Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t…::The YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has halted production after controversies over ethics and accuracy in reporting, spurred further this morning by accusations of sexual harassment experienced at the company.
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So despite the recent “reactions” from LTT, and just to bring this all back to the beginning… Thank you to Gamers Nexus for doing some damn necessary journalism, which couldn’t have been done without a high level of ethical, and technical competency.
And courage, because this could have really been twisted and clouded, Gamers Nexus really went out on a limb (albeit justified).
Steve and crew do amazing work. They seem so genuine compared to 99% of the content on YouTube. Its like the Red Letter Media guys compared to all the other movie review channels.
What they did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to stop corrupt/incompetent reviewers from misleading people.
They really should, especially since LTT was trying to be GN by adding the Labs. Claiming to be better than GN while making basic mistakes was just super unprofessional, which is why Steve’s response was so awesome. Anyone who has watched his channel knows he has a standard, and it’s massively important to him. I don’t think he would mind more competition in the space necessarily, even coming from LTT Labs, but the bedrock of GN is data, even if it’s a little bit dry as content sometimes. If you’re going to try to compete with or dunk on Steve, best meet the bar he’s set.
Other than “this should never have happened” I see this as the best possible outcome.
Now we wait and see I suppose.
Agreed. The upload schedule has been a holy grail within LTT for a long time, and I truly believe it’s the root of all of this, yes, even the sexual harassment. When do you have time to make good HR policies? Pull people into HR for reprimanding? Have opportunities for others to second guess decisions? Do training? Or heck, even just have less tired and irritable people making in-the-moment stupid decisions?
This uncompromising maximum velocity hurts everyone, and I hope they keep never bring it back to this pace, even after the process improvements they have planned.
This was my take as well. To add to it, on an individual level, the way to avoid biases is to step back and think critically for a second. In the interest of time, if you just blurt out every thought that comes to your head you’ll say insensitive stuff every now and then. Or you’ll unconsciously express favoritism out of convenience. The work culture there that tries to pass it off as “just the odd mean joke between friends” needs to change too, but having time to foster a positive environment involves taking away time from cranking out the next video.
Linus has got to look inside a little and find integrity again for his company, because that’s what they lost years ago in pursuit of a constant churn of content.
The company has far outgrown Linus’s ability to run it. Half the shit he says on the WAN show I cringe at as someone who’s done corporate management / systems consulting for the last decade+. I get the feeling he really is unable to separate his ego from his corporate responsibilities and this inability seeps through in all their content. Just take the Billet Labs fiasco as an example, he was so convinced he knew better that he felt insulted on the WAN show that his conclusion was brought into question when it was shown his methodology was abhorrently flawed; or look to his and the entire team’s proclivity to misappropriate inventory to their homes or the projects that personally benefit him and his family - I would hate to be his personal attorney as any litigation hitting LMG is sure to hit him personally as there is ample evidence of the corporate veil being pierced, and JFC why is the entire consumer tech market perpetually in the mindset of a horny 14 year old? Talk about a hostile work environment.
I found it hilarious when he was discussing Blizzard and their actions to be egregious when the vibe at LTT honestly doesn’t seem all that different - he seems to be barrelling toward following in their footsteps
Very much so.
They’ve basically been operating in startup mode for years, and haven’t bothered to transition their management systems to “decade old company with lots of employees” mode.
You can’t burn on startup mode forever without things exploding at some point.
I think this mess is just a sign of a company experiencing growing pains. Seems like they are still figuring out what kind of processes the company needs to have and who is the right person for each task. When a company grows quickly you tend to bump into (or more like crash into) unexpected issues like this. In the case of LMG, it got particularly nasty, but I’m glad they are finally addressing the issues.
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The situation got really bad because the company didn’t have what it takes to notice and intervene in time. Once they have noticed the problem, they should work to prevent it from happening in the future. Perhaps they need to fire people who don’t have manners. All of this applies to lots of other issues too; not just sexual assault, harassment etc. That’s why I was mainly focussing on the big picture rather than a single category of problems.
Fortunately though, they have already built processes to prevent certain issues from arising in the future, but obviously there’s still a lot they need to do in this regard. The way I see it, that’s a clear sign of growing pains in general.
Hopefully things will get better, and also let’s hope the “shocked face” thumbnails for the videos go away. I don’t care if the algorithm says they convert better. I skip right over.
Unrelated hot take but the thumbnails don’t seem as egregious as others I’ve seen, but honestly I might’ve just gotten used to them, or I pay more attention to what he’s holding or something.
On another note, I do also hope things get better. Unfortunately, I’m disappointed in Linus’s own response in the video as he still victimized himself, but he said some things that seemed genuine after. Half the stuff about Billet labs I found reasonable but the rest seemed half-baked. Hats off to the rest of his staff and his CEO though—they were very genuine and not shy about taking accountability. I appreciate the CEO taking charge as he’s a much more sane voice than Linus in my opinion, and I appreciate Yvonne standing up.
I dont get why everyone is so up in arms about thumbnails. I watch the videos not the thumbnails!
But yeah, I was wondering if the new CEO would say anything about the matter, and I was surprised to see him actually say something. Even more surprised to se Yvonne speaking out too. Both her and the CEO seem to have basically told Linus to fuck off for a bit, cuz hes only making things worse.
Oh yeah, 100% with Yvonne and Teren. It’s kinda like Teren’s like “you hired me as CEO, now let me be CEO and back off.”
Worst thing is you never know the topic of the video, I cant tell if it’s about PC building some random gadget review, some nonsense humour piece. The only one I wanted to see was Intel’s $5000 build your tech thing. For PC building I go to other channels now
get the dearrow extension
I had never heard about this, this is absolutely awesome
I know, I just found out about it recently because it’s made by the same devs as sponsorblock
This has been coming for a long time. I have had issues with Linus and his channel for a long time including making a complaint about breach of advertising standards in Canada (which resulted in a change forced by the ASA). They have become the model of how to make money on Youtube but they do so in such an unethical way where they make or invest in competing products that they also review. They have never had any appearance of journalistic standards or integrity, they don’t publish errata or corrections and they make a lot of mistakes and the abusive reviews have been going on for a long time.
I am not surprised to find sexual harassment as well as undue pressure being applied in the workplace. It all centres and comes from the Narcissist at the centre of it who has built a media group off the back of civil law breaches repeatedly and continues to push the limits.
Labs was a terrible idea mostly because Linus and his media group will corrupt the results for his personal profit and he and Yvonne are the only ones making big bucks in all this. This has been building for a very long time, the lack of basic morality has been on display since the beginning.
They have been misleading millions of people for years and getting away with it. I hope this company is done. There have to be consequences for this kind of behavior.
What Gamers Nexus did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to get rid of corrupt channels like Linus Tech Tips and I suspect they were just one of many.
Except I watch for entertainment and gamers nexus is boring.
Ah, colour me surprised that the spammiest channel on YouTube, which is practically unwatchable without Sponsorblock and has always been my go-to example use case for the addon (which Linus deems “Piracy”), turns out to have incredibly shady advertising practices.
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You seem to be delusional. Do you know what fatigue is?
I believe some of his early videos were basically undisclosed advertisements. They were so over the top positive, it just didn’t feel right. I’ve had his channels blocked on YouTube for a while now. I simply don’t trust anything coming from him.
Misleading? Have they been lying about their reviews?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The company has currently paused all production to improve its review processes, and CEO Terren Tong tells The Verge an outside investigator will be hired to examine the harassment allegations.
“We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” said Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke.
According to Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips reviewed a copper cooling block from Billet Labs on the wrong GPU, then auctioned it off at a recent fan event without the company’s permission.
The afternoon after Gamers Nexus posted its video, Sebastian began responding to concerned fans in the Linus Tech Tips forums.
Reeve went on to accuse the company of barring her from videos after she reported being “grabbed multiple times in the office” and being told to “calm my tits” and “stop being such a bitch.”
He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
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The grabbing part is clear - but “calm your tits” and “stop being such a bitch”? At least where I live both are gender neutral, first one even used most often male to male. Am I missing something? Would it not have been sexual harassment but just toxic culture if it was another cuss? E.g. when you say “motherfucker” you don’t actually mean “somebody having sexual relations with one’s mother”. Can somebody with more knowledge about US legal system explain this to me?
If I said either of those things to any of the women I work with I’d likely get fired before the end of the week. And they really do not want to fire me
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The thing I don’t get is all these random LMG apologists saying “actually here is exactly why it happened and is actually completely okay” despite absolutely no one having a true inside view of the company.
Like I saw someone just randomly guessing really stupid reasons why Madison is in the wrong, and acting like they have secret knowledge.
But Steve didn’t contact Linus to give him time to prepare an explanation in which he would blame everyone else and say how sad he is! It’s just a poor $100M company, they are just humans and they make mistakes. :D
ngl you had me in the first half. It’s too early in the morning for me.
Yeah but sometimes you have to make up some facts to base your opinions on!
Someone replied to their apology video saying “I’m not entirely convinced that Madison isn’t half making this up for attention.” Followed by “as someone who works long hours in manual labor” then uses that as a reason the workers shouldn’t be complaining about their work schedules.
I’m convinced half of LTT’s fans are incels.
If it’s half as bad as the allegations some heads should be rolling when this is all said and done. Otherwise this is just a PR patch job. But for now, we wait.
Man, when I was a teen shopping for parts on NCIX, the last thing I’d have imagined was that the new-release hype guy was going to eventually get his own behind the music. Yet here we are. Life is truly strange. When I imagine purgatory, it looks like the inside of one of those stores. I can still hear the ticket thing.
