this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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LTT vs Google.
I’ll side with LLT on this, but that doesn’t mean I want to support their channel.
Why? What did LTT do?
Out of the loop on this.
Quick summary, probably missing a lot, but...
And just general douche-baggery.
But mostly? It just means to take anything LMG does with a massive grain of salt. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not above manipulating their audience and influence to push anti-consumer behavior. So a video where they were "too spicy" for Google for promoting alternatives (some of which LMG themselves operate) is, to quote the children, sus. And yeah, it sounds like the issue has nothing to do with "don't use gmail or youtube" and all to do with "use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube".
This has always been my beef with Rossman. He always has something to sell--not just sponsored content--his own apps and solutions. He comes off like a used car salesman, just pushing the hard sell and making you feel like an idiot for not jumping at the chance to give him money. I'm sure he has made some positive movement in privacy and right to repair, but every time he talks I just feel like he's going to try to get me to sign up for a timeshare. I don't trust him.
Rossman is a different mess, but I think it is undeniable that he has been a net positive on r2r over the years. And I think he will continue to be as long as he is someone that outlets like GN and even LMG collaborate with or reference but minimally platform.
But yeah. I think Rossman is genuinely a free speech absolutist with strong libertarian tendencies. Stuff like his "I don't care if that amazon delivery driver was racist or not, this is unacceptable" just undermines his efforts. Same with his never ending hatred of NYC because he ran a business into the ground. Also his tendency to push immediately from "ads bad" to "STEAL THAT SHIT".
Like, I immediately think of THAT Dril quote, but I do have to give it up to LMG from like three or four years ago. The idea that people SHOULD be aware of how to run adblockers and even dns level adblockers. But to also understand that they are pirating content (whether that is bad is up to the individual) and that some sites are going to block them or not work. Because that is honest and "real". And it provides a conversation that can be had between companies and consumers.
Whereas Rossman has increasingly been "If they aren't going to let you block ads, fuck 'em. Pay a different company to let you access their content without ads or giving them money" which just paints everyone who cares about privacy as a childish pirate with no respect for the work of others.
I agree. He's not perfect but I think he's coming from the right side of things.
Ultimately antics that get clicks still motivate what he does tho
Great summary! Here is the other side of the debate:
The backpack is overengineered and spares no expense in materials and durability, making it expensive. It is not overpriced. It may be unreasonably costly and not worth the purchase. The reason being it costs a lot to manufacture, not because it's overpriced.
Linus was stupid in his "no warranty needed" claim, as most people won't (and shouldn't) take his word for it. Nevertheless, it is true his store always replaced items without issue and continues to do so, warranty or not. The customer experience is generally much better than the average store, where you may have to fight for your warranty claim only for it to be refused anyway. This is what he meant. If stores are not honoring warranties, and his store is accepting returns without a warranty anyway, then what's the piece of paper worth anyway? But people like the piece of mind it provides, they learned the lesson and are providing it now. Of course the warranty never mattered either way.
I did buy the backpack. Months later I received a replacement set of zippers. There is nothing wrong with the original zippers, they just felt these ones are better and people who bought the backpack before the change should get them too. This has never happened to me with another purchase in my life, where the store decided to upgrade it for free and ship it to another continent for free, without me asking.
Months later they discovered the material used for the backpack floor isn't what they wanted. So they offered me (and all purchasers) a full refund and additional store credit. Nobody noticed the issue, nobody asked for refunds. They discovered it and offered refunds proactively, even though it's a non-issue. Again never happen in my life with another purchase.
Shitty for the employee to shit on GN. Commendable for Linus to stand by his employee publicly instead of blaming him.
You are correct they had lot of quality issues. It is also worth mentioning their overhaul that happened after that, improved processed, slowed down upload cadence, and the formation of volunteer "beta tester" viewers who watch videos pre-release to find errors not found internally. Good for them to try to improve.
Auctioning off the prototype cooler was quite egregious! As usual Linus took the heat on himself and never named the responsible employee who misallocated the cooler in their inventory.
A third party investigation found the sexual harassment allegations unfounded. Due to the nature of this we might never know the details though.
Linus invited Naomi to meet him in the meeting rooms of his hotel's lobby, which exist specifically for business meetings. She later untruthfully misrepresented it as an invite to his hotel room.
In general, the transparency at which their business operates makes it very easy to point out flaws. I think it's better than the opaque businesses where this can't happen.
I agree with these of your points I didn't address.
Hope this provides both sides for readers, and thanks again.
Didnt they find out about the backpack floor BECAUSE one of the customers wore through the floor? I believe i remember linus telling them that "wasnt possible" or something to that effect before recieving the backpack in question and finding out the manufacturer removed the second layer they had requested because they thought it was a mistake
I hope I recall correctly: I was watching an episode of wan-show where they looked into a backpack returned from a miner after heavy wear, but little real damage. Live on the show they wanted to showcase the double bottom, so they cut into it (can't recall if this was in the miners backpack or another one) and were surprized to realize there wasn't a double bottom. Linus quickly assured, still live, that this would be handled for all customers.
LMG did blame the manifactures of the backpack for removing a layer in a late stage design adjustment, but LMG have also alledegly taken a huge cost on assuring customers that they can receive a new backpack for free if the bottom fails for any reason.
My memoery of this might be fuzzy, and the story I have heard comes fully from LMGs perspective, so take everything with a grain of salt.
I love how they only ever really paraphrased the report and never showed us on the sexual harassment allegations. Bill Barr behavior
The one where they hired a lawyer (that i think was infamous for protecting the Canadian logging industry)?
Yeah. That is always bullshit. Unless you are doing REALLY illegal stuff AND are documenting it to an insane level, lawyers are not mandatory reporters. Their job is not to prove there was no wrongdoing. Their job is to investigate what risk the company is at to wrongdoing that, as far as they have been told, did not exist. And their report is the risk based upon documented evidence and interviews with employees.
So when a company does a third party investigation from a law firm they paid? They are not getting a clean bill of health. They are having all potential risks identified and doing what they can to mitigate that.
A very good friend of mine who tends to be on the other side of the court room when this stuff happens likes to describe it as: Paying a law firm to investigate your company is not an STD test. It is confirming that you don't have any weeping sores and making sure you have plausible deniability for why all your condoms keep "falling off" while you stealth people.
But people hear "We investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing" and think it means... anything.
Oh man, I totally forgot about the Naomi Wu drama. I remember it kind of resolved in some way with some explanations of Linus maybe making some sense if you were generous. But under the light of everything that came after, eh, maybe it was serious after all.
I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus's excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC'd to some of those emails anyway.
I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with...) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which... okay.
As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the "where there is smoke..." range. And it is why I point out that Madison's harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.
Honestly when they first launched Channel Super Fun while at the Langley house they really were acting more like a fraternity than like employees at a company sponsored event (and I've been to some interesting company-sponsored events with virtually unlimited free alcoholic drinks and none have concerned me as much for the company culture as LTT's early channel super fun videos)
They also really harassed Dennis a lot, to the point where he, not yet a citizen of the country he's on a work visa in, looked close to tears and seemed to not be enjoying it. Come to think of it, I haven't seen him in any videos for quite a while, so I wonder if he bounced as soon as he got Canadian citizenship...
"Trust me bro" and "I think individual smart light bulbs are a good idea" were when I had to put LTT in the Jays 2 cents corner of shame.
Now I'm out of the loop, what happened with Jay?
As a person, nothing Jay is fine.
As a tech consumer advice channel, he is a joke. I still remember when ryzen first was getting good and after going over all the data on why it was better and cheaper he cuts to himself sitting behind a desk and tells everyone that they should do the "right" thing and buy intel, as it is the clear choice.
Im curious, as mentioned in another comment mentioned here, what other/better courses of action would they have to take in order to "make better" with the communuty? They have taken lots of measures and changes to address all these concerns, but sounds like this is irredeemable from your point of view. Are there any points in this comment linked that you disagree with and why?
Im not trying to take a side, but rather see your comment as one sided of only accusations and not mentioning what they've done to make ammends.
Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not "subscribers go up" but actually show that you are better.
As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?
A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about "people out for blood" all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn't do a "What the fuck is wrong with you?" to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.
But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.
Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer's name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of "this wouldn't be a problem if he were a white man" level responses. So... I guess they already got the memo.
Could you link to the James Streib audio clips, blatant threats towards employees and Linus going to bat for D-Brand's racist jokes? I haven't heard those allegations before.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 is james sexually harassing people during the seminar
Here is the verbose "We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing" post https://x.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057 with a real nice bit threatening anyone who ever dares to be a whistleblower again
And here is Linus playing the "what about the white man" card https://x.com/linusgsebastian/status/1778165221414347053
"I can take a shit in a box and put a guarantee on it. Believe me, I've got the time. My point is all they've done is sold you a guaranteed piece of shit."
Thank you for taking the time to type this whole thing out! I thought I knew everything but I clearly only knew the GN takedown piece, wow.
Other than the stuff already mentioned here, people (probably fairly accurately) thought Linus was a salesman douche with no real knowledge of computers back in the NCIX days.
It was partially true, he was basically a warehouse manager who happened to get lucky making a successful youtube channel which he turned into his own media business after NCIX died.
But that's what the key term is. It's Linus Media Group. Their top goal is to create content that generates views for revenue, and not content that might be useful or takes a lot of effort to do.
Which is why you will almost never see any heavy IT people watching his videos. There are so many examples of people running entire data centers in their house better than LMG could do with actual budget, server space, and hardware. They used to use windows server for everything because they didn't have anyone who knew linux lol.
Of course their biggest scandal was rushing content and not being diligent with their benchmarks. I honestly never had the impression that they were really the professionals or experts they present themselves to be.
That being said, I think if you view their videos more as entertainment and an entry level content into the IT world for people who otherwise wouldn't be interested, their content is acceptable.
I wouldn't watch their videos expecting to learn anything or trusting their expertise/benchmarks, but just for the vibes. Luckily we have real experts like tech jesus to keep them in check. I also think people who actually seek to learn something will eventually figure out LTT ain't it.
LTT is tech content like Donut media is Automotive content. It's edutainment at most.
I find it funny the amount of hate that LTT gets, it's niche entertainment and you can watch it absolutely free anywhere in the world and Linus rejected a 9 figure sum to keep ownership of something he built, say that out loud... "He turned down over $100,000,000." Yes they flog merch and have floatplane and all that bullshit but that's how they stay independent.
You can take Donut and Motortrend as examples of how it all goes to shit. MT were YT only, then moved to their own paid streaming platform, then sold out to a network and told all their international subscribers to kick rocks because the network deal was more money.
Or the Donut route, where you get bought by venture capital who suck all the fun out of the job, try to monetise everything and wind up having all the talent leave and go start their own channels because they took a fun job and just made it a job.
They’ve been criticized of rushing and skimping on accurate / ethical review practices. There are also allegations that LTT is a fairly toxic work environment, but, the former has more concrete evidence since the janky reviews were recorded and uploaded.
And on a more subjective note, a lot of people aren’t really into the way that Linus behaves on camera. I’m in this camp. I find that he often comes off pretty arrogant and belittling when he’s interacting with his staff on camera.
I remember on the old site years ago saying that Linus came off as a bit of a douchebag and being downvoted to hell for it. Like, I get having relationships with friends where we're always bullying each other a bit, but it never seemed to me like he was ever on the recieving end of that.
Yeah, as someone who has been in people management for a long time, he has a way of interacting with people that makes my HR spidey sense tingle.
It’s very subtle, but there some ways of collaborating and communicating with his employees that I’ve seen before, and are often associated with people who get shitty reviews from the ICs and peers.
HR Spidey sense! Love it.
After years on the job you have an eagle eye for the subtle hints that slip out. Talking over people, dismissing options that are different than yours, playfully teasing people that don’t reciprocate, etc.
Maybe it’s nothing, but when I watch his videos I have flashbacks to problematic leaders who often get shit reviews when employees are allowed to submit feedback anonymously.
Lied about a review of a product prototype they’d been sent. “Lost” it, gave a bad review based on tests of it (but it was a different product, not the actual one). Then later apparently they SOLD this prototype & told the company who had lent them it that they’d lost it.
So you can totally trust them claiming they didn’t sexually harass women employees. /s
I left when every other video was about the personal lives of Linus or his staff. I know that developing the parasocial is important to any channel, but it turns me off.
I actually like those, and started to watch the channel regularly after the house remodeling series.
What's barely sufferable are the "we bought stuff from the internet and here it is. check out our sponsor..." videos that's been published a lot lately.
Right? I learned how to block channel in FreeTube motivated entirely so I don't have to see his stupid face in my recommendations
I feel like we'll find out this was engineered for clicks by them.
same²
Ditto