What do we do now?

[kazaakas]

1 hour ago, Guy Games said:

Thats understandable and I completely see your point. I don't know but my guess would be that potentially someone took James to one side after and said something about it being wrong to him. Punishments and disciplinaries are very rarely done openly though so we can only speculate.

Even if that did happen, the thing is, Madison stated that the harassment kept happening despite her speaking up about it to HR. This together with James' extremely poorly timed joke in the leaked harassment meeting recording, makes it seem very likely to me that he couldn't care less about (sexual) harassment in the workplace.

[Fingernoodle Donut]

3 minutes ago, hansthegerman said:

I think they at least could've removed Luke's joke, that should've been possible to do.

 

They didn't remove it, which shows their indifference.

 

It's time for LMG to grow up from the sophomoric behavior and unprofessional attitudes. If they don't pivot, their reputation will continue to sink.

[iLikeBananas]

38 minutes ago, Gus Pyles said:

It's not a genuine apology if it's an attempt to make money. Stop making bad excuses for others just because "they're a business". GN found it in their budget to make a video without monetizing it. LMG could too, as demonstrated by the fact that they turned off the monetization after enough many people screamed at them about it.

 

It can be a genuine apology and make money at the same time, which is the reasonably thing to do as a business in my opinion. Linus invested so much money in this lab for a reason. They want to deliver accurate data. They may have failed to do so until now but I am sure it would have changed in the future. It's not easy to structure such a big company. Linus has shown his Integrity a lot in the past by firing bad sponsors and being very transparent. Because of that I believe him when he says that didn't mean any harm.

 

38 minutes ago, Gus Pyles said:

Well, frankly you're sounding like a fanboy who cannot see any fault in the subject of their fandom if you're immediately blaming everyone else for "bad faith" for daring to criticize Linus's clear deflection and lack of sincere apology. I've never been a biggest fan of Linus and LMG, because of the issues raised - their data sucks, and they don't seem like a healthy place to work. I'd love to see them fix these issues, make an actual apology, fix their issues, start behaving like adults in a 100+ person company, and produce good quality content.

 

I am not blaming everyone here. Linus was always very open to criticism in the past and I think he handles the situation very well. I brought up "bad faith" because both this forum, and the LTT sub is full of posts by new members, who I am assume are not fans to begin with and enjoy seeing Linus burn.

 

People have accused Linus of being a Nvidia and Apple shill in the past when he is clearly not. If you watched a lot of his content, you know that he is not and has called out both of these companies a lot. This is why I assume that some of the criticism is made by people who don't like him in the first place, with the intention of driving new fans away.

 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Gus Pyles said:

• Not listening to employees, e.g. when a large number of them are saying they're rushing

 

I believe that this was about to change with the new CEO hire. Right now They have to work extra hard to bring back some of the money they invested into the labs.

 

 

38 minutes ago, Gus Pyles said:

• Ethical issues with conflicts of interest due to e.g. Framework and Noctua

Linus has always been very transparent about his position with Framework and always discloses his investment when he reviews their products. He also reviewed alternatives to framework in a transparent way. Additionally, Linus does not own any AMD or Nvidia shares to be able to stay neutral, despite knowing that those would skyrocket. 

 

I see no ethical issues here at all and believe that Linus is able to objectively review laptops and fans.

 

38 minutes ago, Gus Pyles said:

• Making bad excuses for their mistakes and deflecting when "apologizing" - which they continued to do in this non-apology, Linus didn't make a single moment on camera before doing this, and then immediately continued complaining about how "hard it is" to listen to random internet trolls

 

He did admit when he was wrong in the past, like with the warranty issues they had with their store. Took him a while because he was of the opinion that he earned our trust, but he did end up admitting that he was wrong.

[public-file-6521]

29 minutes ago, Fingernoodle Donut said:

 

You're free to see things that way. Having a one-day spike in views doesn't sustain a company. I think you're upset with the message and attacking the messenger.

I'm only commenting here to say that GN stood to gain, and did gain, significantly more than a one-day spike in views. His subscriber base increased by ~90,000 from August 10-16 according to socialblade. That is a 4.5% jump in subscibers in a matter of days, and a 900% increase over his usual weekly subscriber gain. Gamers Nexus' name recognition has also skyrocketed due to how widely this controversey has been reported. I have my own opinions about the motives behind Gamers Nexus' actions, but they're not relevant here. All I'm saying is that their videos were a fairly huge business success, even despite the first video lacking monetization. 

[gargamel314]

I've been watching LTT since the early days, but the truth is, LTT actually was like my introduction to other tech YouTubers, including GamersNexus, and I've grown to love all of them, and I always enjoyed the cooperative nature of all the tech channels. This chain of events has really hurt to watch progress. Today I just unsubscribed from ALL my tech channels because this topic is all anyone wants to talk about, and I'm sick of hearing about it.

 

This week has actually made me pretty sad. I get all the allegations. Of course, the stuff with Madison Reeves that just surfaced was shocking. I want to set this apart from everything else that I'm talking about, so please hear me out.

 

I am just totally blown away by just how vicious and resentful all the feedback has been. Yeah, mistakes were made, and at their worst, it was driven by carelessness, and lack of respect for Billet's prototype, which I get. There was no presence of malice or foul play here, just mostly lack of attention. So yeah, mistakes were made, it's been made crystal clear, and the people at LTT seem to have gotten the message. You all are ready to crucify Linus and all of the employees at LMG, but can you just acknowledge for a minute that LMG has done far more good than harm over its time? I've learned a lot of great skills, and it's helped to promote other tech companies and bring it into the limelight. I seriously bought an Intel Arc A770 because of info I got from this channel, and I'm not the least bit sorry. I do wish they would focus more on the "tech tips" stuff and less on the gear that only multi-millionaires can dare afford, but I'm gonna keep watching them after this.

 

As far as their workplace environment and sexual harassment goes, I don't really feel comfortable discussing this with anyone on these forums, and I'm just gonna say it's not the least bit acceptable for any company to tolerate or enable, and I think they are all learning a really tough lesson here, but it WILL be learned. I hope that Madison receives whatever relief or compensation she's entitled to from what she's been through. But there's still this disturbing element of deep resentment from everyone that just doesn't make sense, and it's been going on for a long time, it's not new at all or specific to this week.  It's toxic. I left the LinusTechTips subreddit a couple months ago because of such HATRED over something Linus said on the WAN show about unionizing, and it was misinterpreted and taken to such extremes. Why do these people watch the channel if they hate it so much? I just don't understand.

 

I do hope that LMG recovers from this and continues to make excellent content, and I hope we are able to enjoy it again.

[Blahx]

17 minutes ago, gargamel314 said:

I've been watching LTT since the early days, but the truth is, LTT actually was like my introduction to other tech YouTubers, including GamersNexus, and I've grown to love all of them, and I always enjoyed the cooperative nature of all the tech channels. This chain of events has really hurt to watch progress. Today I just unsubscribed from ALL my tech channels because this topic is all anyone wants to talk about, and I'm sick of hearing about it.

 

This week has actually made me pretty sad. I get all the allegations. Of course, the stuff with Madison Reeves that just surfaced was shocking. I want to set this apart from everything else that I'm talking about, so please hear me out.

 

I am just totally blown away by just how vicious and resentful all the feedback has been. Yeah, mistakes were made, and at their worst, it was driven by carelessness, and lack of respect for Billet's prototype, which I get. There was no presence of malice or foul play here, just mostly lack of attention. So yeah, mistakes were made, it's been made crystal clear, and the people at LTT seem to have gotten the message. You all are ready to crucify Linus and all of the employees at LMG, but can you just acknowledge for a minute that LMG has done far more good than harm over its time? I've learned a lot of great skills, and it's helped to promote other tech companies and bring it into the limelight. I seriously bought an Intel Arc A770 because of info I got from this channel, and I'm not the least bit sorry. I do wish they would focus more on the "tech tips" stuff and less on the gear that only multi-millionaires can dare afford, but I'm gonna keep watching them after this.

 

As far as their workplace environment and sexual harassment goes, I don't really feel comfortable discussing this with anyone on these forums, and I'm just gonna say it's not the least bit acceptable for any company to tolerate or enable, and I think they are all learning a really tough lesson here, but it WILL be learned. I hope that Madison receives whatever relief or compensation she's entitled to from what she's been through. But there's still this disturbing element of deep resentment from everyone that just doesn't make sense, and it's been going on for a long time, it's not new at all or specific to this week.  It's toxic. I left the LinusTechTips subreddit a couple months ago because of such HATRED over something Linus said on the WAN show about unionizing, and it was misinterpreted and taken to such extremes. Why do these people watch the channel if they hate it so much? I just don't understand.

 

I do hope that LMG recovers from this and continues to make excellent content, and I hope we are able to enjoy it again.

80% of things said on reddit wouldn't be spoken to a person face to face.  it is what it is, internet muscles.   This also has  that bleeding chicken thing to it, everyone peck away until LMG's dead.  

[Nodachi]

On 8/16/2023 at 4:37 AM, Texbobcat said:

You can't say "I don't give a shit" then 30 minutes later say "I give a shit" you already explained how you felt your voice on the matter only changed because of outrage

It's hard to take criticism. Especially when the people giving it don't know the entire picture. While quite a few of the criticisms being leveraged were valid. There were also a lot of ridiculous accusations being thrown. Which has a tendency to put people on the defensive. It's important to acknowledge that while most of us do come from a place of concern and do generally hope that they succeed. We are essentially questioning the character of not only Linus, but his life's work. His defensiveness is understandable, but just because it's understandable. doesn't' make it ok. Coming away from situations like these with nothing but continued constant criticism; despite them taking these criticisms to heart. Doesn't leave much motivation for them to listen in the future. So just remember to have some empathy.

[ewitte]

There never needed to be this much drama...

[Woofer21]

16 minutes ago, ewitte said:

There never needed to be this much drama...

Its the internet, you take things and run with it here. 

[mdk777]

1 hour ago, Blahx said:

80% of things said on reddit wouldn't be spoken to a person face to face.  it is what it is, internet muscles.   This also has  that bleeding chicken thing to it, everyone peck away until LMG's dead.  

Wow, you think people are that spineless.?? 100% of what I post I often say to people face to face.

Yeah, you have care that words have meaning and consequences....but how will companies /people know that their product is not meeting your standards if you don't complain.

So in case anyone is wondering...

 

The correct response to the criticism at the start was

.Hey thanks for caring enough about our accuracy to bring this to our attention!!! We really appreciate both our FANS and our crtitcs helping us improve!!

 

BANG.

Done.

 

You acknowledge mistake are made,pledge to do better and completely disarm the haters...

IT is really that easy

[focuspuller]

So what do we do now?

[Woofer21]

1 minute ago, focuspuller said:

So what do we do now?

Wait, all we can do.

[pologoalie8908]

Even two months ago there were stirring from the community that Quality is more important than quantity....but apparently fell on deaf ears.

 

[exsin]

1 hour ago, Barkermn01 said:

...

Nopes A merchant (LTT) can choose a platform (Shopify in his case) that fits his needs. 

 

Shopify has proven not to respect 3D-secure

Merchant should consider moving platform because they preach security.

 

It's that simple.

 

[Itismrwonderful]

How much did it cost Linus for his spine removal surgery? 
 

thanks

[ReverendTechie]

I just recently joined the forums (fantastic timing, right?) and I understand that this video has been talked to death.  My day-job is very much connected to large companies and organizations which are very effective at spinning bad publicity or burying tough headlines (the day-job is in engineering, not my ministerial work as the screen name implies).  What LMG put out with this video was solid, IMHO.  I understand that many viewers may have emotionally wanted to see something different, but I believe they did an effective job of providing as must information and ownership as possible without succumbing to public self-flagellation.  

 

Were there random jokes?  Yes, but sometimes you need something to cut the dry explanations to maintain viewer retention.  Was their self-promotion?  I mean, not really.  I've seen some individual criticize the random "LTTStore.com" jokes, but those came across more as jokes than promotion.  Are there nuances to the situation which could have been addressed?  Sure, but nuance is... well... it's nuanced and requires a lot of individual attention.  They hit the broad strokes and that's what you want to see.  They provided explanation without letting that explanation convert into an excuse.  That's a hard balance, and some will see any form of explanation as an excuse, but I think they struck it.

 

The comment I made on their YouTube video was "Now the ball is in their court".  They've said they are going to revamp how they do things, re-evaluate their processes, and learn from this.  No amount of pontification or editorializing from the outside world is going to change the fact that the onus is now on them to prove their promises mean something.  

 

What I believe they did that was quite brilliant was publicly state that they were stepping back for a full week.  I hope they do.  It would be really awesome if "big tech news" broke and they were able to demonstrate restraint to prove they mean business by NOT uploading a new vid.  The momentum of this event is clearly being driven by drama and a desire to air every grievance against LMG by proxy of the current headlines.  I am not saying that I don't think LMG has been party to some terrible things... it sounds like there may be a few skeletons to evict from their closets... but it's important for all of us to recognize that the driving forces between the emotion and angst seen in the social space is largely due to knee-jerk reactions and an audience desire to see results. 

 

Sometimes you don't get what you want; sometimes we have to wait and see if LMG really means what they say.  I think it's hyperbole to suggest that they are "done for" or that GN has somehow destroyed LMG.  When you step back and look at what LMG did, it was unethical and some of the other allegations floating around are mortifying, but the reality is that none of this is career-ending for a multi-million dollar media group.  The question isn't whether they survive or not; it's whether they survive with their soul in-tact.

[Floor]

I like your videos. I don't even care.

[sercasti]

Basic Ethics common sense in media, before you publish something (video, article, blog), you reach out to that person/company/actor to tell them about it, and give them a heads up.

 

Publishing a video highlighting every error and mistake from LTT without calling Linus first was a jerk move by GN, and it means they wanted to create this crappy situation.

 

Intentions do matter... accidentally screwing up some graphs or failing to return a GPU because of a miscommunication is one thing, but intentionally publishing a hate piece is wrong, in my opinion

[Nicnac]

James 'sex joke' has been overly dramatized imo. dunno about the rest, still catching up

[GuiltySpark_]

24 minutes ago, ReverendTechie said:

I just recently joined the forums (fantastic timing, right?) and I understand that this video has been talked to death.  My day-job is very much connected to large companies and organizations which are very effective at spinning bad publicity or burying tough headlines (the day-job is in engineering, not my ministerial work as the screen name implies).  What LMG put out with this video was solid, IMHO.  I understand that many viewers may have emotionally wanted to see something different, but I believe they did an effective job of providing as must information and ownership as possible without succumbing to public self-flagellation.  

 

Were there random jokes?  Yes, but sometimes you need something to cut the dry explanations to maintain viewer retention.  Was their self-promotion?  I mean, not really.  I've seen some individual criticize the random "LTTStore.com" jokes, but those came across more as jokes than promotion.  Are there nuances to the situation which could have been addressed?  Sure, but nuance is... well... it's nuanced and requires a lot of individual attention.  They hit the broad strokes and that's what you want to see.  They provided explanation without letting that explanation convert into an excuse.  That's a hard balance, and some will see any form of explanation as an excuse, but I think they struck it.

 

The comment I made on their YouTube video was "Now the ball is in their court".  They've said they are going to revamp how they do things, re-evaluate their processes, and learn from this.  No amount of pontification or editorializing from the outside world is going to change the fact that the onus is now on them to prove their promises mean something.  

 

What I believe they did that was quite brilliant was publicly state that they were stepping back for a full week.  I hope they do.  It would be really awesome if "big tech news" broke and they were able to demonstrate restraint to prove they mean business by NOT uploading a new vid.  The momentum of this event is clearly being driven by drama and a desire to air every grievance against LMG by proxy of the current headlines.  I am not saying that I don't think LMG has been party to some terrible things... it sounds like there may be a few skeletons to evict from their closets... but it's important for all of us to recognize that the driving forces between the emotion and angst seen in the social space is largely due to knee-jerk reactions and an audience desire to see results. 

 

Sometimes you don't get what you want; sometimes we have to wait and see if LMG really means what they say.  I think it's hyperbole to suggest that they are "done for" or that GN has somehow destroyed LMG.  When you step back and look at what LMG did, it was unethical and some of the other allegations floating around are mortifying, but the reality is that none of this is career-ending for a multi-million dollar media group.  The question isn't whether they survive or not; it's whether they survive with their soul in-tact.

Incredibly well written. Really should just be a thread ender right there. 

[MaxHeadroom75]

I don't like posting here generaly, but here I am.

 

I am going to say just this.  I do not know if the aligations are true or false, I know that Linus can have a bit of an ego, but we all do.  there were a lot of mistakes made here, I will not defend anyone.  

 

but the one thing I really want to say, I get that Gamers Nexus has the right to talk about what he saw, thinks or feels.  but jebus man, did that video have to be 44 minutes!   after about 10 min, you are just whining.  was he right? perhaps, could he be wrong, also perhaps.  but 44 min, I just didn't have the time to sit and listen to something that he could have done in 15.  

 

 

[gergy008]

On 8/16/2023 at 11:04 AM, exsin said:

Made an account specially for this

 

I'm done with LTT since they completely fobbed me off when they didn't require 3D secure for my CC payment which is mandatory in the country where I live... They pretended it was Shopify's fault whahahaha.

That's literally shopifys fault.

[ReHWolution]

14 minutes ago, sercasti said:

Basic Ethics common sense in media, before you publish something (video, article, blog), you reach out to that person/company/actor to tell them about it, and give them a heads up.

 

Publishing a video highlighting every error and mistake from LTT without calling Linus first was a jerk move by GN, and it means they wanted to create this crappy situation.

 

Intentions do matter... accidentally screwing up some graphs or failing to return a GPU because of a miscommunication is one thing, but intentionally publishing a hate piece is wrong, in my opinion

Yup. Like it or not, integrity in journalism doesn't exclude a "journalist" (last time I checked he doesn't have a degree, therefore the quotes) reaching out to the involved party. That's the worst part of it all: he's being called once again a "Tech Jesus" but integrity is far from how he behaved. Once again, Billet Labs' situation is bad as it is, but calling out mistakes in videos charts, that ultimately don't change the review outcome (except for 2 notable exception, that are the C2077 result with the 4090 and the Noctua coolers), is some kind of childish attack on the notes of "hey look, our videos are better and we have less people than you".

90K subscribers more on their YT channel, 2 videos in 2 days totaling 6 million views, both in their top 10 in terms of views, their patreon gaining +250 subs in just a couple of days (with revenue going up by 9% as shown https://graphtreon.com/creator/gamersnexus), this ain't integrity talking. This is a low blow because he (and HUB) got offended by Tim's comment regarding their methodology for reviews.

[richaoj]

On 8/16/2023 at 4:18 AM, Hazz3r said:

Typically emails between businesses are considered confidential. I am surprised they felt comfortable openly showing a screenshot.

Since when is an email you send to a media/journalism outfit "confidential" by default?  It isn't.  Nor are emails between companies confidential.  

[exsin]

32 minutes ago, gergy008 said:

That's literally shopifys fault.

He can literally move platform