My personal thoughts
At first it came off a bit whiney, but I watched the entire thing and I’m glad I did. It shows a pattern of carelessness and in some cases complete douchebaggery of LMG.
What they did to Billet Labs is absolutely un-fucking excusable. LMG and Linus, in particular, needs to be mercilessly shamed for that until Billet Labs gets a clear and unequivocal apology and paid restitution for damages. Fucking shameful. What a bunch of pricks.
Video Description
This video is not monetized. This video covers our serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of Linus Media Group, including Linus Tech Tips, ShortCircuit, and TechQuickie, particularly as it relates to rushing content out the door to favor – by staff’s own admission – quantity over quality. As the company continues to expand into its LTT Labs direction, the importance of accurate data increases; however, even as ‘only’ entertainment, there are still certain responsibilities to the consumer and the manufacturers to report fairly (and to have defined corrections processes in place). We tried to approach this as objectively as possible and hope that viewers are able to listen to the evidence we present, particularly as it relates to significant and frequent data errors that now present in nearly every technical review video.
The thumbnails LTT uses tells you everything you need to know about his content and company.
I’ve always found the titles to be clickbaity and uninformative. If I want to look up their videos again I would have no idea what the title is to look up.
It doesn’t help that the titles get changed a handful of times throughout the release day so even if you remember the name it may not be the same if you want to re-watch it.
Yeah I think LTT content has really declined over the years. They’re spread so thin now they’re churning out a bunch of low quality content rather than a few accurate and entertaining videos.
Nah, it’s always been shit.
this is a YouTube problem, not an LMG one unfortunately. nearly all successful creators will A/B test various titles and thumbnails until The Algorithm™ is happy
It’s called the Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect effect.
…and, of course, the current title of that video contains “unreasonably effective”, a meme, same as considered harmful.
Normal title: THE BEST THING EVER!!!
Dearrow title: device XYZ is a bit meh
To be fair, this is how the YouTube algorithm requires big channels to act to maximize views, ads, and money. They’ve got way too many people reliant on that income to do anything different than exactly what best optimization strategies work
If your organization is too big to act with integrity then maybe it’s time to downsize a bit.
big channels to act to maximize views, ads, and money
More proof LTT is just a corporate business shill
This is judging a book by its cover. Not really helpful to any discussion.
There are cases where a book’s content matches its cover. They are saying LTT is one of those cases
It’s been clear for quite a while that they’ve focused only on growth/expansion with more channels, the lab, so many new employees, etc and at the same time you can see the sloppiness getting worse with lack of preparation, lack of quality control to meet deadlines, etc.
The Billet Labs thing is absolutely inexcusable. Shitting on the product despite LMG being the one responsible for not even having the correct GPU for it, giving it a bad review, then doubling down when called out over a couple hundred bucks of time? The auctioned off prototype is so much worse as well. Not sure of the Canadian terms but in the US it’d potentially be theft by conversion. Literally sold someone else’s property. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and accept it as an accident, it seems like more evidence of whoever is running their logistics department being incompetent IMO.
One thing that bothers me about the billets stuff is they stand by their core point, which is that it’s a useless product.
But that’s not the only thing they’ve claimed. They also said it’s a bad product that doesn’t work properly, thus damaging the company’s reputation.
To most people that’s a significant difference for how they view the company:
“Useless” product that works well at what it does = hopefully this company will make something more relevant in future
“Useless” product that doesn’t even work properly = I’ll avoid this company in future
I would disagree. Linus has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth or probably say he phrases many of these discussions in very bad ways. You see this with him talking about “Is using adblocking piracy” or “Warranties are only trustworthy as the company you buy them for” (Trust me bro) or the many other controversial views he has had. Where at the face of it it looks pretty incendiary but if you ignore what he said initially and look at what he is actually meaning to say. I think the whole Billet labs’ cooler thing was a stupid video and they should have done it with a 3090 TI FE as it was meant for but Linus meant it was a “bad product” because its a $900 cooler for a last gen cooler on a 1800+ GPU. Anyone willing to spend that amount of money is probably going to spend it on the newest thing, that being the 4090. Now where this comes to bite Linus in the ass is they have a preorder for a 4090 fe (for the same price as the 3090 ti one) here Which is set to release around next month or November. Now its clear many things weren’t discussed but off the broken concepts that Linus was presented/or at least absorbed he isn’t wrong that noone would want a exotic cooler with a last gen gpu but its clear there was a major breakdown in the communication pipeline here.
Edit: Haven’t had any comments yet but I will say LTT really done fucked up with the whole auctioning off the prototype and its clear there is some issues with the organization of LTT. I don’t think they did this out of malice more they had a contact who didn’t talk to the logistics team or the team handling LTX. So out of mistake the prototype got sold even though they said they would send it back. That is pretty god damn egregious. I can understand why there was a fuck up but man they really screwed the pooch on this one.
I think needing to write a wall of text to say Linus said this but he actually meant… shows a need for Linus to move away from off the cuff segments, and stick to scripted content.
It’s not just a Linus thing, but for those who are strongly associated with a company brand it’s the better move to start distancing personal opinion pieces from what can be associated with the company. He’s not just some random employee of LTT who can have their thoughts hand waived away as not representing the views of the company. LTT has a way to go before everything stops being associated with Linus when it comes to the good or the bad.
How do they know it’s a bad product if they didn’t bother to test it under the conditions it was designed for? It was a prototype, not a final product. In the original video, Linus is surprised (and maybe a bit upset) that the other guy didn’t grab the right card or even notice that he didn’t get the right card.
And to the point of the comment you replied to: it doesn’t matter what the cost of the cooler was. If it was the best of the best then it was worth showing that. LTT does not seem to have a consistent viewpoint of “practicality”. Even if we ignore that, saying “this product isn’t worth the cost” is very different than the “useless” comment they ended up with.
The whole situation is what I like to refer to as “fractally wrong”. No matter the perspective, how close or far away, it’s always wrong.
Again if you are charging 800+ dollars and again to Linus’ point of view he wasn’t aware of the 4090 FE edition of this cooler, doesn’t make sense for buyers. Most of the video they are complimenting the machining of the piece.
The best case scenario for this thing is the temps are slightly better but the experience of building with it is a
nightmare and the advantages over literally any other solution are negligible it’s a cool concept but unfortunately I think that there are very few buyers for it with that said you know if it tickles your fancy but you’re thinking yeah cool idea but maybe if it was a little more like this I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys could basically make just about anything for you they’ve definitely got the manufacturing chopsI don’t think they ever say useless in the original video. Could you provide me a link of them doing so but gave it a quick scan via transcript and not seeing it. To me they just say its a bad product (with Linus’ limited knowledge of said product).
he wasn’t aware of the 4090 FE edition of this cooler
Yes he was, he commented on it in the original video, which the GN video included.
I don’t think they ever say useless in the original video.
My bad, I should not have quoted a word that they didn’t use directly. But still, his final conclusion, as included in the GN video, is that nobody should buy it, and not just because of cost.
Yes he was, he commented on it in the original video, which the GN video included.
maybe I’m blind deaf and stupid but the link for that say nothing about Linus knowing about the 4090 FE edition of the cooler. Just that they used a 4090 in the original video and that was bad, which I again agree with and said he probably should have used a 3090TI.
My bad, I should not have quoted a word that they didn’t use directly. But still, his final conclusion, as included in the GN video, is that nobody should buy it, and not just because of cost.
Because its a 800+ dollar of copper for a gpu and cpu cooling. Even if it was 20 degrees lower, you are spending half of what you spent on a fucking GPU on copper (that is magnificently manufactured/milled). This is so niche its just a bad product since the tolerances are so tight as shown in the video it only works on one type of gpu and/or cpu. Like its clear Billet labs is doing fantastic work on the machining but no reasonable consumer should ever buy this. This is so unreasonable and that is the point Linus is making. Its a cool project that Billet labs is making but there is almost no practical purpose for it.
Edit: Like their business model is so niche. If anything this feels like a way to spin the company in the direction of making custom milled part for commercial entities that need custom solutions. The consumer market isn’t a good market for them.
The problem I have with this is that if he’s known for these things and he knows it, why not hire someone to do the communication for him instead of making the same mistakes every time. Or is he too stubborn or not smart enough to realise the damage he is doing to his brand?
Is it real that Linus publicly said that they can’t justify putting in another half day to ensure the data is correct before publishing it? Why would anyone watch their low quality content which they admit to be worthless?
The weird part of that is the the amounts he’s saying it would cost/time to re-run the test – $100-500 (probably like that pay for a employee’s day) – are nothing in the context of a company. Especially one that was sold or offered $100million. My company run on like a $3million budget. A few hundred dollars is nothing to us. That’s a staff lunch or our bar tab sometimes. If the retesting costs like $5000…OK, that’s certainly something to pause and think about. But a few hundred? A day or half a day for an employee to re-do the test? That’s too much?
Maybe to the average person, the average viewer, that sounds like a lot of money. But not to a business. Certainly not one as large as LMG.
Even more ridiculous when LMG could monetize that 500$ of time spent into another video and make the money back.
The video from GN had footage from WAN show where he said that, so yes. I have not personally looked up the context, but it also sounds very much in character for how Linus thinks these days, so I am not at all surprised.
I also think it’s an excuse to cover up the real problem: complete disorganization and the extreme pace of production. In the video itself, Linus seems legitimately upset with his employee that didn’t even realize they had the wrong GPU. He did not seem surprised, however, which is very telling.
Wholeheartedly agree. Wverything else I can understand and maybe even excuse. But auctioning off a prototype that isn’t even yours is so far beyond the line. They have turned into another soulless corporation just like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. And corporations should never be trusted.
He’s another tech bro. Wan show always seemed more like a soap box for him to try to make him seem like an aww shucks type of guy, but there was the whole discussing wages issue at LTT too that broke the illusion of the image he tries to depict of himself.
When I was still watching I remember he said if LMG ever tried to unionize he would take it as a personal failure. The intention of that statement may mean well, but it’s a really not great view to have and profess. Unions can (and should) maintain a good relationship between the workers and management.
I watched the occasional LTT video, they are entertaining and helpful at a general understanding but I’ve often taken their data with a grain of salt.
Emily (formerly Anthony) Young was the one writer at LTT who stood out as really knowing their stuff. She also was their in-house expert with Linux! (*Note: nothing happened to her at LMG, I’m using past tense because I’m not up to date with the latest roles she might be in)
Linus has been way more focused on running the business than the tech, especially compared to his days at NCIX and some years after.
The Billet situation sounds like a fuckup. So long as they make it right with them I don’t care tbh.
The data integrity issues and way too frequent post-edit corrections is imperative for LMG to fix, if they want their media to be trustworthy (like if they’re hyping up their labs)
Luckily, they’ve said what the fix is themselves and it’s relatively simple. All it really takes is them to either slow down with the rate of content to be able to carefully review it, or bring on more hosts and editors so that mistakes and errors can be caught and re-shot before publishing, and that due diligence is applied when preparing a product review.
Linus’ response is just meh, not good nor bad. The one thing is I don’t buy is Linus’ line of “just talk to us”. The community told them plenty of times, the writers and Linus themselves were very well aware of the problems of rushing and releasing half-baked content. Even if GN told them, the direction they were going with Linus Media Group and the new CEO and the buyout offer and all of that suggests where LMG’s wouldn’t be concerned with it as much as making sure the timing of their content maximizes revenue. Data issues brought to them by GN and the community would be cast to the wayside with just a footnote and silent correction, maybe with a couple empty words sprinkled on top.
So I’ll say it again to Linus from a fellow Canadian, whether he’ll listen or not: “Slow down, bud!”
Hey bud, no need to deadname anyone.
Disagree. As a casual LTT watcher i had no idea who Emily was until they said her former name. I’m sure there are others like me who don’t keep up with the latest happenings in every youtube channel. There’s no offense in providing extra information for clarity.
I use her current preferred pronouns, there are multiple Emilys at the LMG team and for people that might not recognize who I’m talking about if they haven’t watched LTT for a while (since 3 months ago). I figured by adding “formerly”, I was clear that it’s a name she no longer goes by and doesn’t feel represented herself well.
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I thought you had to refer to a person by their old name for that to be the case, not just mention the existence of a former name. I could be wrong though.
Using the name is still deadnaming. Think of it like this. If you changed your name from Jim to John and saw a friend on the street, would you want them to say, “Hi John formerly Jim”? You’d likely just want them to call you by what your name is now. Add to that the likely dysphoria caused by some using a trans person’s dead name, and it is now causing harm for no real reason. When in doubt, just call people what they want to be called.
But it is natural to bring it up if you’re talking to a common friend that isn’t aware of the change of name. OP was talking to us comment reader instead of that person.
But your example just referred to someone by their old name. Not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a terrible example. Haha
Better example would be: Friend says, “Hey John, how are you! Remember when you used to go by Jim? Boy, those were crazy times back then.”
Is that deadnaming?
EDIT: my bad. Just re-read the OP post and your example is dead on. For some reason I had it different in my head. Never mind!
Thing is, a lot of people just aren’t aware of Emily’s transition, because she’s been in very few LTT videos since she came out. It makes sense to quickly mention what people used to know her as.
If she had been in dozens of videos since coming out your point would make sense, but she just hasn’t.
(Referring to other replies, sarcastically) I friggin’ love having people explain how it’s totally cool to do to people all’ the things they (or people like them, in relevant contexts) say not to! Like when five freaking people people show up, none citing so much as a blog post or having met a trans person once, explaining that it’s totally cool to deadname someone as long as it doesn’t bother the person doing the deadnaming.
I’m just a little tired of this “it’s fine and you’re the real problem for whining about it” (not quoting anyone currently present… I think) kind of attitude. Maybe I’d be singing a different tune if my convenience got to override everyone else’s comfort and even wellbeing.
Edit: At least I don’t feel so compelled to join Beehaw any more. Certainly not the uniformly careful bunch I’d, unreasonably I suppose, imagined. Silver linings!
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Ahaha. He managed to write all that and say nothing, he really needs professional advice before making public statements, he can’t help but jump in with his first thoughts. Classic linus though just deflecting “we got some really big things coming up guys! forget about this!”
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.
He wrote an entire article but still thinks his video cadence is good. Reminds me of my current CEO, as the sand empire he built for the past 4 years starts to crumble beneath him
This response at least answers the most important question. They are paying Billet for the prototype. Personally I think they should do more than cover the raw cost, but at least they have done something.
They should cover R&D costs too, not just the cost of manufacture and materials.
Great video, a lot of the benchmark stuff I was unaware of because I don’t pay THAT much attention to the wider youtube review community, but I Did notice that waterblock review when it went up on LTT. Go and watch it, it’s honestly embarrassing how unprepared and silly it was. As a comedy sketch it’s fine, but as a review of a prototype it’s really really embarrassingly under prepared. It brings to mind something like an Asmondgold hardware review… “I don’t know, let’s just try this”.
To see they auctioned off a prototype device after that “review” is kinda disgusting (sorry for the hard word, but it’s how I feel).
Tbh that’s how almost all of their projects seem to be now. Woefully unprepared, full of jank.
not to cast doubt on anything he says here, but steve has increasingly been making ‘dunk’ videos for the past year or two. i feel like his channel has been trying to find (or create) exposés, because those are the videos that pop off. starting from the video of that NZXT case that caused fires.
again, not to cast doubt on the experiences of billet labs, but i question steve’s intentions in presenting this. i hope this discussion doesn’t end up revolving around gamers nexus.
because those are the videos that pop off.
Yeah, drama gets clicks,
But Steve did say at the beginning, that this video is unmonetized.
So I give him credit for taking that step.
this video is unmonetized.
Doesn’t mean it’s not a growth based move. Unmonetized means no ads right? And you still get the exposure.
not to come off overly negative- steve also does great work. i hope we hear from LMG soon <3
I felt the same and was wary to even watch this. Seems like something to discuss privately first. But it’s full of solid points, and I think the amount of public mistakes from LMG makes it a little easier to accept.
The last time something like this happened it was made clear GN was going to cover LMG as the corporation it is, not as an individual where you might hash things out privately first.
Based, even if it makes high school me sad
They can do both, and if their stance is at all ideologically motivated, then it is necessary to focus on more than just the low hanging fruit of doing reviews.
The free software movement is more than just the free software existing. It is also congruent to the laws that permit it and extending rights
Right to repair is about more than simply fixing things. It’s about going after companies and lobbying to get actual rights enshrined into law.
Have only seen the clip of the LMG employee saying what they said from GN’s video, but seems quite an over-reaction from GN and the other company IMO. Definitely some form of baiting for views, even if parts of the video are valid.
LTT: says they want more accuracy, so they build a whole fucking lab for it.
Also LTT: puts bad data into the video anyway because time
That’s literally enough said. It’s not an attack on LMG, it’s pointing out legitimate concerns about LMGs internal processes because these easy to catch errors are getting through all the time.
They test a water block prototype on a card it wasn’t designed for, and then review it as a finished product with the bad data.
It’s a pattern over a long period of time that has been called out by the community. GN is fully right to be putting this out there. Even if you disagree with Steve’s assessment, he’s right to be pointing out things he has concerns with.
Yeah, once you stop playing up the entertainment angle, but try to be a go to resource for consumer buying decisions the kid gloves come off. Hashing things out privately in that area is how you lose legitimacy if trying to seem credible and not playing favorites is the image you are trying to project to viewers.
Right. Many are hitting with the “it should have been handled in private” line, and it’s kind of annoying. Journalists report on things, and GN did just that. Reported on an issue that has been gaining in public discussion over time. This deserved transparency, and I hope that having it put out there will help LMG/LTT fix their shit. I’m sure I can speak for most of us in saying that we WANT LMG/LTT to SUCCEED. We want to see them produce quality content. But they can’t do that with accurate information right now, despite their public desire to provide that.
If you see the response to my comment that you responsed to you see that someone made a response along lines of what Gamers Nexus said near the end
I hope that people listened before they just jumped to the OMG drama wall comments
Found that funny, and does show why some of the comments are dismissive of the situation thinking it is just drama, and see it more as their favorite content creator being attacked than an assessment of the quality of reviews meant for consumers.
Clickbait used to be reserved for the title/thumbnail, but now it’s ingrained in the content itself and goes hand in hand with the drop in quality.
Before I stopped watching them I noticed the drop in quality. Can’t remember which video, but there was one with so many corrections it was absolutely ridiculous.
He’s Targeting a younger audience as they are more likely to spend money on stuff.
I mean the quality of the test data is slipping but
“He’s Targeting a younger audience as they are more likely to spend money on stuff.”
What younger audience has the income for an $80 screwdriver and a $200+ backpack? I think you may need to think out your point a bit more since nah I don’t think they are targeting a “younger” audience those in the sub 20 category. I think they are primarily focusing on just being a “entertainment” product rather than a informative review one. They do fine with technical stupid jank shit but probably shouldn’t be trusted for specs for the moment but at the end of the day I think labs will still probably be better than userbenchmark (even though that is a pretty low bar).
Rich kids
What a bunch of pricks.
I hesitate to blame them all. In GN’s video, some of the clips show LMG people seeming (to me? Somehow I don’t see anyone else pointing this out???) anxious to terrified of Linus. In one of the WAN Show clips there’s this meek, near-mumbled kind of “Uhm… Linus sir maybe if you’d, um… just tested it properly that could’ve been maybe better I guess? <.< v.v;” sort of thing, and the person who grabbed the wrong card barely squeaked out a response at all, but Linus just never seems to give a damn about anything except making the quickest possible bucks.
I don’t know what’s keeping everyone else there but I think at least some of those people are just trying to get by without incurring some kind of wrath as Linus himself repeatedly makes (or causes) a mess then arrogantly doubles, triples, quadruples down on it (or has someone else do so, or maybe other arrogant pricks are involved?) up to a point of “Okay, I messed up and I’ll own that now everyone forget about it” after which business-as-usual resumes until the next mess. It seems like no one else has time to learn from any mistakes (or “mistakes”) and those who do (presumably a hierarchy-related privilege) are unwilling or incapable.
Now, they may in fact be a bunch of pricks. I just feel like some of those people (such as the one suggesting that testing the water block correctly might made sense (before potentially killing a startup unfairly)) try to help but have no power to inhibit Linus’s pompous profit-driven pissheadery.
I can not watch the video now but I have read description.
Thing is I see them more as entertainers than IT professionals, so I don’t expect any valid data from them. If not before, it became obvious with the whole Linux for a month fiasco where he complains that it’s Linux’s falult he deleted important packages.
But I get it, youtube is forcing this dramatic, often, high performing videos on all creators. You can see it explained very often by various youtubers.
Of course they care more about quantity, because Algorithm will punish them for not publishing and they will disappear.
No one living from youtube can not be trusted right now, they are all forced to publish often clickbity dramatic videos.
i watch ltt for alex messing around, and every now and then a video of linus wasting money on cool testing equipment for some reason. I’ve always assumed GN is superior for actual testing.
