I always thought his channel was really dummed down. I watched a video or two and then noped out of it. Wasn’t many if at all any tips from the so called tech tips site.
Oh and stating the obvious but he’s ‘sorry’ because he got caught.
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.
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.
man thats some crazy parkour you did there
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.
Everything you’re told in this thread + they put ads into their “apology” video
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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Afaik this (third party) investigation was started by Terren Tong, the CEO, who was not in this position as of this year and Madison left a couple years ago. I think on this part we can at least give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Linus position might be a very different matter though.
I mean he also is a friend of Linus’ going a long while back but I agree he should be given a chance to straighten this out
Friend yes, but he was his boss, and in linus’s own words, he was the only one who could manage linus. Idk, I am cautiously positive due to the new CEO, but he does still answer to Linus so…
Agree, I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I personally don’t think I’ll resubscribe and be as much of a follower as I was, but who knows, depending on the end of this all I actually might
I have been kind of wondering about that investigation. If their HR is already 3rd party, continuing to use them would technically be a 3rd party investigation. Linus said their HR team is investigating, and they’re hiring someone outside to investigate, are they hiring two HR firms? I looked at LMG’s staff page, and they don’t have any HR listed there. Only a Talent & Culture manager and coordinator. Maybe that’s HR? Seems doubtful.
I just feel like they might be calling in the same 3rd party HR firm that they’ve been using, find no evidence, and keep on trucking.
I have been kind of wondering about that investigation. If their HR is already 3rd party, continuing to use them would technically be a 3rd party investigation.
They have internal HR now but didn’t back then. So bringing in someone new to investigate this sounds like a good step. If they really are serious about this, then it would be one of the only way to get a handle ton this. But of course it all depends on how serious LMG is treating this and how much freedom the investigators have. They could easily try to brush this under the rug when the attention drops. So we’ll see I guess.
We need a second third party HR team to investigate OUR third party HR team, and make sure they stand up to scrutiny!
“fuck Linus” when Eli the computer guy made that video a few years ago I stopped watching his videos fuck Linus
What is this video you are talking about?
I can’t find the actual video, I assume Eli took it down. But if you recall a controversy with Linus Media group using DMCA takedowns about 4 years ago. Eli was calling Linus as a hypocrite and basically said fuck Linus.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/at955e/so_whats_up_with_eli_vs_ltt/
Sorry about the reddit link but that’s the best I can find.
thanks mate
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”.
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.
What a corporate answer that says, now that the public knows we suck I guess we need to address it.
If they’re smart, they’ll realize they need to address these issues in order to exist as a company people want to work at going forward. It’s in their best interest to not appear as a toxic work environment.
What kind of answer would you rather have. I’m seriously asking what should the comment have been in order for you to be happy?
It would start with acknowledging a problematic culture, and give details of initial resignations or sackings to help excise it.
Maybe after an actual investigation into these allegations. Taking things at face value and grabbing pitchforks has never worked
I feel a good majority of people are just in the outrage phase and there’s literally no response that would have been good enough.
Oh I’m fine with the answer. With the information I gathered that same day this is probably the best they can do now. I would like to know more info about this outside investigation.
There is no way. Too many corp answers that were nothing but words have been published before for anyone to not be cynic about it.
But how to make it better? Do you just want LMG to disappear and leave 100 employers jobless, because that’s not nice either.
Well, start acting on what you say and trust will come in time.
Based on the response above they’re trying to do exactly that now. So maybe wait and see?
Yes. This. Because something else will rise in LMG’s place. Because other companies will see what happened and say we cannot let that happen here, because we don’t want a salted desert where our offices are. Because we don’t want our company to be a synonym for a fallen tower.
If abuse of employees led to business collapses, then we wouldn’t have edifices like Ubisoft who swim in their lucre while still perpetuating sex abuse rings among the upper management who take their choice of hot office clerks.
A company of a hundred employees getting razed over a scandal would indeed serve to spare tens of thousands of jobs more and allow developers to develop in peace without getting harassed by their management.
To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I have read a statement that talked about bringing in third party investigators. Is that common for corporations?
It’s usually something agreed to in a settlement or in a power dynamic situation like Apple telling a supplier they want a third party audit. It also happens when you have no intention of ever publishing the findings. That they’re proactively doing it with the obvious obligation to publish what is found and the consequence of it is most def a show of positive character. I think ya boy Hanlon is right when it comes to leadership at LMG - never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
This, but maybe not after what we got from Linus to begin with. This is clearly damage control and also is probable detracting from what limus actually feels which is f*ck you I can do what I want and I don’t owe you anything.
Maybe an inclusion of the word sorry.
And wording it so it sounds like it was written by an actual human being that gives a shit and not a dressed out HR drone that only knows corpspeak.
This reads as it was written by ChatGPT.
That I can agre to. The word sorry bares some weight and to me it shows that you care even more than just doing damage control.
Unfortunately saying sorry is an admission of guilt. A sterile corporate response is the best they can do to appear impartial while the investigation goes ahead. The apologies may come later if there is truth to the allegations.
Saying sorry isn’t (legally) an admission of guilt in Canada
Maybe an inclusion of the word sorry.
yeah because we all know the internet is level headed and it won’t be twisted into a clear admission of guilt 5 nano seconds later…
They tried that with the video, it didn’t work.
Dude, crimes have been alleged. You do not say “sorry” in writing while a criminal investigation is looming.
They recently got a new CEO a month ago because Linus the owner realized he was unfit for that purpose. It should have been dealt with years ago but I wonder if some benefit of the doubt can be given here seeing as the company was in a state of transition and probably would of cleaned up the work culture in private.
Or not because Linus still owns the company and the buck stops at the absolute top. He put his friend in high positions so it would cause a uncomfortable position when someone who wasn’t his friend lower down the ladder were to speak out. He has also consistently showed toxic masculinity in the way he acts and has spread it within the fabric in the company,
I have no strong opinion one way or another, but please tell me if I’m being unfair here on either side here. I think the company can still clean itself up and has shown actions before it was publicly known to address it, and I also think the company has misogyny in it’s corporate structure and DNA which will constantly be problematic.
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.
What a classic response. Classic and soulless. Ugh.
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Every single one and more.
We’ve got Smile Makers and Goop lined up, stay tuned for our new channel.
This is likely to quickly become a problem.
My Pillow?
Dbrand, apparently
Dbrand will probably still make fun of linus and mock them because of this whole thing
“Damage control, its there when you need to cover your ass. Speaking of covers this is the perfect segue to our sponsor, Dbrand…”
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“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.”
