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.
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.
There is no actual proof for the suicide of the son and the mom, would love to see actual proof if you have it but i wouldn’t really use this as an argument. I admit his behaviour was too much but pointing the blame for the suicide of a child is also too extreme
found this twitter post about it: https://twitter.com/reddit_lies/status/1691895748286177765 Just realized that Twitter account is quite stupid but I still can’t find any evidence for it being true or not
Edit: I don’t know if I want to believe if MindChop truly did what the reddit post is talking about, but I feel like Linus wasn’t at fault for his community bullying the Owner.
Another thing I just found: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15sjv78/for_anyone_wondering_why_madison_stayed_silent/jwfeg5a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
This whole thing is very complicated and I am not trying to discredit the madison allegations with this, they are a completely different topic
Small note on the cooler subject; the cooler was auctioned to charity - they didn’t keep the money for themselves.
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 😅
Linus Tech Tips, a large YouTube tech channel, has faced backlash after GamersNexus posted a video detailing their increasingly flawed videos focusing on quantity over quality. LTT releases videos multiple times a week, but these videos almost always have errors that are later corrected or are not noticed by LTT. This results in lower quality videos that can sometimes be misleading (especially product review videos). These criticisms had been expressed by many viewers of LTT prior the GamersNexus video. GamersNexus is also a popular tech channel and amplified these criticisms with the release of their video.
Other criticisms of LTT are that their packed release schedule overworks their employees and their corporate culture is hostile towards stressed employees. These criticisms were merely speculation until a former LTT employee posted on X (formerly Twitter) a detailed account of why they decided to leave the company. Their allegations detailed overworking, harassment, and their declining mental health due to their job at LTT.
GamersNexus does probably more research than a video deserves though. I’ve always found the accuracy levels of the LTT videos acceptable; I think GN might be sort of spuriously demanding rigor here.
Harassment is no good and must be stopped, though.
LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as “bad” after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).
Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.
A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn’t really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say “I’m sorry” at one point which was pretty meme worthy.
The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.
Different people have different conclusions – some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.
But that’s just me – I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.
Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don’t know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.
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
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A comment I saw on another thread put it best. He should have taken the 100 million
“We fucked up, and that’s why I’m here to cry about people being mean to me on the internet again. Also I’m super not sorry and it definitely will happen again” -Linus
Really it’d be like, “I’m sorry… Just like this segue to our sponsor!”
They can’t put out a statement without a segue. It’s just not allowed! They love that word.
Even their apology video with the dbrand plug-in at the end, pretty cringey. They’re like that Key and Peele slap ass skit, they need to plug-in their sponsors like an addiction. If they wouldn’t have mentioned which sponsor, then yeah stupid joke to lighten the mood, but they had to mention dbrand.
You got that from the video? The comment was hot headed, but I thought the video was the best they could have done.
"And a message from our sponsor! Just kidding…
DBrand did offer though. :D
You can watch our progress transparently… on floatplane"
Is all I loosely heard from it. Shame his newly appointed CEO has to deal with this, I feel like he should have been the only one in the video. It would have put extra value and emphasis on his message, and cut out all the blame passing and job title responsibilities; they could have dealt with all the other stuff separately. They shouldn’t need to put their staff out there to dry like that (even if they’re management), the issue is blatantly deeper rooted.
If they’re trying to address their accuracy, management processes, or talk about video content burnout that influence their staff and viewers, it should have been short and sweet. They should have posted an update video to show us the progress. Not make promises and jokes and put half of it behind a paywall.
They wrote and uploaded their apology so quickly, they didn’t even let the fallout settle before more controversy came inevitably to light. Now they need to eventually address that in a video too seeing as there’s an investigation. Though it would have been hard to comment on year old incidences without an investigation to be fair.
I was told that when making apologies don’t use too many if at all any reasons… Justifying your action with excuses means you felt there was an exception. They shouldn’t have gone into specifics and just said “God damn we really ballsed that one up”.
If Linus was his own boss he’d have fired himself.
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.
That is the second. The “first” was linus going on an unhinged rant and shirking blame on the LTT forums
