The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
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Ltt has felt untrustworthy to me for a long time. I watched a smartphone review of theirs years ago, and they had made errors with specs and features. Watching their other (and older) smartphone reviews it felt like they would just copy last year's review, make small changes and call it a new one. Calling old features new year after year, not mentioning key features, getting simple facts wrong. Decided to not trust any information in their videos after that
I fell off of Linus yeeeeeeeeears ago when him and Luke got to talking about harassment in League of Legends. Luke gave sensible advice, mute everyone, take breaks. Linus then rudely interjected "Or just get better".
Sure getting better at league will reduce some harassment, but not all, and the way Linus interrupted Luke with that line left me with a subtext of, "People only flame you if you are bad, if you are bad it is your responsibility to git gud, if you are getting upset that people are flaming you, you're a stupid ass bitch"
That made me feel like Linus wasn't this happy-go-lucky tech enthusiast, but just another overconfident ego-driven asshole. Recent events are giving me some nice confirmation bias. Linus is now a money enthusiast, not a tech enthusiast anymore.
My anecdote is totally silly, I know, but cracks in Linus' character can be seen outside of his reviews I suppose.
Just look at his profile on their forum. Dude is ego maniac and should be avoided as much as possible. Especially when lying at people and ruining other people work.
Same here. I liked their early content but it was obvious they crossed a line and everything new was driven by the dollar signs. If anything this GN video shows just how greedy Linus has become.
Tbh even when there aren't such blatant errors in their reviews Linus has felt out of touch for years. Sometime in 2018 or 2019 (I don't remember exactly when) Linus did a review of some $150 Alcatel phone and he kept complaining about how it had a micro USB charging port instead of type C, arguing how physical type C ports only cost "pennies" more than micro ports and how there was "nO eXcUsE" to still use micro USB. Mind you, type C had only started appearing on flagships around late 2016-17, so it hadn't yet started to trickle down into the mid-range and budget segments of the market at that point. That made it all the more jarring to hear Linus ranting about a budget device still using micro USB only a couple of years after type C had even begun to see market adoption.
As someone who's stuck to the low-mid end of the market (~$150-250) basically since getting my first smartphone, it was immediately obvious watching that video that Linus doesn't know what the hell he was talking about when it came to tech outside of the high end, and expects every big new feature or standard to be crammed into budget devices regardless of the effects it might have on the final cost of said devices. Sure, type C ports only cost "pennies" more than micro-B ports at that time. But those extra pennies add up on devices that might only cost a handful of dollars to manufacture, plus the extra engineering and design work that has to be put in to implement it, and the added cost of type C cables over micro-B that would have to be included in the box.
After giving it some thought after watching that video, I started to gradually trust Linus less and less regarding anything budget of mid-range over the last 5-ish years before I unsubbed entirely last night. It sucks seeing a creator you respected so much at first go down this path, but I guess nothing can last forever.
https://youtu.be/4sAeslM74U8 My perspective about LTT changed after this video.
TLDW: Alex reviews a Thinkpad and asks Lenovo to remove the trackpoint
😯
The channel's only good for their goofy shit now. Like jerry rigging a stupid, massively over-engineered cooling system to cool a server cabinet using a swimming pool.