My biggest complaint is how Linus is still saying he’s not sorry about what he did, at least it doesn’t seem genuine, instead he is still apologizing that he didn’t realize what the community wanted.
He shouldn’t care what the community wants. He should always strive for accurate data, ethical partnerships, and correcting mistakes when they still make it through because they always will.
Linus is doubling down on his opinions, hiding mistakes, doing the bare minimum to fix them, and needs public outcry and the heavy hand of the other executives in LTT to see any course change.
im so out of the loop here, help anyone?
In one of their videos one of the employees said they do better and more accurate GPU tests than other YouTubers called Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed. Then of course those mentioned YouTubers started to hit back and show how often LTT is wrong and makes wrong assumptions, because they don’t do proper due diligence. Since they have to release several videos per week. Gamers Nexus also exposed that LTT auctioned off a prototype GPU cooler from a small startup. But they had no permission to sell the unit. It was only for reviewing. The startup even asked to get the unit back several times. Linus, the owner of LTT, then released a non-apology. Afterwards a former employee came out and told why she left the company and it turns out the work environment is very toxic at LTT. She also reminded everyone that pettiness by Linus caused his fans to harass a small YouTuber called MindChop. Who eventually committed suicide. He fell into a depression because of the harassment and later his mom also committed suicide. She couldn’t bear the loss of her son.
“Several videos a week”.
Twenty-five (25) videos a week. Five a day, four if they work weekends which they likely do. Plus the WAN show and other social media. Their velocity is far too high for accuracy to be a priority. As their own employees said in their video, they wish they had more time. And as Linus himself said, their velocity is so high that the instant they publish a video it has to be forgotten because they have to turn to the next one.
Holy shit, I can’t wrap my head around channels that release more than one video a day
Jesus fucking Christ
Can you point to the comment by Madison about the MindChop thing? As far as I can see she never brought it up.
Yikes.
Small note on the cooler subject; the cooler was auctioned to charity - they didn’t keep the money for themselves.
It doesn’t matter. It literally doesn’t matter.
The problem is THAT it left LMG to anywhere except the manufacturer, NOT how it left. The problem is it left the company at all to the wrong place.
Love that they clarified that after being called out, as if that somehow makes it more acceptable. “See? It was to charity guys, you think making money for charity is a bad thing?” While still missing the mark completely and refusing to send said prototype back.
Talk about moving goalposts. They fucked up.
It’s still a bad mistake, absolutely. If the cooler hadn’t been sent out already, I’d call it malice. I don’t think they’re claiming themselves blameless, just admitting that while they’re dumb, they’re not greedy.
Idk, taking someone else’s property, when not given permission, for your own tax deductions still sounds pretty shitty
Do people still not understand how donations/charities work? If they sold it for $100 and donated $100. Yes, they technically get a tax deduction. But it doesn’t change how much profit they made. If they had tossed it in the trash they’d still have the same amount of profit. They just aren’t paying tax on the $100 they sold it for because that money is being donated.
That’s even worse. Giving charity stolen money is pretty fucked up.
LTT fucked up hard, doubled down, worse things came out, tripled down
I thought the video was a step back, not tripping down. They took actual action and they layed out a plan how they’ll improve. What would you have preferred?
Fucked up hard = published numerous videos with inaccuracies and errors due to tight timelines and QA that was not rigorous enough. Also they fucked up communication and sold a prototype at auction. These are mistakes and journalistic ethical issues.
From what I can tell, they have owned up to most of that.
The more serious accusations come from Madison Reeves who not only claims she suffered from being worked like a dog, but also severe sexual harassment and other awful behaviors. LTT put out a statement that they had hired an external investigator and would take corrective action based on the findings.
Now, LTT is for sure in the wrong here, but what have they done wrong since? It seems they are taking the criticism seriously, despite Linus’ initial understandable but unacceptable emotional reaction. Curious to hear!
edit: not sure why my summary of events is garnering a negative reaction 😅
Perhaps I’m biased, but “hired an external investigator and would take corrective action based on the findings” translates to “distract folk until the spotlight is off us, so we can then sweep the problem under the rug and go back to business as normal.”
What could they do that is better than have someone outside investigate them?
deleted by creator
Have a third party investigate and independently release the findings to the public.
Yea that’s true
Could be! They said they are doing and internal review but also having an external one. I hope they do the right thing.
Mhmmm “we will investigate ourselves and find we’ve done nothing wrong.”
If you do something wrong, like publish wrong info, and then are OK with that wrong info being published… CONGRATULATIONS!! You just did something unethical.
Ethics does not require you to “do ethics”. It requires you to do respectable work. You do not get to decide to avoid ethics.
Totally agree. See my comment where I mentioned numerous mistakes and ethical issues. They will be publishing new standards and guidelines and channels to report inaccuracies apparently to address this.
Madison’s situation is the way bigger concern in my eyes. The issue is, they shouldn’t have to hire an outside investigator, or they should’ve done so years ago. They were being told the issues directly for months and refused to do a thing about it until the spotlight was on them. You don’t get to grope someone and say “I didn’t know it was bad 🥺” a year later. You don’t get to work your staff like dogs despite numerous private and public complaints only to say “wow, we had no idea” once it starts to affect your image. If this “external investigation” doesn’t start with completely gutting the management and HR structure, and handing out appropriate punishments to employees who have received complaints, then it’s clear that they don’t care about their company culture as much as their brand image.
Agreed. The shit she endured is egregious. I think I approach from the perspective of the new CEO. Whatever he’s done so far seems to be correct, and it should result in swift and sweeping changes. LTT very clearly has a culture problem that appears largely top-down. I’m not in the habit of feeling bad for CEOs, but what a shitshow he inherited…
The problem with inaccuracies on a channel like this is they are basically purchase influencers. One of their wrong graph shown some GPU was 3 times faster than other while it was around 15% faster only in reality. They kept selling the trust me bro attitude on every media and it turned out you cannot really trust them. With big power comes big responsibility.
Video inacurracy i am fine with if they are on the right course to fix that. Auctioning off prototype that are not theirs and knowingly use a wrong spec for the review for me is not. First one no matter what intention it is thief, second one is just disingenuous. It’s fine if Linus admits he is wrong on it, but he double down.
I went down this rabbit hole last night. This dude accurately summs it all up in about 10 minutes. First 10 minutes of the video
If you have time there are more, longer, videos in the video description
Phillip DeFranco still makes videos? Huh. TIL.
Do what I do. Don’t care about the things that you don’t care about.
Although watching this since yesterday has been somewhat entertaining. Seems like a public figure stepped on his dick.
If Linus was his own boss he’d have fired himself.
After sexually harassing himself.
“We keep the sexual harassment forms in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet so we can get a good look at your ass when you bend over to get one.”
I mean, he did. 6 months ago.
I don’t watch LTT or indeed hardly anything on YT, so I’m not about to sit through a teary YouTube apology video.
I assume it’s the usual “sorry not sorry” arse covering job?
First one was. Second one not so much. It also outlined what actions they plan to take to improve things. We’ll see how it going.
If you only see the Linus bit, the second hasn’t changed that much, he was still trying to justify it and to feel like a victim.
What’s the second one I only saw the one on their YouTube channel
That is the second. The “first” was linus going on an unhinged rant and shirking blame on the LTT forums
Well, and the stuff on the WAN show. I don’t watch it so I only saw highlights.
The timeline as far as I can tell is non-apology on the WAN show, Gamers Nexus releases video calling out Linus on a bunch of stuff, Linus’s breakdown in the forums, the last video on LTT.
As all this unfolds, I am more drawn towards the opinion that I don’t care that much about the GN call out, because those things can be fixed. I just don’t care that much about tech entertainment being dry as bones to ensure accuracy, but am a lot more concerned about the posts from ex-employee Madison about how she was treated.
Sounds like they have made themselves a bit of a mini Blizzard culture. Crunch and sexism abound.
This just confirmed my opinion of Linus as an utter twat and probable sociopath.
His reactions to things like Project Farm’s review of his overpriced screwdriver, and the constant, blatant submarining of Linux and opensource tells you what kind of person he is. None of the behaviour I’ve seen in this latest installment is surprising. Everything is done to get view numbers up, even monetizing the apology FFS.
But the fanbois gonna fan regardless, and he’ll come away with more money after this than before because of it.
Im beginning to wonder, if Luke left the video production side of LTT because they truly were working staff like animals to pump out videos and he finally decided “yeah im going back into development type work again…” Then made floatplane and got LTT to be his biggest investor. 🤔
That was the first thought that crossed my mind when he started FP.
Then you were way ahead of me then, it hit me like a ton of bricks just now.
He came a long way from the depressed linus meme of years ago
I’m probably missing a meme, what’s BP?
BP oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
BP CEO hearing: https://youtu.be/X8p4s7EE6FY
South Park’s version: https://youtu.be/HQhmGIW7MVU
Edit: Here’s a better South Park one with the OP’s screen… https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
British Petroleum… You know the guys behind that huge oil spill several years back
British Petroleum. That bit is about the South Park episode which originated the meme rather than whatever Linus did (of which I’m also out of the loop)
British Petroleum, if I had to guess.
They were largely (if not entirely) responsible for the oil that leaked/spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Sponsored by BP, Nestle and Purdue. \o/
