Remote View

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.

95 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 doesn't help that the titles get changed a handful of times throughout the release day so even if you remember the name it may not be the same if you want to re-watch it.
  
  Normal title: THE BEST THING EVER!!!
  Dearrow title: device XYZ is a bit meh
- To be fair, this is how the YouTube algorithm requires big channels to act to maximize views, ads, and money. They've got way too many people reliant on that income to do anything different than exactly what best optimization strategies work
  
  If your organization is too big to act with integrity then maybe it’s time to downsize a bit.
  
  big channels to act to maximize views, ads, and money
  More proof LTT is just a corporate business shill
- This is judging a book by its cover. Not really helpful to any discussion.
  
  There are cases where a book's content matches its cover. They are saying LTT is one of those cases

It's been clear for quite a while that they've focused 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 inexcusable. 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
  
  I would disagree. Linus has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth or probably say he phrases many of these discussions in very bad ways. You see this with him talking about "Is using adblocking piracy" or "Warranties are only trustworthy as the company you buy them for" (Trust me bro) or the many other controversial views he has had. Where at the face of it it looks pretty incendiary but if you ignore what he said initially and look at what he is actually meaning to say. I think the whole Billet labs' cooler thing was a stupid video and they should have done it with a 3090 TI FE as it was meant for but Linus meant it was a "bad product" because its a $900 cooler for a last gen cooler on a 1800+ GPU. Anyone willing to spend that amount of money is probably going to spend it on the newest thing, that being the 4090. Now where this comes to bite Linus in the ass is they have a preorder for a 4090 fe (for the same price as the 3090 ti one) here Which is set to release around next month or November. Now its clear many things weren't discussed but off the broken concepts that Linus was presented/or at least absorbed he isn't wrong that noone would want a exotic cooler with a last gen gpu but its clear there was a major breakdown in the communication pipeline here.
  Edit: Haven't had any comments yet but I will say LTT really done fucked up with the whole auctioning off the prototype and its clear there is some issues with the organization of LTT. I don't think they did this out of malice more they had a contact who didn't talk to the logistics team or the team handling LTX. So out of mistake the prototype got sold even though they said they would send it back. That is pretty god damn egregious. I can understand why there was a fuck up but man they really screwed the pooch on this one.
  
  Stealing and selling their best prototype also means they couldn't send it to a better reviewer to demonstrate it isn't a bad product.
  Honestly atrocious behaviour from them over this. Any 1 bit of this would be bad, but all of them together could absolutely ruin a start-up. And all because Linus didn't want to spend "up to" $500 worth of people's time.

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.
  
  Linus takes all criticism on LMG as a personal attack regardless of his involvemen
  I mean, AFAIK he built that company off the ground - yes likely privileged, I saw a video where it's mentioned he and his partner lived rent free in his dad's house. And yes, likely not alone. But still.
  Makes sense he'd see criticisms of the company as attacks that he needs to personally take on. It's not the best approach, but totally understandable. Lots of people's livelihoods at stake by now, too.
- I agree. I can already see a slight shift in his attitude since he stepped down, but clearly it's not enough.

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?
- The weird part of that is the the amounts he's saying it would cost/time to re-run the test -- $100-500 (probably like that pay for a employee's day) -- are nothing in the context of a company. Especially one that was sold or offered $100million. My company run on like a $3million budget. A few hundred dollars is nothing to us. That's a staff lunch or our bar tab sometimes. If the retesting costs like $5000....OK, that's certainly something to pause and think about. But a few hundred? A day or half a day for an employee to re-do the test? That's too much?
  Maybe to the average person, the average viewer, that sounds like a lot of money. But not to a business. Certainly not one as large as LMG.
  
  Even more ridiculous when LMG could monetize that 500$ of time spent into another video and make the money back.
- The video from GN had footage from WAN show where he said that, so yes. I have not personally looked up the context, but it also sounds very much in character for how Linus thinks these days, so I am not at all surprised.
  I also think it's an excuse to cover up the real problem: complete disorganization and the extreme pace of production. In the video itself, Linus seems legitimately upset with his employee that didn't even realize they had the wrong GPU. He did not seem surprised, however, which is very telling.
- IIRC, his justification was something to the effect of, even if the data presented is incorrect the conclusions were reached with the right data, so the conclusion wouldn't change.
  But how do we know for sure they used the right data for their conclusion? If they can't take the time to fix issues during the edit, how do we know that the entire process isn't flawed?
  He thinks hes got it figured out because he knows something we don't know, but if we are to trust him, WE NEED TO KNOW.

My biggest problem right now with LTT:
He has literally admitted that they have too much to do right now (see https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/27/#comment-16079025)
but at the same time he doesn't see the need to reduce the number of videos to achieve the required quality and just tells people to "stay tuned".
I find that very strange to be honest.
- It's because Linus still has startup brain. He was squeezing blood from the stone for the first few years and his success then makes him believe that he needs to maintain that same mentality now.
  Fortunately, he's also realized that he doesn't like running a large company and he's hired a CEO. Unfortunately, said CEO is still stuck in his previous role and won't actually be starting full-time for another few months. So now the company gets to sit in an awkward limbo of Linus checking out but Tarren not being ready to take over.
  Once he is able to be a real CEO of LMG, I'm willing to bet things will start to dramatically change. Tarren has been running businesses as businesses for a while now and thus should know how to shape the company. He'll be able to adjust the goals and fix the spends to align with those goals. Since the company is privately owned, as long as Linus doesn't step on the process, it should go pretty well.
- His comment didn't address two key issues for me:
  The "crunch"/tight scheduling of projects which led to sloppiness to begin with
  The constant need to correct, ranging from simple mistakes to very problematic methods.
  I've been enjoying solely the WAN Show, but hearing about constant mistakes in benchmarks while praising "We want to show factual information on benchmarks for once.", is rubbing me in the wrong way. You can't rush benchmarking without QA and publish those results as fact. You get to choose for accuracy, or fast to churn content.
  And Linus not mentioning something concrete on the first issue is worrying to me, not showing a clear intent to ease on rushing those benchmarks.
  Not to mention, it's worth taking down a video if benchmarka are wrong even if the conclusion is "most likely to remain the same", which one cannot conclude with certainty without redoing it. It would be better transparency wise to either not knowingly publish wrong information, or put a more clear notice on said videos besides the description and a pinned comment.

Edit note: The Twitter thread from the former employee eclipses either issue from here. I still think a big root cause for all of this is the pressure and exhaustion coming from their pacing/content schedule. It will take a bit more than that to resolve this.
I watched the occasional LTT video, they are entertaining and helpful at a general understanding but I've often taken their data with a grain of salt.
Emily ::: spoiler spoiler tw (formerly Anthony) ::: Young was the one writer at LTT who stood out as really knowing their stuff. She also was their in-house expert with Linux! (*Note: nothing happened to her at LMG, I'm using past tense because I'm not up to date with the latest roles she might be in)
Linus has been way more focused on running the business than the tech, especially compared to his days at NCIX and some years after.
The Billet situation sounds like a fuckup. So long as they make it right with them I don't care tbh.
The data integrity issues and way too frequent post-edit corrections is imperative for LMG to fix, if they want their media to be trustworthy (like if they're hyping up their labs)
Luckily, they've said what the fix is themselves and it's relatively simple. All it really takes is them to either slow down with the rate of content to be able to carefully review it, or bring on more hosts and editors so that mistakes and errors can be caught and re-shot before publishing, and that due diligence is applied when preparing a product review.
Linus' response is just meh, not good nor bad. The one thing is I don't buy is Linus' line of "just talk to us". The community told them plenty of times, the writers and Linus themselves were very well aware of the problems of rushing and releasing half-baked content. Even if GN told them, the direction they were going with Linus Media Group and the new CEO and the buyout offer and all of that suggests where LMG's wouldn't be concerned with it as much as making sure the timing of their content maximizes revenue. Data issues brought to them by GN and the community would be cast to the wayside with just a footnote and silent correction, maybe with a couple empty words sprinkled on top.
So I'll say it again to Linus from a fellow Canadian, whether he'll listen or not: "Slow down, bud!"
- Hey bud, no need to deadname anyone.
  
  I use her current preferred pronouns, there are multiple Emilys at the LMG team and for people that might not recognize who I'm talking about if they haven't watched LTT for a while (since 3 months ago). I figured by adding "formerly", I was clear that it's a name she no longer goes by and doesn't feel represented herself well.
  
  Disagree. As a casual LTT watcher i had no idea who Emily was until they said her former name. I'm sure there are others like me who don't keep up with the latest happenings in every youtube channel. There's no offense in providing extra information for clarity.
  
  I thought you had to refer to a person by their old name for that to be the case, not just mention the existence of a former name. I could be wrong though.
  
  (Referring to other replies, sarcastically) I friggin' love having people explain how it's totally cool to do to people all' the things they (or people like them, in relevant contexts) say not to! Like when five freaking people people show up, none citing so much as a blog post or having met a trans person once, explaining that it's totally cool to deadname someone as long as it doesn't bother the person doing the deadnaming.
  I'm just a little tired of this "it's fine and you're the real problem for whining about it" (not quoting anyone currently present... I think) kind of attitude. Maybe I'd be singing a different tune if my convenience got to override everyone else's comfort and even wellbeing.
  Edit: At least I don't feel so compelled to join Beehaw any more. Certainly not the uniformly careful bunch I'd, unreasonably I suppose, imagined. Silver linings!

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
- Dam that response sucked.
- 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.
  
  Linus commented on this later in the thread saying "Billet sent us a quote. I don't know or care how they arrived at the value. If they're good, I'm good." So hopefully that was all taken into account.
  
  They should cover R&D costs too, not just the cost of manufacture and materials.

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.
  
  When I was still watching I remember he said if LMG ever tried to unionize he would take it as a personal failure. The intention of that statement may mean well, but it's a really not great view to have and profess. Unions can (and should) maintain a good relationship between the workers and management.
- That seems like a pretty large jump just because of what they already said was a miscommunication and are taking steps to work on (though it shouldn't have happened) I don't really see what malicious motivations there could be behind auctioning it off cuz they aren't that desperate for an amount of money that doesn't really matter to them (see the size of the investments in things like the badminton center and the labs, also I think the money might've gone to charity) What you say about corporations is true, however I think you can grow to trust people in those corporations and yes, I don't acutally know Linus but he's shown that he usually tries to do the right thing so I don't think he's going to randomly flip into going against what he's claimed are his morals for years. Also, there are most likely other people at LMG in leadership who, if Linus did become some sort of terrible person, would probably try and stop him, even if just for job security

Great video, a lot of the benchmark stuff I was unaware of because I don't pay THAT much attention to the wider youtube review community, but I Did notice that waterblock review when it went up on LTT. Go and watch it, it's honestly embarrassing how unprepared and silly it was. As a comedy sketch it's fine, but as a review of a prototype it's really really embarrassingly under prepared. It brings to mind something like an Asmondgold hardware review... "I don't know, let's just try this".
To see they auctioned off a prototype device after that "review" is kinda disgusting (sorry for the hard word, but it's how I feel).
- Tbh that's how almost all of their projects seem to be now. Woefully unprepared, full of jank.

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.
- 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.
  
  this video is unmonetized.
  Doesn't mean it's not a growth based move. Unmonetized means no ads right? And you still get the exposure.
- not to come off overly negative- steve also does great work. i hope we hear from LMG soon <3
- 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.
  
  The last time something like this happened it was made clear GN was going to cover LMG as the corporation it is, not as an individual where you might hash things out privately first.
- They can do both, and if their stance is at all ideologically motivated, then it is necessary to focus on more than just the low hanging fruit of doing reviews.
  The free software movement is more than just the free software existing. It is also congruent to the laws that permit it and extending rights
  Right to repair is about more than simply fixing things. It's about going after companies and lobbying to get actual rights enshrined into law.
- 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.
- As soon as I saw who the video was by it's a hard pass for me. This is drama for clicks, nothing more. Steve could do something worthwhile with his time instead of these silly reaction style videos for the YouTube algorithm. Like Linus stated, if he really had issues, and actually felt a concern about anything in the video he would have reached out. Not doing that makes this no better than the bot created trash for clicks IMHO.

What a bunch of pricks.
I hesitate to blame them all. In GN's video, some of the clips show LMG people seeming (to me? Somehow I don't see anyone else pointing this out???) anxious to terrified of Linus. In one of the WAN Show clips there's this meek, near-mumbled kind of "Uhm... Linus sir maybe if you'd, um... just tested it properly that could've been maybe better I guess? . v.v;" sort of thing, and the person who grabbed the wrong card barely squeaked out a response at all, but Linus just never seems to give a damn about anything except making the quickest possible bucks.
I don't know what's keeping everyone else there but I think at least some of those people are just trying to get by without incurring some kind of wrath as Linus himself repeatedly makes (or causes) a mess then arrogantly doubles, triples, quadruples down on it (or has someone else do so, or maybe other arrogant pricks are involved?) up to a point of "Okay, I messed up and I'll own that now everyone forget about it" after which business-as-usual resumes until the next mess. It seems like no one else has time to learn from any mistakes (or "mistakes") and those who do (presumably a hierarchy-related privilege) are unwilling or incapable.
Now, they may in fact be a bunch of pricks. I just feel like some of those people (such as the one suggesting that testing the water block correctly might made sense (before potentially killing a startup unfairly)) try to help but have no power to inhibit Linus's pompous profit-driven pissheadery.
- I can not watch the video now but I have read description.
  Thing is I see them more as entertainers than IT professionals, so I don't expect any valid data from them. If not before, it became obvious with the whole Linux for a month fiasco where he complains that it's Linux's falult he deleted important packages.
  But I get it, youtube is forcing this dramatic, often, high performing videos on all creators. You can see it explained very often by various youtubers.
  Of course they care more about quantity, because Algorithm will punish them for not publishing and they will disappear.
  No one living from youtube can not be trusted right now, they are all forced to publish often clickbity dramatic videos.

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.
- He's Targeting a younger audience as they are more likely to spend money on stuff.
  
  I mean the quality of the test data is slipping but
  "He’s Targeting a younger audience as they are more likely to spend money on stuff."
  What younger audience has the income for an $80 screwdriver and a $200+ backpack? I think you may need to think out your point a bit more since nah I don't think they are targeting a "younger" audience those in the sub 20 category. I think they are primarily focusing on just being a "entertainment" product rather than a informative review one. They do fine with technical stupid jank shit but probably shouldn't be trusted for specs for the moment but at the end of the day I think labs will still probably be better than userbenchmark (even though that is a pretty low bar).

i watch ltt for alex messing around, and every now and then a video of linus wasting money on cool testing equipment for some reason. I've always assumed GN is superior for actual testing.

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