1y ago

The Problem with LMG

My personal thoughts

At first it came off a bit whiney, but I watched the entire thing and I'm glad I did. It shows a pattern of carelessness and in some cases complete douchebaggery of LMG.

What they did to Billet Labs is absolutely un-fucking excusable. LMG and Linus, in particular, needs to be mercilessly shamed for that until Billet Labs gets a clear and unequivocal apology and paid restitution for damages. Fucking shameful. What a bunch of pricks.

Video Description

This video is not monetized. This video covers our serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of Linus Media Group, including Linus Tech Tips, ShortCircuit, and TechQuickie, particularly as it relates to rushing content out the door to favor -- by staff's own admission -- quantity over quality. As the company continues to expand into its LTT Labs direction, the importance of accurate data increases; however, even as 'only' entertainment, there are still certain responsibilities to the consumer and the manufacturers to report fairly (and to have defined corrections processes in place). We tried to approach this as objectively as possible and hope that viewers are able to listen to the evidence we present, particularly as it relates to significant and frequent data errors that now present in nearly every technical review video.

22 comments

The thumbnails LTT uses tells you everything you need to know about his content and company.
- I've always found the titles to be clickbaity and uninformative. If I want to look up their videos again I would have no idea what the title is to look up.

It's been clear for quite a while that they've focused not only on growth/expansion with more channels, the lab, so many new employees, etc and at the same time you can see the sloppiness getting worse with lack of preparation, lack of quality control to meet deadlines, etc.
The Billet Labs thing is absolutely unexcusable. Shitting on the product despite LMG being the one responsible for not even having the correct GPU for it, giving it a bad review, then doubling down when called out over a couple hundred bucks of time? The auctioned off prototype is so much worse as well. Not sure of the Canadian terms but in the US it'd potentially be theft by conversion. Literally sold someone else's property. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and accept it as an accident, it seems like more evidence of whoever is running their logistics department being incompetent IMO.
- One thing that bothers me about the billets stuff is they stand by their core point, which is that it’s a useless product.
  But that’s not the only thing they’ve claimed. They also said it’s a bad product that doesn’t work properly, thus damaging the company’s reputation.
  To most people that’s a significant difference for how they view the company:
  “Useless” product that works well at what it does = hopefully this company will make something more relevant in future
  “Useless” product that doesn’t even work properly = I’ll avoid this company in future

Linus' response is here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641
- Ahaha. He managed to write all that and say nothing, he really needs professional advice before making public statements, he can't help but jump in with his first thoughts. Classic linus though just deflecting "we got some really big things coming up guys! forget about this!"
- To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us.
  He wrote an entire article but still thinks his video cadence is good. Reminds me of my current CEO, as the sand empire he built for the past 4 years starts to crumble beneath him
- This response at least answers the most important question. They are paying Billet for the prototype. Personally I think they should do more than cover the raw cost, but at least they have done something.
- Dam that response sucked.

Wholeheartedly agree. Wverything else I can understand and maybe even excuse. But auctioning off a prototype that isn't even yours is so far beyond the line. They have turned into another soulless corporation just like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. And corporations should never be trusted.
- He's another tech bro. Wan show always seemed more like a soap box for him to try to make him seem like an aww shucks type of guy, but there was the whole discussing wages issue at LTT too that broke the illusion of the image he tries to depict of himself.

I really hope stepping down as CEO leads to Linus surrounding himself with people he trusts to call him out when he's missing something.
He strikes me as the kind of person who is susceptible to a few certain mental traps you kinda don't want to see in a leader of a large influential organization:
Taking an "ends justifies the means" mindset (e.g. stepping on the "growth" gas pedal and accepting sloppiness because it will get better later with Labs)
Letting "objective facts" justify big subjective decisions w/o much consideration (e.g. thinking the Billet Labs video didn't need to be re-shot because the "objectively" product rec conclusion wouldn't have been different)
Substituting actual solutions to problems w/ commitments to solving them (e.g. implementing "Accuracy KPIs" instead of slowing the pace of video releases)
None of these constitute outright malice, IMO, but boy can they lead to a problematic working environment.
I'm sure there will be quite the flame war as a result of this, which I think is a bummer. Linus strikes me as someone who's acting in good faith, but has an unshakable habit of making rushed decisions without considering the full scope of their impact, and is (or has been) lacking the appropriate feedback structure to help him learn to either a) make more thoughtful decisions, or b) fully delegating those decisions to folks who are better equipped to make them.
Here's hoping this leads to positive change.
- Linus is surrounded by people who can call him on his bullshit. Luke is very aware of the shit Linus steps in and lets him know. Linus just kinda sucks at publicly admitting it, at least not without getting his own jab in. Hence taking over the "Trust Me Bro" joke.
  Linus takes all criticism on LMG as a personal attack regardless of his involvement. Hopefully, once Tarren steps in, he'll be able to wrangle Linus and just let LMG handle the public relations side.
  
  This is the main issue I have with Linus. Doubling down on dumb takes.

Is it real that Linus publicly said that they can't justify putting in another half day to ensure the data is correct before publishing it? Why would anyone watch their low quality content which they admit to be worthless?

not to cast doubt on anything he says here, but steve has increasingly been making 'dunk' videos for the past year or two. i feel like his channel has been trying to find (or create) exposés, because those are the videos that pop off. starting from the video of that NZXT case that caused fires.
again, not to cast doubt on the experiences of billet labs, but i question steve's intentions in presenting this. i hope this discussion doesn't end up revolving around gamers nexus.
- not to come off overly negative- steve also does great work. i hope we hear from LMG soon <3
- because those are the videos that pop off.
  Yeah, drama gets clicks,
  But Steve did say at the beginning, that this video is unmonetized.
  So I give him credit for taking that step.
- Have only seen the clip of the LMG employee saying what they said from GN's video, but seems quite an over-reaction from GN and the other company IMO. Definitely some form of baiting for views, even if parts of the video are valid.
  
  LTT: says they want more accuracy, so they build a whole fucking lab for it.
  Also LTT: puts bad data into the video anyway because time
  That's literally enough said. It's not an attack on LMG, it's pointing out legitimate concerns about LMGs internal processes because these easy to catch errors are getting through all the time.
  They test a water block prototype on a card it wasn't designed for, and then review it as a finished product with the bad data.
  It's a pattern over a long period of time that has been called out by the community. GN is fully right to be putting this out there. Even if you disagree with Steve's assessment, he's right to be pointing out things he has concerns with.
- I felt the same and was wary to even watch this. Seems like something to discuss privately first. But it’s full of solid points, and I think the amount of public mistakes from LMG makes it a little easier to accept.

Clickbait used to be reserved for the title/thumbnail, but now it’s ingrained in the content itself and goes hand in hand with the drop in quality.
Before I stopped watching them I noticed the drop in quality. Can’t remember which video, but there was one with so many corrections it was absolutely ridiculous.

22 comments