this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Linus posted a response on the LTT forums:
Did this motherfucker just respond by chiding someone else for not following “proper journalistic practices” after completely fucking burying a company without reaching out to them about their prototype product?
Oh he reached out to them, agreed to send it and their graphics card (that they didn't use for the testing) back to them and then ~~sold~~ auctioned it off.
Rules for thee, not for me.
Linus is a massive narcissist. He literally thinks he's special.
Yeah. That hit me hard was well. Dude is apparently way more unhinged than most people knew. In his rise to fame, he's become a complete hypocrite (which also isn't unique).
If Linus knew he wasn't going to recommend anyone buy the waterblock no matter how it performed, but also didn't want to show it off as a niche 'supercar' of waterblocks, then why agree to review it at all? Was he maybe not in the loop at all until shooting the video?
Seems like there was no good way for this to turn out for Billet which is a real shame since they seemed to just want to show off something cool and maybe get some publicity for their startup.
And auctioning off their handmade prototype, even accidentally and for charity, is a collosal fuck up that really can't be solved with money alone.
Thanks for sharing his side/comment here.
Not that I agree with his defense (seems like allot of avoidance), but I am glad I could read it.
I get vibes of Top Gear reviewing the Tesla roadster.
I find him only responding in the forums sketchy, like I a lot of people have an will watch gamers Nexus video and will want a response from Linus. If Linus actually wanted to clear the air why wouldn't you do it on the wan show, he did it with the trust me bro situation. Almost nobody who watched the GM's video will read this post and I think that's what Linus wants, less eyes on the situation.
A couple of other things am sorry but DW guys we had a bit of a miscommunication with billet labs and sold their best prototype but we are gonna pay them back soon*tm is an awful way of handling it.
Also with the inaccuracies he doesn't actually address the problem, they are making too many videos too quickly, no matter how many checks and balances you put in if you rush people you will get a rushed shitty product. Not to mention he doesn't actually respond to the glaring issues of benchmarks being wrong or them trying to get the benchmarks to fit amds given ones or hell the clear conflicts of interest with noctua or Asus
He's only responding to his fans. It's just sad.
They are the ones that make him money, so they are what he is focused on.
For now. Y'all acting like Linus should immediately make a video in response to Gamer Nexus's 45 minute one. There's a lot to break down and go over so these things take time. Honestly WAN show being live would be a much better time to discuss it than the quickest response video in the west when one of the complaints right now, too is sloppiness when rushing.
Wait, so now they care about getting things right?
They are doing too many videos Indeed, but what's the solution? Doing less videos is penalized by the algorithm, which means not enough money to keep everyone around. So one solution would be to scale down, fire a bunch of people, close a bunch of channels and really focus just on LTT. To me this seems unrealistic and I doubt anyone in Linus' position would do this.
The other option instead is to double, triple and quadruple down, hire a bunch more people, create lots of tools and know how, ways to create more data, more easily and accurately, remove lots of work from the writers and try to grow until the issues are resolved. This to me seems the only solution and is one that LMG has been pursuing for years now.
The third option is to just handwave the problem away and say they should do better without actually offering a real solution l (and I'm talking from both points of view)
Am I wrong?
If that was what would be necessary, then yes, scaling down would be the correct choice, because in that case scaling up was a mistake.
Infinite growth is unsustainable, and it always falls apart in the end. Why can't we just be happy with some slow and sustainable growth, until a sustainable plateau?
They could hire more people, so the production load would be more spread out.
A few months ago there was a post on Reddit pointing out the problem with the writers being rushed from someone claiming to work at LTT. The solution the Reddit post suggested was to hire more people. Linus mentioned it on the WAN show but dismissed the post as just a whiner. (I believe the person making the post may have already been fired prior to making the post.)
If LTT was unionized there would have been an institutional path for this person to go through to get their grievances addressed. But Linus views that as some kind of personal failure. Rather than an institutional change that needs to happen to ensure the company is well run.
I have a hunch LMG will come out with a company reply. LMG is not Linus, and Linus is not LMG, despite owning the company. You can also see in the comments how many people get this wrong, some even going on ad hominem attacks on Linus' person.
It could be the case, that the forum post was Linus' personal answer and the other execs stopped him from running his mouth on a live show (WAN) and dig them a deeper hole. I don't work at LMG and I don't know Linus personally, but if LMG would want to be "taken seriously as a company", it should be a company statement, not a personal one.
Linus criticizing Steve on “proper journalistic practices” shows an incredible lack of self-awareness.
tl;dr with commentary:
On testing errors: Yep, we're trying to be better. [i.e. Let's move on and forget this ever happened.]
On the Billet auction: We're trying to do the right thing after a miscommunication. [This one's probably the best response, but that's not a high bar.]
On the Billet hit piece: We were only assholes to them to get them to be better. [MAJOR abuser vibes. "I wouldn't have beat you if you didn't deserve it".]
On releasing knowingly inaccurate videos: This is actually a good thing because we show our mistakes with footnotes. [WTF]
On conflicts of interest from corporate partnerships: Crickets [No surprise]
The worst part about the billet testing I feel is the arrogance when he said "it wouldn't matter if it dropped temperatures by 20 degrees, it's a bad product"
Like a bad product to who? If I were overclocking and something knocked off a full 20 degrees, that's a great product regardless of price
There's a reason people bought 4090s, some people want the highest tier performance and dropping an extra thousand to get something decent isn't a concern for some
To be fair, he meant 20 degrees from where it was during testing, not from stock or competitors. Even in this hypothetical it would match other options at best despite a higher price. But the problem is that we can't know this because they didn't test it properly
Steve never uses the wold 'sold' in his video, and uses the word 'auctioned' twice.
As if "sold at a charity auction" isn't an incredibly common and normal phrase. Linus is grasping.
I mean, since when has auctioning not been selling something? Auctioning is literally a method by which to sell something.
Right. And that's what Linus lead with.
But he never even used the word sold, just auction/auctioning.
Link to post: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641
FYI your link does not format properly on Kbin at least.
The starting line really puts me off. I don't really care much about the tech content but find their videos entertaining.
I have un-subscribed from all their channels and will see how much this video is addressed in the next WAN before I decide if to continue to watch their content at all going forward.
"I'm sorry...
...that you feel that way"
Kind of post.
The one real point that I thought Linus had here was that Steve didn't talk to him first. That part is getting a lot of ridicule, because it sounds petulant, but it's valid--it is accepted journalistic practice to give the subject of a story a chance to comment before publishing.
Since we can now see what that comment likely would have been, it doesn't seem to change the conclusion much. From experience I can guess at Steve's likely response--he would have tentatively given LMG credit for compensating Billet for the loss, pending verification and comment from Billet, and ripped all the rest of Linus's excuses a new one. But that still doesn't change the fact that Steve didn't quite live up to the journalistic standards that he touts on his channel.
That failure gives things a bit more of a "drama" flavor (It's hard not to suspect that this is primarily a response motivated by that clip of Linus's lab tech attacking GN's and HUB's testing methods). But of course it doesn't absolve LMG and its vaunted lab of milking the Youtube algorithm first and being a source of real information a distant second--which was argued pretty convincingly by GN and which a lot of us started to notice long before this video came out.
I think the way LTT handled the backpack warranty debacle shows that by contacting LTT, you won't get anything substantial in response. Linus will just keep being stubborn and you'll get nothing in response. Even the way that Linus responded in his "response", it's still a nothingburger response.
He's still doubling down on the way that he reviewed Billet Labs cooler and doesn't even acknowledge the biggest criticism that GN levied towards LTT, spending more time in making sure that the content that they're producing is accurate. Having a pinned comment and edited fixes shows that LTT doesn't really care about quality and instead pushing to keep more producing content.
I saw a post somewhere showing that at least 300 people unsubscribed from Floatplane, so that means at least 1500 USD/month (can be more if there's people who subscribe for 4k content) of revenue are lost. Just from him not wanting to spend 500 USD of his employee time to make sure that he reviewed the products properly.
Linus has completely lost the plot here. Although it's not unexpected since the way he handled the backpack warranty situation.
Please explain why it aught to be/is standard practice to try and get a reponse before publishing.
It's a customary practice, and I think it's a good one because it makes the story less one-sided and can diminish the appearance of it being a hit piece if it's negative. Bottom line, it's natural to want to know what the person the story is about thinks of it and what their perspective is. Obviously not all journalists seek a comment from every subject, but if they do, they often mention that they asked for a comment even if they weren't able to get one, because people want to know that they at least tried.
What could LMG have said which would change the reporting of the inaccuracies of their content? Getting a response before hand may be able to get some more information but giving corporations time to react also gives them time to act in bad faith (e.g. cover up or attempt to blackmail, etc).
Wanting to know what the person in the story things doesn't appear to me to support sharing your criticisms before posting. Something being a custom doesn't justify it being a custom (if it really is one).
I mean, I'm not a journalist, I've just been reading them for decades. It's a thing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/
Just as an example that came up in a quick web search--the Washington Post is a major US newspaper and this is its stated policy. Seeking comment from story subjects is an important practice in journalism, and if you consider yourself a journalist and don't do it in a given case, you should probably have a good reason. This is why Steve felt the need to explain himself on that point.
I assumed some do it, perhaps most do and that makes it a standard.
Taking their comment into account has the potential to get more information which would prevent you reporting misinformation. I'd love to know how often their comment is useful vs how often corporations take advantage.