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I don’t know why some drama about a borked GPU install has been at the top of my feed for a week, and at this point I’m afraid to ask.
If you are interested there are essentially 3 problems:
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the GPU fiasco: Where they didn’t just bork a install. A small 2 man startup send them their (I think only or at least best) prototype for testing and even included the correct GPU to use it with in their packet. LTT for some reason tested it on a different one (obviously not working well there) and came to the devastating conclusion that NOBODY should ever buy this. Then instead of as requested sending it back they auctioned this prototype off at an event they hosted.
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the second problem that was also called out in the video published by gamers Nexus was a consistent pattern of publishing data errors in their reviews. And if such errors are caught, they would be inadequately handled. Maybe through a post under the video or by later replacing part of the video. If they caught an error before publishing they also often would just add a small onscreen text correction with an * instead of redoing that part. All problematic as many people will miss those corrections and thus be influenced by wrong data.
Those two points are especially problematic given the reach of LTT, since they are by far the largest tech YouTube channel. And thus influence a lot of people, especially beginners. Their initial response to these problems was also extremely bad.
- the third problem was a former employee coming forward with allegations of them being an extremely toxic place to work at. With sexual harassment, intense workload and so on.
Thank you, I spent so much time combing through posts and comments and your comment is the first time it has been succintly explained.
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Everything you’re told in this thread + they put ads into their “apology” video
This isn’t about that specifically, but the gist of it is that they basically got a one-of-a kind prototype GPU water block from a boutique startup to review, and instead of reviewing it with the correct model GPU and sending it back as requested, they did their review on the wrong card, concluded it was crap, and then sold it at auction during their convention.
And GN calling them out on this and a pattern of getting many things wrong with Linus doubling down on the whole thing as a response.
And to make matters worse, insist that no amount of modification would justify buying that cooler ever. It’s literally covering your ears and muttering la-dee-da repeatedly.
The whole thing was terribly unprofessional but he is right an $800 water block is niche.
I also don’t fully understand why people are so furious. Yes it’s some pretty serious alligations from Madison yes, and some dumb faults has happened from overworked stressed employees because of some bad company policies. Manny big companies have these issues at some point but you don’t hear about it because it’s handled internally or the company just slowly dissolves. LMG are at least open and a million times more transparent than I’ve seen many other companies be. Then own up to their mistakes now and are at least trying to fix things. Shutting down for a week is pretty drastic and for me it shows that they care.
TLDR: The LTT fan base has a culture of calling out bad actions by the company not because they hate them but because they hold them to standards.
A small company Billet Labs sent them a prototype to test. That prototype was designed for a 3000 series graphics card. LTT didn’t have that card at hand so they asked if it was ok to use a 4000 series card. Billet said they could try but it wasn’t designed for their card. LTT published a review of the prototype based on a scenario it wasn’t designed for and Linus told people it was a bad product. They later agreed to return it to Billet. They ended up auctioning it off at a convention (where some of Billet’s competition was).
Ultimately LTT paid an undisclosed amount to Billet. The actual damages of selling off a start ups only prototype (possibly to their competition) after agreeing to return it, after telling people not to buy a product (which was only a prototype) based on how it performed in a situation it wasn’t intended to be in is unmeasurable. They could have effectively destroyed years of work and killed the future of those people.
Linus said he didn’t use the correct card because it would have cost ~$800. The issue isn’t that he didn’t buy that correct card it’s that he didn’t decide to not publish a video on it if he couldn’t do it right.
On a podcast the other week Linus praised the LTT fans for not just agreeing with everything he does, creating a toxic positive feedback loop. This is them calling him out on his errors.
Yes other companies make these same terrible decisions. But their bad actions don’t justify LTT’s bad actions.
Minor correction, but Billet sent them a 3090; they lost it. It was found and returned eventually but yeah.
They threw shit at a small company by testing their product the wrong way.
I get that. It’s not cool. Very much not cool. But everyone makes mistakes or do some stupid shit like this at some point on their lives and should at least have a chance to make things right no?
They did have a chance. Linus took the chance to respond by making excuses and deflecting blame. For fuck’s sake, he said they did not sell the prototype, they auctioned it off. That’s not even a valid excuse.
I understand your point, but the issue is that they had to get an insane clash back from the community to start doing these changes. I mean, Gamer Nexus made a video calling them out.
That’s true. And I generally don’t agree with the practices that have happened. I just hope they’ll at least get their shit together and get better at treating their hard working employers. I’m not so much of a pitchfork and torch guy and generally hope for the good in people. LMG certainly got a slap in the face now and a wake-up call it must have been. I just hope it’s enough.
I’m not so much of a pitchfork and torch guy and generally hope for the good in people.
This is apparently rare on the internet considered what’s being said and done. While I criticised, I’m also hoping they just get the criticism and use it to improve, both the video quality and the working conditions. Both go intrinsically together, happier workers will produce better quality content, which in the end will be good to everyone.
People who are wishing for the death of LMG, remember these guys employ already >100 workers, many of them which have a passion for technology and probably are happy to work there.
So, get your pitchforks down and lets wait for the result of this downtime.
It’s not owning up if you’ve been caught red-handed, denied any wrongdoing, and only made an apology video once your subs started tanking. At this point it just feels like damage control.
Monetized apology video with self promotion. That is also important.
As I understand it, it’s not actually about this entirely. it’s that this has caused people to look into things and see that there is a long running history of poor content being pushed out due to issues in the workplace. The mishandling of the Prototype and the accusations by the employee are just extra icing on top of this already fucked up cake.
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My Pillow?
We’ve got Smile Makers and Goop lined up, stay tuned for our new channel.
Dbrand, apparently
Dbrand will probably still make fun of linus and mock them because of this whole thing
This is likely to quickly become a problem.
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Every single one and more.
Oh my fucking lord, who cares? Linus has always been a manipulative shitlord and a bastard hyping and doing whatever clickbait will make him millions of dollars this week. Unsubscribe from his manipulative trash and stop talking about him and let his scammy, garbage little YouTube enterprise die as it should have years ago.
Unsubscribe from his manipulative trash and stop talking about him
Peoeple who do bad shit should be exposed before they are forgotten about.
that fucking comment 💀
Should be pinned ngl
It’s great because of how serious that post is then there’s a totally tonally different killer joke lol
The end result will likely be something like: “We have investigated ourselves and found that we are blameless of any wrongdoing”. Which is usually how these things end up.
Also, weird to not see them saying they’ll reach out to Madison to get the story from her, but I guess that might be one of those obvious things so not mentioned. I hope.
It being a third-party investigator means they aren’t “investigating themselves.”
Third-party investigator is just a long handed way of saying, I’m still paying this person. Unless someone is being forced to be investigated by an outside source, get ready for some bullshit.
You pay the investigator whether they find fault against you or not. It’s not like they’re incentivized to find no wrongdoing at all just because they’re being paid. That would actively work against their credibility and long-term survival as a business
Yea man lemme live in the world you live in
My point is that when you are the one ordering an investigation on yourself, usualyl the results are bound to be highly skewed towards what you want.
I’ve seen my government recently do this in a pretty big corruption case that would have made heads roll, as well as a couple other private entities I can think of who have hired “outside investigators” to investigate themselves only to go like what I said.
I’m obviously open to being proven wrong in this case, but the track record of such things isn’t very positive.
Sorry I wasn’t very clear, I just didn’t want to make my comment too big.
Aside from ordering a third party investigator, how else can a company prove to itself and everyone that they are serious about corrective action?
You’re essentially saying they are guilty of everything and no matter the findings which haven’t even begun, there is a conspiracy. I don’t see how that cynicism is productive.
My point is they shouldn’t be the ones doing the auditing (or at least ordering it), it should be an outside source doing it (in this case, I guess a government entity? Or something independent from LMG anyhow).
I’ll gladly admit to being a cynic, but that’s because I’ve worked in similar work environments, quit for very similar reasons and saw nothing being done too. So it’s a sore spot for me too. I can easily see my own bias in this situation.
In any case, we’ll have to wait and see how it pans out. Hopefully for the best is what matters in the end.
A third party isn’t them though. I get what you are saying because LMG writes the check, but realistically that’s the best anyone can do. Why would the government get involved? Specifically why would taxpayers pay to help rehabilitate a private company’s reputation?
Private independent auditors are in every industry and a standard practice.
Oh, and as long as we’re being cynical, let’s say you got your wish and a government entity does the investigation. Odds are they would just contract it out to these same people. Same results, only everyone gets to charge more for their services.
Cause it’s gonna be biased towards LMG.
Your last paragraph really sums up your perspective. Hi staunch capitalist.
Issue is they’re trying to investigate something from more than two years ago. They’re unlikely to find anything at all in the first place.
That’s also very true, absolutely not gonna disagree there.
In any case, all we can do is speculate, we will see the end result when it eventually comes out. As long as this brings positive change to LMG as a whole, that’ll be good.
I know it won’t matter overall, but I won’t see the change since I’ve unsubbed to everything LMG related myself (a long time coming, honestly) but I really do wish them all the best.
Yeah I think they have dug themselves in deep shit and this will not go away until they make everything public and take action. And Linus as well as Terren Tong know this.
It means they’re hiring someone. What will matter is which type of firm they hire:
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Firm with a proven track record of being unbiased in their processes and conclusions.
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Firm with a track record of finding no fault, only low level scapegoats
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Unknown firm, likely the same result as option 2.
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Other some youtuber should. Not LTT.
No a professional should, not a drama/attention farming YouTuber.
Nah it’ll be “negative” but generic
“We’ve found that we were set up in a way for people to have suboptimal experiences. We thought we had a good culture and a program to minimize harassment but we obviously let some of our employees down so we are hiring a new chief sensitivity officer to address these concerns and ensure that current and future employees feel welcome,. comfortable, and respected”
Or some shit. Basically a “yeah things got out of hand but since we’re being scrutinized, we’ll hire an adult to keep us in line, maybe”
It’s like, c’mon Linus ‘If my employees need a union, I have failed as a boss’ Sebastian, you have failed as a boss and your employees need a union.
“Damage control, its there when you need to cover your ass. Speaking of covers this is the perfect segue to our sponsor, Dbrand…”
lol
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that is from when Madison initially left, that wasn’t a meeting that happened today
Also, that meeting is exactly what I would expect from a good company. Somebody had an issue, or said they had an issue, and they made sure everyone was aware of the processes in place to address issues. If anything I think this audio clip is indemnifying of the culture.
I disagree. That meeting was apparently from right after when Madison left 2 yrs ago.
I think that’s the exact meeting you have after you fuck up, have an employee leave with cause to sue, and consult your external HR, who tells you to have that meeting.
Id believe it if they had more of those meetings over the last 2 years, and not just the one when they are trying to show that “no, no, thats not our culture! We had meeting!”
Additionally, maybe don’t start off with (and keep the tone throughout) that this is boring corporate mumbo jumbo blah blah. What a great way to get the people to continue the actions that got you there in the first place, and especially prove the further point to potential victims that you don’t give a fuck.
Holy shit
This is Billet labs all over again, they’ll literally only do something if they’re publicly called out
I don’t know if Madison felt safe expressing all her concerns internally, so this might be the first time they realize the extent of the issues.
You should read the thread she posted. Half of it was about management telling her to stop whining when she brought up any of the misconducts against her.
Imagine reporting that someone was being inappropriate with you only to have that person come berate you. That’s levels of fucked up and goes radioactive when it’s your boss.
Possibly not even then. Gamer’s Nexus called them out in that video for several errors involving their testing, methodology, and results and the sheer amount of content being pushed out the door with little to no oversight and no real meaningful attempts to correct themselves to the public, using features that other YouTube channels don’t even have access to, and Linus responded by doubling down on the less important bits while not addressing any of the main points. The accountability, logical and scientifically unbiased testing, and their propensity to post information knowingly that is not true and make weak attempts to “correct” that info after millions of people have viewed the content. There doesn’t seem to be a plan to do anything. Linus and the new CEO have not addressed any changes to be made. They were also called out for essentially double dipping (reviewing products from companies they are actively promoting or have partnerships with while also reviewing those companies competition). That was also never addressed. Linus himself has an objectivity problem and that seems to have filtered down through the entire LMG as a whole.
Yeah, it’s called lack of ethical integrity.
It’s probably overwork, rather than a malicious lack of integrity. Guy left a to field empty and moved on with his day, well probably was sending 900 emails a day and can’t keep track. Sexual harassment in the workplace? Can’t think of that we have deadlines!
(downvote edit lol: not defending Linus, not defending the actions, or those involved in it all. Just pointing out that mistakes are made when overworked rather than tainting everyone at LMG with the unethical / lack of integrity brush)
Lack of ethical integrity happens when you’re more focused on quantity over quality.
People aren’t calling out the staff. They’re calling out the management.
I know this might be a controversial take. But people in professional settings are expected to fullfil the responsibilities they agree to take on, follow thru with promises, and to turn down the things they reasonably cannot be expected or can’t do. It’s called having professional ethics.
In some ethical frameworks, intention of action is not excusable. An act or absence of act that causes harm is immoral regardless of whether the harm was intended or not.
Yeah I mean things drop through the cracks. Humans is humans.
As a foreigner in the same city as LMG the work culture is to never say no, I get in to a bunch of professional trouble when saying no. So turning down work to make yourself less busy is hard for some here. I’m just suggesting that this may not be mallace and pure evil, the situation is a product of the work and office culture there. It would play out differently in different parts of the globe.
I never said it was malice. I said it was lack of ethics. They might be very good and nice people. But if in a professional setting they behave like this, they are unethical. If the whole industry behaves like this then the industry’s work culture is unethical. This is not rocket science. The tech sector is a toxic sludge of unprofessional pricks. The tech entertainment is worse. But that’s not excuse. There are professional and ethical tech entertainment companies in the space who don’t abuse their employees.
I am in the wrong thread man. My comments are purely based on the billet labs thing where this thread started, and those not directly involved with the sexual harassment being grouped in with the unethical lack of integrity brush.
That’s the interesting part. Linus wanted to make his yt channel a company. Created LMG with a loan and all. Cool. But that means that now the company, and by extension Linus himself as the owner, is morally responsible for all that happens within their walls. That’s also part of the initial ethical failure, I don’t mean they cause or are to blame all the time, but they’re responsible for dealing with it.
Linus might not have harassed anyone himself personally. But, if one of his employees harassed another of his employees, he is responsible. Worse, if he know and did basically nothing, then LMG neglected to act on its duty of care. Same reason why, when one employee goes in public to diss out and trash talk a competitor, then it’s as if it came out of Linus mouth, because it’s LMG speaking.
“But I was busy with emails” is not an excuse, or “I didn’t know”, isn’t either. Your company your responsibility.
This is the schedule that they themselves set though. It made sense a bit to create as much content as they could in the beginning when they were first starting out and growing their channel. But they’re extremely successful in this category and they don’t have to remain beholden to the YouTube algorithm to make money what with Floatplane and so on. They literally have the ability to slow down production, do reviews, and other content in a responsible way, and they haven’t.
That work load may have contributed to him not addressing or not properly handling the situation with Madison, but that is something he brought on himself. It shouldn’t have been an email to a single person. This isn’t some random startup with venture capital. Linus built a whole successful company. A company that should have both a PR team (who don’t let him get in his feelings with reactionary remarks without getting legal counsel first), and an HR team to handle things like this. It should literally never have gotten to this point.
Overwork is also one form of workplace abuse. It just makes the matters worse
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We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong. The Home Depot is the same way and allows rapes and retaliation. HR is a scam. All they deserve is violence.
Ah yes calls for violence, definitely a level headed and appropriate response.
Says every blue voter who wonders why women lost their right to choose.
You’ll lose to the GOP who actually do it because you sit there and do nothing.
man thats some crazy parkour you did there
Wow you’re literally the walking definition of radicalized, edgelord teenager or boomer with lead poisoning?
Don’t you have capital to storm again there potato chip bandit? Would love to send some more of you emotional LARPers to jail
The bootlicker speaks. Go back to golfing Trumper.
Ew, someone generalizing my politics. Go check out my post history.
Thanks for being part of the problem, nut job.
Edit: and just in case I need to spell it out, it’s ACAB, BLM, LGBTQIA and sweeping progressive reform for life without direct provocation of violence for life, like it or not.
I’ll say it again, what do you all expect from a company called Linus Tech Tips? Linus? You gotta be kidding me, right? There’s expectations for someone called Linus? Fuck me. Haven’t even heard of this garbage until this whole thing was discovered.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of his initial fame came from sharing a first name with the creator of Linux. They’re both pretty toxic, but at least it seems like Torvalds is trying to change.
Well to be fair Linus Torvalds pronounces his name more like “lee-uh-nuhs”.
I had literally never heard of this company before now and all the threads on Reddit have thousands upon thousands of posts. Why is this such a BFD? Not saying it isn’t, I just live under a rock.
LTT, for better or worse, is a very popular tech/PC gaming entertainment YouTube channel. A lot of the younger folks in the nerd space probably grew up watching his content.
I started watching a little late, because I thought he seemed kind of annoying back in the day, but I actually do enjoy their content. It’s clear they have some organization and communication problems internally that they need to sort out, though.
LTT is one of the biggest YouTube channels and commands a lot of influence in the PC gaming community. The parent organisation actually has a lot of channels on youtube and they pump out a ton of videos under a few different names so even if you don’t recognise the LTT name you might have seen some of their other videos just in passing.
Why is it a big deal? Because the accusations are big, given their influence on peoples’ purchasing decisions.
“Now that people are watching and are angry, we care too, people”
“We’re sorry you found out that sexual misconduct has been a regular occurrence here. We will now take this seriously and ensure you never find out anything like this again. We believe that although sexual assault may happen in the workplace, it is unacceptable for it to be brought to the public’s attention.”
Finally a normal safe corporate response rather than further digging a hole for themselves.
Naw, they’re gonna go back to playing Shovel Knight on one of the next WAN(ks) or so
I wonder if there will be a wan show at this point, I personally believe it would be a mistake from a PR point of view. He doesn’t know how to keep quiet and will probably keep digging
I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t fuck it up by eventually blowing up and deflect accusations on his podcast in the next 3 months or so. I’d (almost) give him a prize if he coils hold it up for this long.
