Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls
Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls
The controversy continues to grow.
What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company to hire an outside investigator.
Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. 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.”
Finally, someone in this shit fest of a management structure realized that having the owners of the company investigate themselves isn't the smartest idea here.
I will be interested to see how much power the new CEO really has over operations, or if Linus predictably has got such a founder's syndrome that he tries to "fix" the problems himself (which he can't, of course, since he clearly doesn't believe he has a workplace culture issue in the first place).
The quality and partner/sponsor issues are mostly expected from getting investor money and expanding quickly. The harassment issues are probably a preexisting problem from existing management. So its interesting that these issues are coming out near the same time.
Expect Linus to be reigned in and no longer be responding directly to these issues. Despite that he didnt sell the company, the people/banks that gave him the money to expand will not be happy to lose their money.
So its interesting that these issues are coming out near the same time.
I don't think it's that unusual, really. LTT and Linus specifically have had people accuse him before of being unprofessional or creating a toxic work environment or bolstering a toxic fanbase or putting out bad content or all those things. Things I didn't know about because I just started getting into his stuff a couple of months ago. But all those things are being reexamined now because he lost favor for a second. The Gamer's Nexus video opened him up to be criticized where normally he'd have a loyal fanbase that would rush to his defense. But even then, it wasn't until he made that first bad response and Gamer's Nexus responded to the response and called out his gaslighting on the topic that a lot of the controversy blew open.
People who had long been ignored or felt like they weren't safe to speak out against the harm they felt LMG or Sebastion had done to them saw an opportunity to let their voice be heard. And people who had been ignored in the past are being looked at again in new context and by more people. This is a common thing. People often feel frightened to speak out about something because they feel they'll be dismissed or punished for it. Everything from people simply telling them to suck it up because that's just life to people threatening violence to people getting you blacklisted. This is why after just a couple of sexual abuse allegations started coming out, an entire flood of them suddenly were made public and #MeToo happened. That was a case where speaking out against producers, writers, directors, actors, or anyone else big in the motion picture industry would usually be an end to your career, so most people weren't willing to do it. And most of the ones who had spoken out in the past were made fun of, actually laughed at, before being blacklisted and relatively forgotten by the wider audience. An individual victim had no power to do anything, but once a few did, some of the others joined, and then it became a movement.
The LTT scandal won't be anywhere near the same size as that, of course. It's one relatively small company. But my point is that it's the same phenomenon at a different scale. The group and specifically Linus have a fan base that has been absolutely brutal to dissenters before. Sebastion on the WAN show and in previous replies to criticism always dismisses it as invalid and that emboldens his fanbase to hit back at people who are, "Just hating," or, "Don't understand what they're talking about!" The Gamer's Nexus videos started to form a little wedge between Sebastion and his fans as they showed how he wasn't being fair to them either. That created an opening.
It'll be very interesting to see what comes from this. Also it'll be interesting how public they will really make the findings. I suspect we will see a big round of firing in the upper management
I was on the fence regarding wether or not to stay subscribed to his YouTube and floatplane.
The "apology" video started to push me towards staying on board until HE LITERALLY SHRUGGED before his apology.
They are talking the talk about doing better, being more accurate, and going over the videos more thoroughly and then they let that COMPLETELY slide? If no one who watched that video ever said "Hey maybe a shrug before your apology might be sending the wrong message?" than there is definitely somethings NG massively wrong at LMG.
The to top things off this Madison stuff comes out of the woodwork?
Yeah, I'm done with LMG. l hope that the talented people who work there either get rid of Linus completely or are able to move on to roles in healthier places.
The apology video to me rang hollow and self serving. They made jokes (including a sex joke which was very unfortunate timing), they teased a new product and plugged lttstore, they said the details on how Labs does thorough testing will be paywalled, they publicly disclosed Billets prototype price which GN's video clearly stated they did not want public (an error in the video apologizing for errors), and then there's Linus' response.
I've canceled my floatplane subscription and unsubscribed from all of their YouTube channels. I was willing to see them through on the original accusations from GN, but after that "apology" and the accusations from Madison, I no longer feel okay rewarding them with my time and money.
Agree that I was ok with the apology (this was before I read Madison's tweets). But then Linus came on camera and he was instantly getting emotional and defensive. Immediately any goodwill that had been regained by Yvonne and Terren were wiped clean.
Then I saw the Madison news and unsubscribed.
I hope they recover, if only for the 100+ people who work for them and rely on lmg for income. But if not I wouldn't personally be upset.
This is the take away that I wish more people would understand.
Linus is (as far as we can tell from the outside) a terrible boss, should not be in charge, and has said/done egregious things.
Some of his staff on the other hand (appear) to be fantastic talent and good people. I don't want ill to come to them.
Carpool critics (I'll never call it by the new name) will always be one of my favorite things ever.
I hope they either exorcize LMG of its demons and rebrand or move on to greener pastures. Either way I wish them well.
I would agree with you, but they're talented people. I don't think they'd have any issue getting a new job unless they're one of the creeps or enablers. I don't want to see LTT come back from this if even just one thing that happened to Madison came to light as undeniable fact.
Like some of the employees were saying how they're overworked trying to get out video after video is bad enough. People that see that and say it's 'hustle and grind' are delusional. There's plenty of other channels that can give me the same info LTT provided without the employee abuse. I'll stick with the GN videos when I'm actually going to purchase components and Paul's Hardware for tech news for now.
I respectfully disagree that the shrug should be read as indifference to the issues going on. I think the rest of his apology, regardless of whether it was sufficient or not, shows that he is taking it seriously.
That's not at all to question your decision to be done with LMG. Anyone who chooses that in this situation is completely justified, IMHO. Madison's accusations especially are very troubling, and I hope they deal with it thoroughly, and tell us what they did after it's taken effect. That sort of behavior is completely unacceptable and if it means that Linus needs to go, then Linus needs to go.
Tbh when I heard him apologise, it did not sound genuine at all. More like him reading off a script that someone else wrote for him to save face.
If anything, he's not sorry for what he's done, he's just sorry he finally got called out for it
The video would have been better of without Linus in it. He really needed to step back and shut up
Their apology didn't even mention reviewing products that Linus has invested in. They didn't promise to correct that.
Keep in mind, some of the "talented" people contributed to these issues. Some of them are to blame as well.
Genuine question: People pay $5 a month to watch videos from that channel on Floatplane?
Yes, I did that in the past. The floatplane exclusives was interesting. But then the Trust Me Bro bs happens, and I stopped watching in floatplane and YouTube. Also I was unable to watch in 4K, I opened a ticket with the support, they asked me to run cloudflare's speed test and I replied then with the results. But never had a response, so no I don't trust you bro.
At the time it was worth it for all the exclusives that you would never see on YouTube. Plus my experience was that they served a better video and audio quality than Youtube.
I hope that the talented people who work there either get rid of Linus completely or are able to move on to roles in healthier places.
Same. I’m particularly hoping that Emily goes somewhere else where she can present more technical content. Her videos are clearly more technical than the rest of LTT and she has a particularly calm and pleasant demeanor while explaining things, like a really good teacher.
She would probably do well elsewhere.
The verge will be handling all PC building videos now. Grab your tweezers!!!
I'm still trying to find my table.
So much for the flippant "I won't be responding to this outside of this text post".
You would think that after so many YouTubers sucked at apologizing and got called out they would figure out how to do it the right way. But no!
That big ass team and you couldn't get a PR person to help you?
None of this was irredeemable. Sure, it will take a significant amount of time to rebuild trust but you can choose to be transparent in response and right your wrongs.
The hubris
I mean the Madison stuff is pretty bad. The rest of it, was probably recoverable from.
I think the thing is in these kind of situations they are typically no win situations. When the fuel is burning really the only answer is let it burn itself out, then deal with the aftermath. I don't think any response would be good enough because right now people are out for blood, some of it very justifiably but people would need to be blind to not see there are people who have an axe to grind and the usual drama chasers. I'm not here to say they didn't do anything wrong but people are going to try to connect some unrelated controversies to keep the fire burning (Note: This isn't about the Madison leak) like the mindchop tragedy.
This is how assholes behave. They don't even see themselves as having done wrong.
They just know they got caught and they're pissed off and annoyed about it. Why should they need a pr person, they think.
The whole reason for sexual assault, employee abuse, and egregious errors in test results isn't simple "oops", it's indicative of priorities and biases and behaviors from the top down.
So it seems like Linus is a self-centered, unempathetic kinda boss, who doesn't have even a correct understanding of how to be a better employer.
On the other hand, that is how 90% of all owner/bosses of all business I've ever interacted with are.
There isn't a point to this observation I'm just sad about it :(
I never found LTT that informational. Jayz2Cents was way better.
I want to like Jayz but every. Fuckin. Video. was clickbait with bait titles
I only watched his watercooling stuff. But honestly some rando 100 view video helped the most.
DeArrow has been quite nice for clickbait titles and thumbnails. Made by the same guy who created SponsorBlock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/
Ditto, if I can't even tell what the video will be about from the title OR the thumbnail I'm not watching it.
This. TBH, I wasn't fully aware that LTT was still a thing.
I'm not surprised by this whole thing at all, the only thing I'm kinda surprised about is that people are surprised by this in the first place.
Even in the first video I saw of him it already showed he did semi basic hardware mistakes and was kind of an ass, and that was years ago.
I've never taken him seriously, sort of taken him for a .. I dunno, for lack of better comparison, tucker Carlson like. Not a right wing crazy, but more of an asshat only to be viewed for entertainment and his "facts" never to be taken seriously.
Maybe they'll eventually make videos that are worth watching some day too after they figure out how to not sexually harass employees
Can someone sum up the controversy? I've seen quite a bit but not sure exactly what's what.
Basic summary which will miss a lot of context because it looks like this is all really a few years coming:
(For ease of flow, I will be using quotation marks in much of this comment, but these are paraphrasing, not direct quotes.)
A YouTube channel called Gamer's Nexus (GN) put out a video talking about Linus Tech Tips (LTT/LMG) and how they have, through incompetence, negligence, or malice, been putting out bunk data and doing really bad hardware reviews at least in the past year, and some guessing of why it happened. In that video, GN also addressed a controversy over Billet Labs, a relatively new company that is trying to build water blocks for custom water loops. LTT did a video with their prototype some time back, in which they lost the 3090Ti that was sent with the block, Linus decided to instead use it on the 4090 someone grabbed by accident, complained that the water block didn't work, and went on to say it's an overly expensive gimmick that didn't work and no one should ever buy it despite not testing it on the hardware that it was made for. At the time, Linus was called out for this and dismissed criticism saying, "Even if the block had done better on the proper hardware, it was impossible it could have improved," and, "None of it changes the conclusion that no one should ever buy it." Billet Labs asked for their prototype (and GPU) back, and LMG said they would send it back. They asked for it back again, were told it would be shipped soon. Then LMG auctioned the block off to the public at the Linus Tech Expo (LTX).
In response to the GN video, Linus Sebastion, owner, founder, and Chief Visionary Officer of LMG, posted on the LTT forums several things such as, "The Gamer's Nexus video was journalistic dishonest because they didn't contact us before releasing the video. If they had, they would have gotten important context such as how we didn't sell the water block, we auctioned it off for charity. And we've already come to an agreement with Billet Labs to reimburse them for the block." The rest of the post went on to deflect blame and never really address the crux of GN's video which was mostly about the bad data LMG has been putting out in their videos, seemingly caused by an untenable release schedule. GN responded in their weekly news video calling out Linus' response for gaslighting, lying, and more. He also contacted Billet Labs and found out that they had not come to an agreement for reimbursement, and in fact that since the water block had been auctioned off that they only heard back from LMG about two hours AFTER GN's first video had been released.
After that, people on Reddit, Twitter, Lemmy, and other social media started looking back at previous accusations against LTT, LMG, Linus Sebastion, and other related entities and saw a long pattern of bad behavior that had mostly been dismissed in the past. A former employee, Madison Reeve, posted a long series of posts on X (Twitter) detailing a toxic work environment mostly consisting of toxic management treating employees like they should be happy to work there when they have a nearly impossible task of getting a tremendous amount of content out at an accelerated rate for a barely livable wage for the city that they're in. But on top of that experience that she said was shared with many other employees, she as a woman also faced a lot of misogyny and even some sexual harassment, eventually culminating in her self-harming quite seriously simply in the hopes that she wouldn't get in trouble for taking a day off.
Since Madison's allegations, LTT made an apology video which did not really address the sexual harassment allegations or even the toxic workplace stuff. What it did have, however, were a couple of humorous seques to their sponsors, some bloopers, LTT merch, a reminder to visit the LTT store, and Linus again trying to deflect the blame away from himself. In my opinion, the apology comes off worse than tone deaf, it comes off as downright insulting even if you pretend that they didn't know about the Madison Reeves accusations before making it. Now, finally, they have gotten Linus to potentially shut the fuck up like he probably should have from the start and the recently-hired new CEO is stepping in to say, "I'm appalled at these accusations, we're going to not only conduct our own review but also hire someone to review us." Keep in mind, however, this was someone who, when it was announced that they'd hired him, Linus said on the WAN Show that he'd been a shadow-CEO working at the company for six months to make sure that he fit with the corporate culture and got along with management. Meaning that he knew about their toxic management before he formally accepted the job.
Wow, I only knew some surface level stuff. Thanks for the write up.
Awesome, great write-up. Thanks for the info!
The train wreck ain't stopping at the locomotive.
edit: I've read the thread and removed the meme, this isn't the time for memes, holy fuck.
Thanks! Edit: Link isn't working for me for some reason. Bummer
One additional point I think some others left out, in a recent LTT lab tour video, an employee took potshots at GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed by saying LTT wasn't reusing benchmark test results and implying GN and HUB were. HUB responded on twitter pointing out they they'd rerun many benchmarks and pointed to some quality issues in LMG tests. Linus responded on the WAN show in a pretty dismissive way and mentioned journalistic integrity or something. This seems to have lead GN to make that 45 minute video which includes a bunch of evidence from LMG videos.
Toxic workplace accusations aside for a moment, some of this might have blown over were it not were Linus's shitty handling at every turn. He probably could've diffused some of this current situation, but just keeps being dismissive and adversarial. Steve of GN said they'd been thinking about these issues for the past few months, but I'm not sure this video would've dropped this week or in quite the same format had Linus not fucked up his response on the WAN show.
gamernexus went over everything, It is fairly damning.
I had no idea this operation was so big
The way they act makes it hard to tell. You would think any company with over 100 employees would have HR policies on responding to things on social media and sexual harassment.
They have over 100 employees? Wow. That it was like like a couple dozen at most.
Same... I thought I'd heard of them more than I cared for before this controversy but now I keep fuckin hearing about them.
I don't understand why people are so enraged. I do understand actually : you all love the drama. It's great, plus you can act offended and make it personal. Some of you look like you are on some personal mission with pitchfork in one hand and a big justice boner in the other. Chill.They are a big private company is not connected to you, they haven't done anything to you directly. Or did they make you buy a cpu that is actually just a tad slower? Come on.
About time they're stopping spreading misinformation. Crucify the creeps!
“I used to watch videos on YouTube from a guy named Linus and he started a company called Linus Tech Tips.” How stupid does that sound? Linus? You guys watched videos by someone named Linus and are shocked and appalled when they/he are accused of treating people poorly and being sketchy. Lol. Fucking Linus? Cmon guys, why were you there in the first place? Linus….lmao