Linus Tech Tips

LTT has lived long enough and grown large enough to see themselves being the villain. I suppose fame and wealth can corrupt a person easily, the arrogance in the response from Linus is disappointing.

LTT hasn't been a serious or informative tech channel for years, you don't watch their video for information but for entertainment. They try to right the course by creating the Lab team but miss the point when they don't change their mindset.

It's like Top Gear vs Fifth Gear back in the days. You don't buy a new car base on the reviews on Top Gear, likewise if I want useful consumer advice, LTT is the last place I look.

I started the video shocked that GN would do a video like this at all. I was 100% ready to blame GN for being petty. As I watched and listened, though, he made really good points, and I can't help but agree. Especially on the points where Linus doubles down on really bad takes instead of doing the right thing, insisting it doesn't matter (there are loads more examples than just Billet).

The one thing he didn't say that I wish he had, though, is to remind people that he's focused on industry journalism, not just hardware itself. This isn't a hit piece, it's an information piece, where he holds industry players accountable. Not unlike his journalism on Newegg and Asus. No, it's not positive, but it's honest, and it informs and benefits consumers.

Here is his response: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=riEm65zw7EleA5UJEi3eN8ZaHnVo6Smg27vxUlGW5uk-1692115262-0-gaNycGzNDGU#comment-16078641

My take on it:

We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing.

Yeah, well, that’s one of the main issues addressed in this video: You are not transparent about this, when you swap out videos without notice or bury corrections in a non-pinned comment.

Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation.

If the listing is wrong, who guarantees the lab tests on which the conclusion is based on are not wrong?

The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes.

Take the time it needs to produce correct reviews then. Who wants fast but false results?

The issue with the water block is massive to me. Testing a prototype product on a GPU that it wasn't made for, giving it a negative review, doubling down on that negative review when called out, promising to return the prototype to Billet Labs, then SELLING the prototype to the public at their LTX expo. As Steve points out, if a competitor gets their hands on that prototype, it could put Billet Labs out of business. This is wild, and LMG should absolutely be called out like this.

Damn this is eye opening for me. LTT was always my most trusted source for tech reviews. I noticed that they’d make little mistakes every once in a while, but didn’t realize it was part of a larger problem. I actually made a Ryzen 9 7900 buying decision recently because of this video which made it seem like the best value (especially compared to their very confusing 7950x3d review). After watching this GN video though, I feel stupid for not even thinking to check other channels before making a buying decision.

(Although honestly this is a major upgrade over my previous hardware, so even if it wasn’t the best possible option, it’s still a net positive for me.)

I really hope LTT takes this criticism seriously. It’s always gratifying to see misbehavior have consequences on the internet, but these independent reviewers are pretty much the only people on our side as consumers. I’d rather see a course correction than a crash, especially since LMG in particular has a uniquely powerful position and can have real impacts on manufacturers that benefit consumers.

Guess this is why GN and a few others were not at LTX

Billet Labs has a good case to sue LMG

Holy shit lol. I can never watch another Linus video again without thinking about this criticism.

Dude sold out forever ago. ALL INFLUENCERS ARE JUST CORPORATE MOUTHPIECES.

Geez.. Watching this now. I've been skeptical of LTT for a while and noticed the focus had changed a bit when they launched Short Circuit and such. But I don't think I could watch LTT without cringing anymore.

I've had beef with LTT since his series of videos where he tried to use Linux as a daily driver while making absolutely zero effort to understand any of the differences between it and Windows, then proceeded to whine about how it's not Windows. The part where he broke his system after it explicitly warned him he was about to break it and asked for rather thorough confirmation that he wanted to do so was where I stopped watching him for good.

There's being ignorant and then there's being stupid. I fault nobody for being ignorant of how something works when they first encounter it. I do, however, fault them when they demand changes be made without actually understanding the implications of those changes.

The most noticeable thing for me are the constant annotations. Sometimes there are so many that I'm not sure why a whole video is up if it's half assed and they want to salvage it through bandaids.

Bot holy shit they are become sloppy and borderline corrupt. Thanks to GN for calling them out.

Mann this was juicy. Tech Jesus was pissed, goddamn.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641

Linus's response.

I honestly fully stand by GN in this and while I think LTT should have had the opportunity to respond to the allegations before the video went live, since this is the proper Journalistic thing to do, it should be considered that ltt has a huge audience and influence in the tech sphere so I can only assume GN didn't want them to get ahead of the curve? It's sad if it has come to this.

I also don't know how exactly ltt could respond to the observations GN made since it's a piece about what happened in videos they posted. They can't really deny what happened. All they could do is lower their head and promise to do better.

I used to like them, but last time I saw USB C iPhone on thumbnail for news video, which turned out to be absolutely not usb related apple news. That was disappointing.