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Pretty damning review.
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Could someone ELI5 the problem and what’s going on? (I don’t have good enough internet to watch videos ATM)
LTT isn’t making sure their info is correct. They also can’t be trusted to give stuff back.
They have been misleading people for years with inaccurate test results and reviewing products when they have a conflict of interest.
A bit more objective than the other guy: their lab testing seems to be inaccurate at times and the way they correct mistakes they spot is questionable (for example just adding a comment and pinning it on the video). Also it seems they sold /auctioned something that was not supposed to be theirs to begin with. Some prototype waterblock. Also it seems there are two different stories about the issue and the compensation for the company who owned what was sold. And up until now, the story that LTT gave out seems to be the dishonest/questionable one.
I watched a couple of Linus videos over the years and recently subscribed. I had no idea how many videos they push out a week - that is something they should really adress. Rather make three or four good videos a week than the absolute crap content they partially put out just to get their schedule full.
After this whole thing now I unsubscribed again. You can absolutely fuck up a situation and be good in my book if you own up to it, but Linus response is childish at best and a disaster at worse.
Linus has always been childish. Can’t stand him.
Linus lost touch with reality a long time ago, and the response to the gamer nexus video is proof of that.
Well he’s not exactly known for taking warranted criticism well…
This is a’ spicy meatball
Their issues are:
- Bad data - major errors in review videos
- Ethical concerns - conflicts of interest, Billet review, Pwnage review
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If LMG gave out a prototype for their latest screwdriver to be reviewed and it was onsold, I highly doubt it being called a “mistake” would have sufficed, heads would be rolling
Feel terrible for Billet and how they were treated here
Ltt is certainly not innocent here but this one I’ll disagree with since it basically just happened to them with an early sample of the backpack.
Billet was treated very bad here and i’m not trying to defend anyone, but i didn’t saw the video and only heard from them because of this shitshow
I don’t understand why he won’t just own up to the wrong gpu thing and move on. It’s like getting pissy that the f150 exhaust sounds like shit on your ford ranger.
LTT should be getting the pants sued off of them for that kind of behavior. No way this whole cooler prototype thing was not nefarious.
At the very least it appears incredibly reckless.
I think that their point that it’s an $800 product for a last-gen card, there really isn’t anyone out there that should buy this, and therefore it’s a bad product is valid. They could have handled the whole thing better and honestly should’ve just scrapped the video before release.
Auctioning off the prototype when the company asked for it back is pretty inexcusable. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t malicious, but they clearly have problems with internal communication of things like this are happening.
At any rate, it’s going to be a spicy WAN show this week. Linus needs to actually watch the video and address this point-by-point. If he “reads the comments” or cherry picks some of GN’s weaker arguments he’s just going to end up throwing fuel on the fire.
Then they shouldn’t have reviewed it if their decision was made before even holding the product in their hand.
They could have reviewed it from the point of view of an R&D curiosity with the potential future iterations and cost reductions as the new startup finds their feet. Because, you know, that’s what it was. But they decided to shit all over it for dishonest reasons instead.
I dont think it was malicious, but it is incredibly negligent. It puts a huge stain on the company that’s expected to honor embargos for unreleased products.
@wordle I also have the same thoughts as you.
It’s pretty normal for water blocks to come out well after a GPUs release. Also it looks like it was a new product/company so it makes sense the design took longer than the competition.
I feel that if LMG looked at this product and thought “hey this is really dogshit”, the decent thing to do would have been to go back to billet and tell them we can’t cover it at all (and cop the loss of few hours as part of running an ethical business)
What the fuck, that’s deplorable
Seemed like fair criticism to me, honestly. I enjoy watching LTT, but if they want to be a reliable source of data with “The Lab”, they can’t continue acting purely as an entertainment company.
Yeah, it was very measured and specific. You could tell he took no pleasure in doing it, the disappointment felt very genuine. It was also a classy move to avoid monetization
I mean for sure he just got a ton of viewers, but it didn’t feel like YouTuber beef or a takedown.
I think he hints at the real issue a few times when he calls them “the company”. It’s the issue why I haven’t been into Linus for a while - he talks like a capitalist now. He’s got plenty of technical opinions, but you can tell he’s not keeping up to speed on the tech (he’s always getting help from someone off screen) - instead, he’s always talking about business.
He talks about making products, the challenges, plans to expand, the sometimes hard to watch reccounts of changing relationships with his friends turned staff.
Which is still content, and I am led to believe he genuinely has a commitment to making good products and standing by them. But I’m not into that. I don’t find it interesting, and I find myself skeptical of his technical judgement and less able to identify with him
Bad data is not the issue when they’re the ones generating it. Rushed reviews are the issue.
What I thought was interesting about this is that apparently not only me, but tons of other people have all kinda felt like LTT has seemed off the past year or so, and this video kinda explained it all
I just can’t get myself to care about the majority of the content anymore. They make so many videos that the topics just end up being about some goofy and dumb stuff that I don’t really care about. The ratio between serious reviews about serious products and some goofy random stuff is just worsening all the time on the main channel and it just pushes me away.
I mean I will never get why people actually watch graphics cards reviews. Just set a budget clock through 20 reviews and take the one that was mentioned most of the time. Watching a video with graphs and benchmarks is so boring
It’s been a consistent decline over many years, which makes it more noticeable the longer it’s been happening.
My own conclusions was that their lab building took so many resources.
I’ll have to watch this review to have a knowledgeable opinion, but from the LTT I’ve been watching over the past few months, my initial feeling it is must suck to constantly have to come up with new content and to have the it’s core business at the whim of the YouTube algorithm (where quality of content doesn’t seem to be weighted much anymore). I’ve read a while ago that a thumbnail with a person’s face weighed more than a thumbnail without in the algorithm, that’s why all the LTT videos have the stupid face. It’s small dumb shit like that (to play by the algorithm’s ever changing rules) that can really chip away at a YouTube series
It’s not really new. LTT initially was breaking the advertising standards laws by using undeclared sponsors for videos without telling anyone. It started as an advert for companies products with paid placement. Many people didn’t care, the Canadian ASA told them to stop by which point they were already succeeding. The fact they deleted evidence of that shows what type of person Linus is.
At no point has LTT throughout its existence shown any regard for the law let alone ethics, morality, integrity or accuracy. Now it’s bigger and throwing out a lot more content it’s showing this at a frightening pace.
As the old adage goes, behind every great fortune is a great crime. I consider Linus at the very least unethical throughout his entire YouTube career. There is probably more going on than we can see, he seems more than willing to just lie openly so at this point any statements about anything he has said regarding framework and other investments and impartiality should at least be seen as highly questionable.
Not sure if this gets seen by anyone from LTT, but I’m a regular consumer of their products (ie., their YT content).
I find that more and more of their videos don’t seem to end with some satisfactory conclusion, and quite a number of it is way too janky when with a little more thought and planning, could have been done and concluded much better.
Take for example the fanless heatsink dipped in ice bath video, or the car radiator water cooling video. It’s always them trying to fix some jank or scramble on camera to fight some spontaneous issues or leaks or whatever. It’s fun, yes, entertaining, yes, but utterly unsatisfactory in the end. Reminds me of a post-nut sad depression wank.
If you have seen three Stooges, that is what LTT videos are for me. No other value other than entertainment.
But after the thread by Madison it is getting difficult to support them for even that.
Another comparable thing is the retro emulator boxes where they play a couple games and go: “Well, it played games, it’s either fine or terrible. now check out out sponsor!!”
I still really like their server content and the home pool water cooling has been a recent cool series.
If I want an actual review, I’ll trust Jeff Geerling, GN, Explaining computers, Craft computing, or ETA Prime.
If I want to watch someone do dumb tech stuff, I’m going for Linus, Dawid, …and red shirt Jeff Geerling. The difference is that the latter two go into it fully transparent that what they’re doing is purely for the “will it blend?” vibe and should not be taken too seriously.
Linus’ videos blur the line a little too much between legitimately educational and purely for the entertainment value in a way that could give people false impressions of either the tech or processes.
Agreed. Everyone should learn to seek out multiple reviews while searching for products and not trust one source.
Love channels like Jeff geerling and craft computing for homelab stuff. They manage to keep things short from, fun, and informative. GN and Explaining Computers is too long form and dry for me. Nothing I’m doing is that deep. But they are super necessary for the space and I recognize that.
I really, really wish they had just done more Scrapyard Wars. Super entertaining and my girlfriend also wanted to watch it.
But it’s hard to ride a like between entertainment and actual lab-quality testing. When they tied themselves to LTT Labs, they made a choice that seems to have been beyond their capabilities, both in terms of scheduling and workforce (LTT folks saying timelines are constantly too tight) and ethics.
If it’s ts fun and entertaining, I think they hit their mark.
LTT needs to make sure quality catches up to quantity wrt their yt videos. Essentially, they need:
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More technical experts/researchers to find and filter news/info before it goes into the script.
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Quality control after shooting a vid, i.e. they must be willing to reshoot segments with wrong info, not just put a note on the screen or in the yt comments
Both requires a huge investment in manpower and studio space. As it is, they are short staffed and juggling sets for shoots. If Linus wants to go on this path of business growth, he has no choice in this matter. They can’t go on like a small garage operation anymore.
He did invest in getting a new huge workspace and hired a bunch of experts. Remains to be seen if it’s enough and if they are used effectively.
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What the fuck are you doing, LTT? Go get the fucking prototype back and return it.
Billet labs has come out and said that LTT has suggested they could get the cooler back for them, and billet labs declined and said they would just take the reimbursement.
They said their reasoning for that include (they said more, but just a few brief reasons) the fact that they can’t know if it’s still in the condition required, and if not, how much time and money it would take to repair it
they don’t know if it would have all the various pieces still attached, once again, not knowing how much time or money it would cost to replace those
they’ve already begun work on recreating the prototype
they’ve confirmed it didn’t go to a competitor, so less worries about ip issues
Finally and the biggest thing to me that I was unaware of before reading their statement, they sent LTT a 3090ti to along with the block to test it, LTT then proceeded to lose it (which is why they used the wrong card in the video) and just recently found it, which meant LTT had not only their block but a 3090ti for 9 weeks so they didn’t know if LTT could get it back how quickly they would send it to Billet.
How the fuck do you managed to just casually lose a 3090ti and a companies proto-type cooler design that came with it… AND THEN AUCTION IT OFF AFTER HAVING TWO EMAIL EXCHANGES SAYING IT WILL BE RETURNED!!
Like, I’ve been through some managerial fuck ups before with getting shit mixed up or sent off incorrectly…but this is on a level I’m having a very hard time understanding just what the fuck went wrong, how it went wrong, and if they even have a single rule or policy in place to keep track of items.
Then there was all the other errors they mentioned in the vid, like basic facts and specs about a component… Like how do you manage to fuck that up as well? That is the type of shit you look up in 5 seconds on Google.
LMG looks like a clusterfuck that needs some serious intervention
I think there was a video about them restructuring their company a few weeks ago. I think he wanted to employ a CEO, because the managment part was getting out of hand. Maybe that is why this shitshow happened?
They already have a CEO but it seems Linus has kept the team rushing into their usual schedule while trying to bandaid their processes. Now they’ve made a statement that they are going to stop production for a week and rethink their approach.
I know a week for a major Youtube channel putting that much content is a **huge ** cost but I doubt it’s enough time to seriously change much. Time will tell but I was already tired of half-finished antics. At least someone like DIY Perks decides to make a submarine PC to dump into his pond, he actually makes the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t seems to abandon the video because they rushed something and have to jump on their next rushed job.
This is what happens when you think the C-Suite is the most important part of the company but keep the (apparently) trash management between them and the actual people doing the work.
Ultimately this is probably a good thing. From what I’ve gathered of Linus he is a person that can recognize his mistakes, but only once you get past his stubbornness. His response saying they should’ve hit him up is kind of classic response. What could you have said really? Like GN is right that like almost every video has a pinned comment or on screen edit of a correction. And you know these companies are complaining. Yet it continues.
Having their audience put them to task will go a long way to making them recognize it is a bigger issue than individual videos. I’m really curious about the idea of Labs being able to actually test things publically in a way consumers haven’t been able to. (Give me more of transparency like digital foundry for games and Jerryrig everything for durability.) So they need to pull their shit together if they want to claim to be a data driven lab. Like accuracy is all that matters.
I think the ethical concerns section is overblown. LTT is almost harsh on their sponsors and I got a kick out of Linus starting the last video talking about Framework saying how he doesn’t actually use the Framework laptop as his daily driver at the time and complained about it.
Their production cycle seems to be more targeted at producing content, moreso than anything else, like integrity or correctness.
I’ve noted several errors myself, most of the ones I’ve seen are relatively minor, and mostly pedantic, but they’re inaccuracies nonetheless.
If LMG wants to move towards being more journalism and a reputable source of accurate information, which, from everything they’ve done recently (most notably the lab), they seem to want to be, then they need people to go and fact check everything, and scrutinize final products to ensure accurate information. Making sure that inaccuracies are caught and sent back to the beginning of the pipeline to be re-reviewed, and if necessary, re-shot.
They can’t keep doing things by the seat of their pants and hoping for the best.
My hats off to GN for bringing it to light, and hopefully some meaningful changes come from this.
I wonder how much of that is because of how much they grew vs the production cycle as dictated by constantly feeding the yt algorithm.
The difference between putting out a video every day and putting out a video when it’s ready is a decision that each channel makes
It very much feels significantly more like incompetence than malice (not that I think any particular person at LMG is incompetent. The processes likely are however). Honestly LMG just probably grew way faster than any of their processes could scale.
The sponsor related aspects I feel they handle pretty well for the most part, they’re often critical of sponsors and I don’t get the feeling he’d straight up sell out. It feels like they’re putting out so much content across so many channels that they’re not able to keep up the accuracy / quality. That’s a fair point I think Steve raised and to see it fobbed off by Linus in his response is disappointing
Anyone watching LTTs server videos hopes it is only for entertainment as following what they do other than for your home lab would be a disaster.
However they are building up the LAB and are selling it as serious detailed reviews… This would be a shift from their current content.
Flip side Gamers Nexus is hard core serious and I always have to skip through their videos as they put me to sleep.
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But that’s the goal of those videos for the audience they’re trying to reach. For the people that will only ever use the hardware with windows, then that’s really is the most practical metric to look at.
As someone who’s been running unRAID out of a tower and like 5 drives; it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear. Like I do more research for myself and I’m not jumping on video. Ultimately I like the videos, I enjoy seeing the approaches, but they try to come off like authority figures. Then they don’t even know how to properly parity swap and make unRAID look harder than it is.
it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear.
As someone who is very technically savvy, let me assure you that these guys are clowns. They are tech entertainers, not experts. Give yourself some credit.
They have people knowing their stuff, it’s just Linus playing around and figuring out. Anthony with old hardware and Linux and Jake does know a thing or two about server stuff
Anthony with old hardware and Linux
Anthony isn’t with LMG anymore. Their name is Emily now. Also, while Emily knew about Linux, having just a single person knowledgeable in that topic isn’t enough. In any case, it’s moot because she isn’t there anymore.
Jake does know a thing or two about server stuff
Have you seen the storage server video? The one where they lost petabytes worth of data because they had zero clue how to configure a ZFS storage pool for proper redundancy? Even before this whole thing went down they’ve been heavily criticised for how they set it all up. As though it was done by an amateur who never configured a ZFS system before.
Edit: NM, Emily is on vacation, she didn’t leave.
They have zero consistency in platform or hardware and don’t seem to setup any monitoring as well.
Other than building gaming PCs I would not look to LTT for technical advice.
I just watch the videos where they do silly stuff… Cooling a server with a pool is something I would never be able to do, that’s the kind of shit I want to watch, them building their thousandth gaming PC is just meh.
it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear.
Exactly, bumble fuck is what every one of their server videos or home automation videos seems to be about.
This pretty similar to why I stopped watching their vids. I always thought they were a trusted authority, until they covered a product that I had some familiarity with. I wasn’t even an expert at it, I was just interested so I read some articles, visited some forums and subreddits about it for a week or two. Their video on it had a couple of mistakes and they omitted a couple of minor features, but were important to me. There was nothing egregious but it was pretty surprising to me that in this one thing, I knew more than them, despite not doing much research.
Yeah they’re good for keeping aware of what’s new in the tech world mostly. Their actually reviews of products are so poor and out of touch. If I hear them nitpick the bevels on a display without actually framing things into the cost and value sentiment one more time I’m buying a farm
I would never follow what they do in server videos exactly, but I learned a ton from their server video backlog. Also find their server shenanigans very fun. Think server and the occasional actually useful tech tip video are still their best stuff.
Most else feels half baked or falls into the GN video criticism.
Totally agree. Glad someone said this.
To be fair, GN provides excellent Chapter selection to encourage you to skip to whatever you want to know. You don’t have to watch the whole thing if you don’t want to. I’m more annoyed by them using those idiotic clickbait thumbnails. Complete no-go for me.
Even with the chapters they yammer on in every section. They could say the same thing in half the time and their videos would STILL be long.
Gamers Nexus makes extremely detailed videos, but after 10 Minutes of non-stop fact firework my brain just starts to fade away
Either i’m not that into tech or it is my brains fault
ya I jump to the chapter then scrub to the graphs.
I know these guys are too busy to do it but I would gladly pay a monthly fee for a podcast with Steve (GN), Steve (HUB), Wendell (L1) and Gordon (PCWorld).
Yeah Steve steve and Wendell would be an amazing trio, Gordon is also really good but he can be a bit rage heavy for me
I’m glad you mentioned Wendell! KY crew rise up!
God-tier independent tech media collab
This is painstakingly well thought and put out. Stuff needed to be said, and let us hope the community voices it as well.
Linus has already responded on his forums, blamed GN, blamed the community and did everything possible to avoid addressing the issue. Too big to change. Too arrogant to admit fault.
I read the reply. Sounds like feelings were hurt. Let us hope reason wins out in the end, one can dream.
The one that gets me the most is the Billet Labs copper water cooler… Like holy shit how big of an asshole do you have to be to NOT return to them what you agreed to return, and then to just auction it off
I keep trying to be charitable and think of it in an “incompetence rather than malice” way, but Linus lying, twisting and tripling down isn’t making it easy.
LTT’s response was that they did not sell it, they auctioned it. As if that somehow makes it better?
They also made it seem like they had already come to an agreement on compensation but they clearly did not until after GN’s video and even after they had made their own claim.
We didn’t sell it, we just sold it. Dude knows what an auction is.
Excuses and spin. Nobody claimed they sold it, just that they didn’t return property that didn’t belong to them.
It’s so idiotic that it can’t be malice.
It’s just Linus overworking his employees.
I think anyone working in a bad company can tell you that people just stopped to care
Yeap. Turns out Linus is another piece of shit too. How sad.
