Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[DeerDK]

1 minute ago, bandainamcofan said:

The simple fact they know each other personally. It can appear improper to report on someone you know, and reaching out to them might alter attempting to report straight facts. Again, I don't know why GN didn't reach out for comment. But they were never under any obligation to.

so its better to blindside him and LMG?? Remember: Steve stated a year ago that he has decided to treat LMG like any other company he reports on.

[Stark_Source21]

13 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.... 

The irony of telling Steve to slow down and think, while pumping out 25 videos a week, with your staff publicly asking to slow down, and increasing amounts of errors and mistakes taking place, mistakes that impact people's lives and livelihoods. Only to then bury your response to criticism in a forum the public barely knows of... 

 

Man, Linus, I've watched the Wan show every week for over 7 or 8 years, I think, and today at least, with the way you're responding to all this, I don't know if I'm up for watching it anymore. 

 

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

12 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

GN did not make allegations or claims, they mostly just summarized facts that are already available on the internet for everyone to see.

They strongly suggested that Linus (and by extension LMG) was an Asus shill, amongst other things.

[RedRound2]

Edit: My response is coming after reading a lot of subreddits and youtube comments. I have not gone over the 85 page long LTT forum, but I am assuming the general response here is also a negative but slightly toned-down version. Anyway I decided to repost the below comment from Reddit because I feel the criticism has been blown out of proportion

 

EDIT: Things have unfortunately turned worse and I cannot in good conscience support Linus and LMG anymore after Billet released their statement & and after Madison wrote her thread and experiences working at LMG (if true).

 

I will leave my original post below, but my stance has changed completely. While probably not malice, Linus got consumed in the capitalistic and inhumane system that he so often likes to diss about other large companies

 

EDIT 2: The apology video is out. And honestly, they are taking steps to rectify the mistakes in videos and Billet labs was just a series of unfortunate incidents (which I emphasise does happen, especially in large companies). I think everyone should just calm the fuck down and move on. The LTT store plug and screwdriver were just light-hearted jokes and people going mad over those, for an issue that is far far from life-altering, should really just go outside and touch grass.

 

The only thing that remains is the Madison issues. At this point in time, it's just hearsay and we don't know the actual story unless someone else corroborates the same. And till then I will treat it as such.

 

== Orgiinal post ==

 

It's so fucking sad to see how the community has completely turned on Linus over THIS, of all things Yes, they made some mistakes. Billet Labs was in particular horrifying. But it was so obvious that there was some miscommunication and it wasn't malicious. And Linus has claimed that they were and are taking care of it. That should've been the end. It happened, actions were taken to resolve it, now fucking move on.

 

Do you know what my problem with this community reaction is? Linus has been very transparent about sponsorships and the offers he got to acquire the company and numerous other things. And that VERY TRANSPARENCY is what is biting him in the back. Look at how many comments here talk about the 100 million dollars in a mocking way (all over Reddit and youtube). Had he not shared, YOU GUYS WOULDN'T HAVE SUCH STRONG AMMUNITION TO hit back at him. And it's not like he has 100 million dollars. It was turned down. It was potential and nothing more. Just because someone is worth so much on paper due to Equity does not actually mean they have that much money to spend. This is exactly the sort of 5-year-old thinking you expect from the internet and it's sad that a generally more informed tech community has fallen prey to this.

 

About the release schedules. LTT forté has always been to release a video daily. Changing that release schedule is basically changing your entire identity. There's a reason why large companies stick to the trends they've set. Brand identity is an important aspect despite how objectively stupid it is. We as humans are stupid but we like patterns. We just love 'em. Changing the course now would hamper LTT. Maybe not much, but enough. So my suggestion here is that rather than focus on making more channels, maybe set more eyes and more people on one LTT project. It's not easy and it will require a lot of extensive processes and documentation, but it's the only way to avoid human error-like mistakes as seen a lot.

 

Linus made mistakes. Not intentional of course for the most part. For the cooler one, he has admitted that he approached it in the wrong way (basically evaluating it as a product to buy/avoid, rather than the tech showcase). Now I do have my fair share of issues with Linus and his ways of thinking, don't get me wrong. Sometimes he speaks tone-deaf about huge corporations like Apple when he himself goes through the same thing as LMG. There are so many times where merch prices have been discussed and he has admitted to extreme complexities around it but completely shuns away the 1000x more complex devices phone design because Apple has multi-billion dollars in its bank. That kind of a slight difference between my thing and your thing is a fair criticism of Linus's character and it has seeped into all this a little bit as well.

 

But the rest of the things he said are fair. He admitted to the mistakes, he has always said the lab is just growing and most of the testing is not final. Gamers Nexus should've approached Linus before publishing the video (that's just basic respect man).

 

All in all, this has been extremely sad and I'm sure Linus and his team did not have a great day today. Especially and probably after reading through the extremely toxic community backlash. If I was in his place, I'm sure part of my mind would be like fuck this ungrateful community, I have enough money to retire and rather spend it time with my family than work hard for pretty much only toxic criticisms and ungratefulness. And at that point, we all lose.

 

@LinusTech I'm sorry you're going through this. I hope you can weed out the unnecessary toxicity from the community and creator alike and just take the small sliver of constructive feedback to work on. I hope you don't lose many sleep over this.

[MotherboardsInThePark]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

so its better to blindside him and LMG?? Remember: Steve stated a year ago that he has decided to treat LMG like any other company he reports on.

After seeing Linus' response, can you blame Steve for not reaching out privately first? Why would he? Linus is clearly unable to take criticism, be it constructive or not.

[Dom1252]

Just now, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

They strongly suggested that Linus (and by extension LMG) was an Asus shill, amongst other things.

ok and for what reason they should ask LMG about this? 

I mean, they just pointed out what is obvious from LMG videos, there's not "investigation" it's just sum up of what LMG employees and owners said in videos

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, maplepants said:

And I guess GN disagrees with the stylistic choice of on-screen corrections.

There have been too many corrections. They should be validating that the information is correct before posting it. We're literally at a point where we just shrug off their inaccuracies - the Labs is supposed to be this super accurate method of testing. They're supposed to be the ones that get it all right with fuckin amazing testing....but they're not. 

 

Every time anyone in a video says "we had this tested at the Lab", it gives it a lot of weight, like they have some amazing data with amazing methodology. So they should be held to a high standard, and anyone who shrugs it off is doing themselves, the community, and LMG a disservice. And when they make corrections, then they need to deal with it and perform a proper correction. 

[MotherboardsInThePark]

2 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

It's so fucking sad to see how the community has completely turned on Linus over THIS, of all things Yes, they made some mistakes. Billet Labs was in particular horrifying. But it was so obvious that there was some miscommunication and it wasn't malicious. And Linus has claimed that they were and are taking care of it. That should've been the end. It happened, actions were taken to resolve it, now fucking move on.

The community is mad about Linus' response. He is acting like a child. And you're acting like a fanboy.

[Godiwa]

1 minute ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

They strongly suggested that Linus (and by extension LMG) was an Asus shill, amongst other things.

when you blindly (and unrightfully so) praise a product because "they made other good products" while totally forgetting all the crap Asus has pulled... that is the definition of shilling...

[Texbobcat]

1 minute ago, RedRound2 said:

It's so fucking sad to see how the community has completely turned on Linus over THIS, of all things Yes, they made some mistakes. Billet Labs was in particular horrifying. But it was so obvious that there was some miscommunication and it wasn't malicious. And Linus has claimed that they were and are taking care of it. That should've been the end. It happened, actions were taken to resolve it, now fucking move on.

 

Do you know what my problem with this community reaction is? Linus has been very transparent about sponsorships and the offers he got to acquire the company and numerous other things. And that VERY TRANSPARENCY is what is biting him in the back. Look at how many comments here talk about the 100 million dollars in a mocking way (all over Reddit and youtube). Had he not shared, YOU GUYS WOULDN'T HAVE SUCH STRONG AMMUNITION TO hit back at him. And it's not like he has 100 million dollars. It was turned down. It was potential and nothing more. Just because someone is worth so much on paper due to Equity does not actually mean they have that much money to spend. This is exactly the sort of 5-year-old thinking you expect from the internet and it's sad that a generally more informed tech community has fallen prey to this.

 

About the release schedules. LTT forté has always been to release a video daily. Changing that release schedule is basically changing your entire identity. There's a reason why large companies stick to the trends they've set. Brand identity is an important aspect despite how objectively stupid it is. We as humans are stupid but we like patterns. We just love 'em. Changing the course now would hamper LTT. Maybe not much, but enough. So my suggestion here is that rather than focus on making more channels, maybe set more eyes and more people on one LTT project. It's not easy and it will require a lot of extensive processes and documentation, but it's the only way to avoid human error-like mistakes as seen a lot.

 

Linus made mistakes. Not intentional of course for the most part. For the cooler one, he has admitted that he approached it in the wrong way (basically evaluating it as a product to buy/avoid, rather than the tech showcase). Now I do have my fair share of issues with Linus and his ways of thinking, don't get me wrong. Sometimes he speaks tone-deaf about huge corporations like Apple when he himself goes through the same thing as LMG. There are so many times where merch prices have been discussed and he has admitted to extreme complexities around it but completely shuns away the 1000x more complex devices phone design because Apple has multi-billion dollars in its bank. That kind of a slight difference between my thing and your thing is a fair criticism of Linus's character and it has seeped into all this a little bit as well.

 

But the rest of the things he said are fair. He admitted to the mistakes, he has always said the lab is just growing and most of the testing is not final. Gamers Nexus should've approached Linus before publishing the video (that's just basic respect man).

 

All in all, this has been extremely sad and I'm sure Linus and his team did not have a great day today. Especially and probably after reading through the extremely toxic community backlash. If I was in his place, I'm sure part of my mind would be like fuck this ungrateful community, I have enough money to retire and rather spend it time with my family than work hard for pretty much only toxic criticisms and ungratefulness. And at that point, we all lose.

 

@LinusTech I'm sorry you're going through this. I hope you can weed out the unnecessary toxicity from the community and creator alike and just take the small sliver of constructive feedback to work on. I hope you don't lose many sleep over this.

Linus destroys a company 3x, steals their property and somehow fails to return it in an entire month, gas lights his community, Degrades the company, "I'm sorry for what you are going through"

[bandainamcofan]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

so its better to blindside him and LMG?? Remember: Steve stated a year ago that he has decided to treat LMG like any other company he reports on.

I don't wish to speak for you, but your language suggests you view this as an act of malice. Another interpretation is that this is done out of tough love. Criticism can be brutal, but sometimes it needs to be said. Why GN did or didn't do something they weren't obligated to do is irrelevant to the points raised.

[DeerDK]

Just now, MotherboardsInThePark said:

After seeing Linus' response, can you blame Steve for not reaching out privately first? Why would he? Linus is clearly unable to take criticism, be it constructive or not.

Irrelevant. "He may be mad at me for posting 40 min vid about all the stuff I think he is doing wrong" sounds like a pretty weak argument. The backlash isn't excactly going to be smaller if you do it "out of the blue"
He wants to treat LMG as a company like any other he reports on. Then he can do the bloody foodwork required. He could even have reached out to the new CEO instead. Doesn't have to be Linus in person.

[Stark_Source21]

9 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

 

Why not say this on a more public-facing platform? I feel like this would be part of an excellent response to GN's  criticisms, I genuinely baffled that you're hiding this on a mostly unheard forum. 

[MotherboardsInThePark]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

Irrelevant. "He may be mad at me for posting 40 min vid about all the stuff I think he is doing wrong" sounds like a pretty weak argument. The backlash isn't excactly going to be smaller if you do it "out of the blue"
He wants to treat LMG as a company like any other he reports on. Then he can do the bloody foodwork required. He could even have reached out to the new CEO instead. Doesn't have to be Linus in person.

It really doesn't matter, mate. The facts are facts and Linus has a hard time dealing with reality.

[treestain]

45 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Like what for example? If somebody with such a big outreach as LMG puts your credibility in jeopardy because of their own wrong assumptions whether intentionally or unintentionally, you let it slide?

And as I mentioned earlier, I agree they should reach out to each other but neither LMG and then neither GN did so it does not really matter in the end. At least we have a fun nifty topic on our hands and I don't think it's harmful to either of GN, LMG, etc... they can actually use this community cry out as a stepping stone for improvement now if they are willing to reflect on how they did/do stuff.

I never said he should "let it slide."

 

LMG did not put their credibility in "jeopardy." It was one employee, who got his facts wrong, who was in a 20 second clip on a Twitter post. There wasn't an hour long video about Gamers Nexus attacking the company as a whole on the LTT Channel. I didnt even hear about it until now, same with plenty of others. Gamers Nexus could've replied to the post, they could've reached out to Linus directly as Linus is very quick to fix and resolve things, but they didnt. They pitifully lit a community on fire hoping for their competition to go with it. This isnt a fun and nifty topic, this is bad.

 

LMG didn't need to reach out for comment, this was a stupid 30 second rant by an employee, not a hour long documentary.

 

Yes LMG needs to improve and receive valid criticism. As us all humans need to. But lighting his community on fire and making him and his entire company questionable does nothing but harm. Read this forums comment section. People are outraged and pissed and are canceling their subscriptions and attacking Linus and his "shills." Again, over a short clip on Twitter by a random employee. This whole thing is ridiculous. This wasn't journalism nor criticism, this was a successful attempt to recreate past drama and hopefully burn the company down with it so there won't be as much competition with GN over a stupid clip on Twitter, which again, could've been cleared up very quickly and easily. Linus didn't use his time and money with writers and editors to make a movie length attack on GN, this whole thing is because of a clip on Twitter... Absolutely pathetic.

 

The simple, TL;DR, is that Gamers Nexus needed extra fries with his salt.

[Dom1252]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

Irrelevant. "He may be mad at me for posting 40 min vid about all the stuff I think he is doing wrong" sounds like a pretty weak argument. The backlash isn't excactly going to be smaller if you do it "out of the blue"
He wants to treat LMG as a company like any other he reports on. Then he can do the bloody foodwork required. He could even have reached out to the new CEO instead. Doesn't have to be Linus in person.

what is the reason why should GN reach out? 

just because Linus said so? 

 

there's nobody in this thread that gave a single valid reason for GN to reach out to LMG before publishing this video, it's all just "well they should" 

[E-Waster]

8 minutes ago, GameFox said:

Do you believe if LTT took more time between videos, they would be able to fix Labs as a whole? When each of the employees addressed that they feel the videos are rushed, that should have been a warning sign for Linus to step back and consider the importance of accuracy rather than pushing out videos for profit.

Absolutely. If you’re going to put the future of your company on Labs, you’ve got to pull out the stops to make it work.

 

The long term success of LTT does not rest on how many Techlinked videos they can squeeze out each month. They need to dial back the video quantity.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

1 minute ago, Dom1252 said:

ok and for what reason they should ask LMG about this? 

I mean, they just pointed out what is obvious from LMG videos, there's not "investigation" it's just sum up of what LMG employees and owners said in videos

Because that's literally attacking someone's credibility and not giving them a chance to defend themselves?

 

1 minute ago, Godiwa said:

when you blindly (and unrightfully so) praise a product because "they made other good products" while totally forgetting all the crap Asus has pulled... that is the definition of shilling...

That's a low bar for entry to shilling. Say someone talks about VHB tape and goes: this tape is from 3M, so it's probably good. That ain't shilling, that's just going by 3M's track record of actually delivering OK quality products, and that's entirely separate from the countless environmental disasters they've caused and the fact that they ship products that could be labelled as chemical weapons, because they do make pretty good tape on average.

[PhilGoodInc]

My take on the GN video:

Yes, the billet labs debacle is bad. LTT/LMG have stuffed up big with that one.

 

The errors seem very nitpicky. Yes there are errors, but the conclusions made are generally unaffected by these errors. I do agree there needs to be less errors, but the severity of them is blown way of proportion IMO.

 

The thing that bothers me about GN's video, it is posted under the guise of being unmonetised, and "This isn't drama", but at the same time, uses over the top phrases such as "desperately needed conversation" "complete chaos" "Irresponsible actions" "harmful information to viewers" "reckless, irresponsible and concerning". The first 1-2 minutes of the video also seems a bit petty and unprofessional, it starts the video on strange note, especially when they are insisting this isnt drama. To me, I can see through the whole "good guy Steve" act, this was all calculated. 

[Stark_Source21]

6 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

 

 

It's so fucking sad to see how the community has completely turned on Linus over THIS, of all things Yes, they made some mistakes. Billet Labs was in particular horrifying. But it was so obvious that there was some miscommunication and it wasn't malicious. And Linus has claimed that they were and are taking care of it. That should've been the end. It happened, actions were taken to resolve it, now fucking move on.

 

 

Yeah, no. I'm not going after Linus over these errors. I'm "going after" him for the way he's responding to critical feedback.  He's done this before, and he'll probably do it again - had a knee-jerk reaction to critical feedback that he often responds to better further down the line, because the community, his team, and Luke hold him to account. 

 

The system works. 

[Alex T88]

2 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

The community is mad about Linus' response. He is acting like a child. And you're acting like a fanboy.

Agreed. Linus should start acting like a business professional and not like some paranoid dictator, who thinks that everybody is out to get him. He is the image and the representative of a company among others. GN's video was about the bad practices in regards to LMG. Not how Linus runs his household. There should be a clear understanding of this aspect. 

[GameFox]

1 minute ago, RedRound2 said:

All in all, this has been extremely sad and I'm sure Linus and his team did not have a great day today. Especially and probably after reading through the extremely toxic community backlash. If I was in his place, I'm sure part of my mind would be like fuck this ungrateful community, I have enough money to retire and rather spend it time with my family than work hard for pretty much only toxic criticisms and ungratefulness. And at that point, we all lose.

I would agree that the some of the community has gone too far.

 

However, without criticism there is no change. As you stated, the majority of issues (besides the Billet Labs) are not earth shatteringly bad.

 

I believe your response undermines the severity of the arguably terrible response that Linus typed up. It did not paint a positive image of Linus himself. So, I would argue much of the forums responses are in backlash to Linus's response rather than the lack of quality in his videos.

[DeerDK]

Just now, bandainamcofan said:

I don't wish to speak for you, but your language suggests you view this as an act of malice. Another interpretation is that this is done out of tough love. Criticism can be brutal, but sometimes it needs to be said. Why GN did or didn't do something they weren't obligated to do is irrelevant to the points raised.

I have a feeling there is some sort of underlying conflict between GN and LMG, yes. Which makes it much more important to be formal and correct. Otherwise it turns into youtuber beef. And as I said. I do consider the critique legit, but to me not reaching out for comment is a pretty big faux pas for someone who wants to be seen as a serious journalist. Especially if there is the risk of the whole thing turning into a personal feud. And like LMG needs to be corrected for being sloppy with the data GN needs to be held to the standards they claim to operate under. 

[bandainamcofan]

1 minute ago, DeerDK said:

Then he can do the bloody foodwork required

This is the point I keep making: It was not, and is not, a requirement to reach out for comment. There is no breach of journalistic ethics in not reaching out for comment. The video was made in reply to comments made on public facing youtube videos. 

 

If you want to argue it was disproportionate to the comments made, I think that's a fair take. But to continually say he didn't do what he was supposed to do is flat out wrong.

[Vandor]

This witch hunt and all this fake outrage is insane. 

 

Nobody gave a damn about Billet Labs 2 days ago, in a month nobody will care again.

 

Truly don't believe LMG is out here pulling a rug out from under small businesses for a giggle because they sell overpriced products.

 

They made grave errors/mistakes/communications, it happens. They compensated Billet Labs (Allegedly).

 

Get over it.