LTT, now sponsored by BP

In one of their videos one of the employees said they do better and more accurate GPU tests than other YouTubers called Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed. Then of course those mentioned YouTubers started to hit back and show how often LTT is wrong and makes wrong assumptions, because they don’t do proper due diligence. Since they have to release several videos per week. Gamers Nexus also exposed that LTT auctioned off a prototype GPU cooler from a small startup. But they had no permission to sell the unit. It was only for reviewing. The startup even asked to get the unit back several times. Linus, the owner of LTT, then released a non-apology. Afterwards a former employee came out and told why she left the company and it turns out the work environment is very toxic at LTT. She also reminded everyone that pettiness by Linus caused his fans to harass a small YouTuber called MindChop. Who eventually committed suicide. He fell into a depression because of the harassment and later his mom also committed suicide. She couldn’t bear the loss of her son.

LTT fucked up hard, doubled down, worse things came out, tripled down

Linus Tech Tips, a large YouTube tech channel, has faced backlash after GamersNexus posted a video detailing their increasingly flawed videos focusing on quantity over quality. LTT releases videos multiple times a week, but these videos almost always have errors that are later corrected or are not noticed by LTT. This results in lower quality videos that can sometimes be misleading (especially product review videos). These criticisms had been expressed by many viewers of LTT prior the GamersNexus video. GamersNexus is also a popular tech channel and amplified these criticisms with the release of their video.

Other criticisms of LTT are that their packed release schedule overworks their employees and their corporate culture is hostile towards stressed employees. These criticisms were merely speculation until a former LTT employee posted on X (formerly Twitter) a detailed account of why they decided to leave the company. Their allegations detailed overworking, harassment, and their declining mental health due to their job at LTT.

LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as "bad" after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).

Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.

A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn't really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say "I'm sorry" at one point which was pretty meme worthy.

The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.

Different people have different conclusions -- some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.

But that's just me -- I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.

Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don't know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamers-nexus-vs-linus-tech-tips-billet-labs-review-controversy

I went down this rabbit hole last night. This dude accurately summs it all up in about 10 minutes. First 10 minutes of the video

https://youtu.be/XH6zCNR0SZ4

If you have time there are more, longer, videos in the video description

Do what I do. Don't care about the things that you don't care about.

Although watching this since yesterday has been somewhat entertaining. Seems like a public figure stepped on his dick.

Even their apology video with the dbrand plug-in at the end, pretty cringey. They're like that Key and Peele slap ass skit, they need to plug-in their sponsors like an addiction. If they wouldn't have mentioned which sponsor, then yeah stupid joke to lighten the mood, but they had to mention dbrand.

LTTSTORE.CUM

"And a message from our sponsor! Just kidding...

DBrand did offer though. :D

You can watch our progress transparently.... on floatplane"

Is all I loosely heard from it. Shame his newly appointed CEO has to deal with this, I feel like he should have been the only one in the video. It would have put extra value and emphasis on his message, and cut out all the blame passing and job title responsibilities; they could have dealt with all the other stuff separately. They shouldn't need to put their staff out there to dry like that (even if they're management), the issue is blatantly deeper rooted.

If they're trying to address their accuracy, management processes, or talk about video content burnout that influence their staff and viewers, it should have been short and sweet. They should have posted an update video to show us the progress. Not make promises and jokes and put half of it behind a paywall.

They wrote and uploaded their apology so quickly, they didn't even let the fallout settle before more controversy came inevitably to light. Now they need to eventually address that in a video too seeing as there's an investigation. Though it would have been hard to comment on year old incidences without an investigation to be fair.

I was told that when making apologies don't use too many if at all any reasons... Justifying your action with excuses means you felt there was an exception. They shouldn't have gone into specifics and just said "God damn we really ballsed that one up".

The video is overall good, just not the linus part.

"We keep the sexual harassment forms in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet so we can get a good look at your ass when you bend over to get one."

If you only see the Linus bit, the second hasn't changed that much, he was still trying to justify it and to feel like a victim.

What's the second one I only saw the one on their YouTube channel

Then you were way ahead of me then, it hit me like a ton of bricks just now.

Winner

It's also lampooning the video LeBron James made when switching teams for the first time.

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https://piped.video/HQhmGIW7MVU

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

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They rebranded to "Byond Petroleum" during their greenwashing campanges but yea

Dafuq what did I miss??? I thought the criticism was about data inaccuracy and overworking (which they addressed in the apology video (whatever that means))

Oof yeah was not aware of these at the time of my original comment.