince himself that he could meaningfully test Billet's water-block on the wrong card.  He had bad judgement in every possible way in that situation, including his refusal to apologize.

 

Dude is wealthy, he can afford to take 6 months off, and he SHOULD!

[PCDCobby]

A couple of years ago Linus absolutely denigrated Nvidia for their treatment of HWunboxed and attack on their search for the truth on the RTX cards performance, now Linus himself and his team have followed Nvidias foot steps and attacked not only HWunboxed but also GN in a couple of videos, tripling down on prior statements and views doesn't actually make you more right than before.
Linus has repeatedly said he wishes these things were kept in private or that personal relationships would influence the response he and his team get for their actions, THAT IS WHAT MSI AND OTHERS DO! 
And you used to yell at for doing the same to you guys and other media partners. 
The cognitive dissonance now that the shoe is on the other foot is deafening....

[Dayderingo]

13 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Steve's the only person making goalposts in the first place, he's the one that claimed he had consistent standards for dealing with companies in the tech space.

What does that have to do with Steve's data?

You're nitpicking. Let's grant that Steve had a lapse of journalistic etiquette. What does that change about his conclusions? Has LMG done an adequate job of issuing corrections or retractions? I think Steve's point about text only corrections was very salient - many viewers are actually listeners, and they'll never see that correction.

 

Steve doesn't have to be perfect. Nobody is. But he needs to be right about the case that he's making. So, is he? Given the large volume of evidence he presented, yes, it seems like there's been accuracy issues from Labs and in other areas, most of which appear to be rooted in time constraints.

 

I love LMG and Linus, but they will make errors, and that's normal. That's human. That's all totally forgivable. But they need to address those errors in a transparent fashion in order to maintain the trust of people like me. Is that so wrong?

Edit: changed "retraction" to "correction" and clarified who's point it was

[CaptainRan]

1 minute ago, navarchus said:

I get the general vibe of 'if we don't get 11 videos out every week everyone loses their job`. Probably reading too much into things but it feels kinda high stress for everyone involved.

If he is that close to needing to fire someone that he can't go back and correct errors or "spend $500" of sn employees time to donate video correctly then maybe he shouldn't be spending millions on setting a lab or spending $800 on snacks every month.

[MCDELTAT]

What’s the percentage of people writing essays here that are currently procrastinating on an actual essay for school?

 

My short opinion: Yeah, it seems like they need more layers to catch things or slow down. I have faith that they will. Given that they probably can’t economically slow down and stay afloat, LABS generating revenue could be the thing that gets them to slow down. A win win win.

[navarchus]

1 minute ago, JoshuaScholar said:

It sounds like Linus allowed himself to be baited by the YouTube algorithm into getting maximum profit from it by giving it what it wants - videos as fast as possible.

 

It's not possible to maintain quality and ethics while absolutely maximizing production speed.  And Linus was allowed to pick that as a goal.

And no one at LMG was willing or able to confront Linus and stop him.

 

And Linus fooled himself into thinking that his goal was defensible, even while screwing over companies like Billet labs to achieve it.

 

Also Linus doesn't have as good technical perspective as he thinks he has, if he managed to convince himself that he could meaningfully test Billet's water-block on the wrong card.  He had bad judgement in every possible way in that situation, including his refusal to apologize.

 

Dude is wealthy, he can afford to take 6 months off, and he SHOULD!

Linus needs to step away for five minutes after getting the rest of LTT in good shape to see that, yes, the 100+ people he hired can make engaging content without him in every other video. He's hired good talent and I feel like he's not using it to the fullest.

[loonks]

Not only a lot of videos nowadays are "rushed", but the pacing and flow of many recent videos feels like this videos was just a placeholders to fill the gap in the schedule, like the recent video about Sega arcade PC, and that's the main concern for me. I know that a lot of people watch LTT videos just because, well, it's a LTT videos, regardless of what's inside, but the data from the Labs would not improve this aspect of a video by any margin

[atxcyclist]

Just now, Blademaster91 said:

Then LMG shouldn't go and they're "disappointed" by not being contacted first before GN published the video, and they can't whine about ethics if they don't have any standards of their own, especially when they trash a company that sent a prototype water block by using it on the wrong card and sold it without their permission.

If you seriously think GN is being a "douchebag" just because they didn't call or email you first, and thats all you got from the video highlighting things LMG needs to improve on, then I don't know what to say other than keep being high on that LMG fan copium.

Of course Linus didn't directly call them out, but anyone that watches GN knows who they're calling out because Steve has a history of saying it's his job to not have any personal relationships with any company.

 

You're tapdancing around what I'm saying, either you realize I'm just holding Steve to his own word, or you don't realize that Steve has made his own word and that's where integrity exists. Either way, Steve has made standards and has ignored them, pretty much end of story there.

 

I'm using an example, you're trying to make this a 'well it's not illegal' argument, but I'm not discussing the legality of being inflammatory. I'm talking about how Steve has contact at LMG and just rolled-out a 45 minute call-out video without making contact; Some offhanded WAN Show and LTT Labs comments do not equal a 45-minute call-out video; Steve wasn't ever directly called-out by Linus.

 

[JamesC87]

I doubt Linus will read through 69 pages of criticism… I have been a long time subscriber on YouTube but don’t use the forums often.
 

The thing I’m most disappointed about is his attitude to these controversies. I get that there has been rapid growth, I get that he gets pulled in 100 different directions but just like with the “trust me bro” situation I often feel he cares less about the community than the dollars. His response is generally to deflect or say we will fix it, but like if that was a response he received from AMD/nvidia etc he wouldn’t accept it at face value. Generally the feeling I get is that he takes in personally and that hinders a rational response.
 

Now I have no idea about there process from filming to editing to QC to the decision to upload, but I feel it wouldn’t be that hard to make a video walking through that and explaining WHERE the issues should be picked up and HOW it is going to be addressed. Whether it’s hiring another QC person to review every video before posting, or new guidelines of HOW they will address errors going forward. He says he doesn’t hide from issues but then It doesn’t feel like he gives the transparency to regain trust from community.

 

I don’t think this is a growth issue either, for years I feel like there have been videos where they start shooting and realize they grabbed the wrong ram or graphics card, and instead of just getting the set reconfigured and starting again they push ahead. I get the entertainment value in that, but the education of the viewer and community kind of becomes secondary. 

I don’t know, maybe more Terren needs more time, but my feeling is Linus is still steering the ship. In my experience when employees care more about KPI’s than having pride in their work it doesn’t lead to good results; and the fact that multiple employees have stated something along these lines publicly in Q&A’s seems to indicate a broader cultural problem that I don’t think Linus understands or acknowledges. 

[Legitsu]

5 minutes ago, Ottoman420 said:

Keep suspecting.

 

I doubt Steve would do this for "clout" his channel has doubled in subs over the last year/ year and a half.

 

That  makes sense That's about the time where he started focusing on pushing out these finger waving opinion pieces instead of actual usable reviews because controversy sells views data doesn't if you can't see that he has a serious ego problem then there's no point in continuing to discussion with you because you'll never understand the problem look at it from a business perspective. What does he gain? He gains a quick burst of views and activity. He makes his competitor look bad and because He's had success with this kind of adversarial douchebaggery in the past people defend it

Edited August 15, 2023 by Legitsu

[ScoggsUK]

Been watching LTT for a number of years, and probably catch a video everyday. Haven't ever bought any merch as I'm in the UK. (So those are my biases out of the way).

 

The water cooler stuff seems like a series of mistakes or unfortunate events that have spiraled into to each other. Its not great, but people or a group of people can make mistakes.

 

For an outlet that is positioning itself as some kind of journalistic freedom fighter, it would have been the correct route to have reached out to LMG in a official capacity for a comment on the Billet Labs situation before pressing publish. Even more so given that Steve and Linus had a personal relationship. 

 

On the quality point, I think its been evident for a good period of time that they've struggled to scale and have said as much on multiple occasions. It's quite clear in the clips selective used by GN, that people internally at LMG want this to improve too, so my own view is it will at some point. However, if you are making a significant purchase and only using one review source as research (as in an LTT video) then it's kind of on you for not looking into it carefully enough. I think Linus would would say similar himself, don't use LMG as your only review source.

 

The points on commercial biases are frankly a bit absurd, Framework is constantly mentioned verbally as Linus having an investment in as well as written disclaimers in the text. Multiple times Linus has stated this is not about personal profit but supporting a sustainability he is passionate about. I personally take him him at his word regarding this, and he keeps making the same point. The alternative is that you are personally questioning his intentions and motives. This is why I can see how this is highly likely to be quite upsetting to a number of people at LMG as well as Linus, especially given a previous relationship with GN. 

 

I personally question the timing of the GN video, given the unfortunate comments on the labs tour. The quality issues have been their before and could be raised along time before. Its several months after the billet labs video and the internal LTT video. The GN video would have more validity if it hadn't come after what could be seen as a professional putting down. It toys to portray itself as journalism, when you offer the accused no comment or reply to the accusations.

 

Likewise, if you are going to raise biases in a video, you need to call out your own. 

 

Lastly, I want to address Linus and LMG team. This is going to hurt big time, on a number of levels professionally and more importantly personally for a breakdown in a relationship. Pause, reflect and most importantly look after yourselves and particularly your mental health, we are all human and people make mistakes and people in the public eye are not immune to them. 

 

Rational people will view this outside of the social media vacuum.

 

 

[Elinzar]

2 minutes ago, MCDELTAT said:

What’s the percentage of people writing essays here that are currently procrastinating on an actual essay for school?

 

My short opinion: Yeah, it seems like they need more layers to catch things or slow down. I have faith that they will. Given that they probably can’t economically slow down and stay afloat, LABS generating revenue could be the thing that gets them to slow down. A win win win.

you caught me man red handed lmao, i should be programming

[DeerDK]

1 minute ago, RasmusDC said:

...

 

I also think the WAN show is a GIANT risk for Linus to be a part of.. this is where i feel like you see the worst of him. 

You are not wrong. Quite a few controversies have come out that way. But WAN also gave us the Nvidia rant. Would you have preferred a corpo-speak "It is our position that Nvidias actions seem ill adviced and detrimental to the creatorspace. HUB has our full support and we hope that Nvidia will re-consider their position on this matter". A real banger....

It is unfiltered and direct, and that is actually what I mostly tune in for. I don't watch a lot of the other stuff, but the synergy and direct thoughts on the subject is great for listening to imo. It's another tangent though.

But yes, he makes a lot of dumb mistakes when he talks before he thinks. GN did have the luxury to do a thorough work here. It was not an impulsive response

[navarchus]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

 

You're tapdancing around what I'm saying, either you realize I'm just holding Steve to his own word, or you don't realize that Steve has made his own word and that's where integrity exists. Either way, Steve has made standards and has ignored them, pretty much end of story there.

 

I'm using an example, you're trying to make this a 'well it's not illegal' argument, but I'm not discussing the legality of being inflammatory. I'm talking about how Steve has contact at LMG and just rolled-out a 45 minute call-out video without making contact; Some offhanded WAN Show and LTT Labs comments do not equal a 45-minute call-out video; Steve wasn't ever directly called-out by Linus.

 

I'd rather not rely on tit-for-tat 'well he was mean first' reporting to start discussion on media accountability.

[BetteBalterZen]

Please delete

Edited August 15, 2023 by BetteBalterZen
After seeing GN newest video, I don't really like my previous comment here

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

4 minutes ago, Elinzar said:

they have more support than ever because someone else had to come forward and inform us about it, not LTT itself, otherwise we all would be none the wiser 

From what we've seen so far, LMG management was made aware of it Friday/over the weekend. So we don't even know what their public response would have been.  What GN did here was the equivalent of hitting the horn on the car and shouting for the pedestrian to get out of the way instead of braking.

[Elinzar]

2 minutes ago, JamesC87 said:

I doubt Linus will read through 69 pages of criticism… I have been a long time subscriber on YouTube but don’t use the forums often.
 

I think more than ever he probably is reading this entire thread

[Shin-Gouki]

9 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 When you are the big dog in the yard anytime you slip up or have any sort of Misstep the competition will be all over you. I was an admin at TFW2005.com for 10 years and we were (and they still are arguably) the biggest Transformers Fan Site out there and I dealt with blowups like this all the time from people from other sites that would come for our throats when we so much as stubbed our toe. (And don't get me started on when Hasbro came to us to handle information gathering and feedback on the first Masterpiece Optimus Prime) 

I get it man, perhaps more than a lot of people. You pour your heart and soul into something, you try to be as fair and honest and transparent as you can and there is always going to be people coming after you. While I have nothing bad to say about Steve's content and I don't know him myself I can only say that this brought up a lot of old memories of the BS I dealt with back in the day and It sucks. It's crap like this that lead to me retiring from TFW because it gets to you on a deeply personal level when you have so much emotionally invested in what you do.

In the end all I can say is I'm glad you are taking the high road on this, I think you can be proud of the content you create, the Transparency you show and everything you have built. Just from an educated outsiders prospective I would say that there are people that have chips on their shoulders and that one unfortunate statement by a member of your team (and we all say things from time to time when we are proud of what we have worked on that sounds great in our head and comes out tone deaf at best and arrogant and adversarial at worst when all we wanted to do is tout what we have accomplished) set people off that were already on edge for some reason or another.

You keep doing what you do, I'll be here for it and am shooting for LTX Next Year followed by a Cruise out of Vancouver (With some Canadian A&W and All Dressed and Ketchup Chips in between)

Stay Strong Brotha

[bandainamcofan]

1 minute ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

From what we've seen so far, LMG management was made aware of it Friday/over the weekend. So we don't even know what their public response would have been.  What GN did here was the equivalent of hitting the horn on the car and shouting for the pedestrian to get out of the way instead of braking.

Frankly it never even should have happened, so being mad at GN for reporting it is just deflection.

[JoshuaScholar]

While my initial reaction was to be disappointed in Steve for the title of the piece, when I actually watched it, I decided it was 100% justified.

 

Linus went total egotistical douch on Billet.  I guess even the best of us have our days when we screw someone over.  Even Canadians!

 

It was all justified.

[Isaac King]

Look hear me out. Hot takes:

 

1. LTT's content and why they can grow to 15M subs: they are fun to watch. Sure they are jank but they are also entertaining. It's easier to follow LTT's content rather than GN's content because GN just goes to rant about numbers bla. Those things gets really boring. I tried watching GN's video and could never finish one. With LTT's? I can binge them. It's the balance of content creation + being informative. 

2. GN's calling out ethical stuff: Let's face it. If you don't have solid bullets to shoot, you go cry "OH ETHICS". I work in research and I absolutely hate it when people quote "ETHICS" to me. If ethic is important, there will be laws and rules governing it. It's a more like "I told you so" situation right now whenever someone quote ethics but they didn't do anything to intervene it. And here's why I think, ethics is bullshit from a research perspective:

• It can slow down research. Ethical considerations can require anyone to spend more time and resources on planning and conducting their research, which can delay the publication of their findings. You know what happens when you delay your findings? People snipe your work and steals it and publishes it. Screw those ethics committee.
• It can limit the scope of research. Some ethical considerations may prevent us from conducting certain types of research, even if those studies have the potential to yield important scientific knowledge. 
• It can lead to censorship. In some cases, ethical concerns may lead to the censorship of scientific research. For example, governments may censor research that they deem to be too sensitive or controversial. This can prevent scientists from sharing their findings with the public and can hinder the progress of science.

3. Im not going fanboy on LTT or hate on GN. What I'm saying is:

This is what is happening and everyone is so caught up with some stupid hot takes.