There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I’ve told him that I won’t be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I’ll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of ‘Team Media’. When/if he’s ready to do so again I’ll be ready.
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. We are going through some growing pains - we’ve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it’s clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we’ve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah… What we’re doing hasn’t been in many years, if ever… and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation. That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. We’ve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re really looking for it… The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I’m REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I’ve already addressed above) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video… OR SO I THOUGHT…
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn’t make sense to buy… so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn’t mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the consumer… it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I’ve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It’s an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, I’m sorry I got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I’ve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test that… with this post. Will the “It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they’re taking care of it” reality manage to have the same reach? Let’s see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it’s been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I’m a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
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Which meaningless drama did I miss here?
Linus is responding to this video from Gamers Nexus: https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc
It’s a long video, but the tl;dr is that LTT are getting sloppy in their reviews, making mistakes, and not fixing them in a clear manner. Additionally, there are some larger issues around a recent review of a gpu heatsink.
there are some larger issues around a recent review of a gpu heatsink.
Worse than that. LMG may have killed the startup behind the GPU water block. They sold off their one and only functioning prototype, despite being asked to return it before they sold it. This could result in the block being cloned by a competitor
Why is it that Billet Labs themselves haven’t spoken publicly about this? At this point, the story is being told second hand. I’m not saying it’s not true, I’m just saying that taking it at face value is a bit iffy considering it’s coming from someone else. Maybe I missed it, and they DID say something, but I literally have to take it at face value that Steve is telling the ENTIRE story, or that he even got the ENTIRE story.
I’m not against accountability, but a lot of this could have been handled privately. Again, not taking sides here, but Steve gets most of his attention from just going after other companies, whether deserved or not. I rarely hear about GN unless there is SOME kind of controversy going on (hardware issues and him having very valid input on it, or basically company drama). I just feel like this is pointlessly dividing a community in to Team LMG vs. Team GN thing, and it’s dumb.
No really, hear me out on this. Steve has said in the past he wants to be treated like he is doing journalism, and intends to hold himself to journalistic standards (he said this during the NewEgg thing). It’s pretty standard when doing a story to get commentary from the party your story is about. Because journalism is, at least supposed to be, about telling the WHOLE story. Both sides. Instead, it’s more of a hatchet job. There are ways to go about “calling out” a company that doesn’t involve telling what is ultimately a one-sided story with the veiled challenge of “prove me wrong.” That’s not journalism. That’s drama for views.
Billet Labs have spoken out about this (GN shows YT comment they made on the LMG vedio). They are not being very vocal about this. GN shows a video of items LMG has on display to be sold at the auction. You can clearly see the GPU water block on the table. Everything GN reported on is public record, including LMG responses. Nothing GN said is speculative. The video is just a report on public facts. Contacting LMG is superfluous.
Calling out BS doesn’t make you the bad guy. GN made it quiet clear, that point of the video was not for drama but help LMG do better for the sake of the industry and the consumer.
I’m not on team LMG or team GN. I’m on team a larger company has no right to hurt a smaller company because they don’t think their product has merit.
Contacting LMG is superfluous.
I mean it is common journalistic courtesy to allow the criticized side to give you a statement when you’re doing a piece on them, but it’s also reasonable to not do it in some cases.
I’d be worried that Linus would (unknowingly/“accidentally”) prime his fan base against this critique if he talked about it, say, on the WAN show, and often the first to come out with something seems more “trustworthy” so it might’ve been a shitstorm for GN too.
I also doubt he’d have anything reasonable to add, which he clearly doesn’t, judging from what he posted since the video released.
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Same here, I feel like I’m missing a lot of context.
In a video on a different channel (not from Linus media group) a LTT employee criticized other YouTubers like gamers Nexus saying they’re not as thorough as them, so gamers Nexus made a 40 minutes video (not monetized, Linus wouldn’t have done that) with a compilation of some of the biggest errors LTT made in the last year.
Mostly the issues that were pointed out is that
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After being sent a prototype of a water-cooling block that will be on sale in November 2023, he didn’t follow the instructions and attempted to install it on a wrong GPU, and that meant there would be a 1 mm gap between the die and the block and wouldn’t work at all. The conclusion of that video was that it was a shitty product and nobody should buy it. For a start-up with 2 people is a death sentence. Later in his hours long wan show (that I never see because too long) he doubles down saying “why I should spend $500 in salaries to test it with the right equipment, it’s a shitty product and nobody should buy it”. The sample was not returned even if it was requested back and instead they sold it at an auction
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For a mouse review they said it had terrible gliding and it was awful, but they didn’t RTFM and didn’t remove a protective film on the bottom (but IMHO it should arrive to the customer without protective films)
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Various instances of the hosts that says something but then it’s corrected by just an asterisk on the screen
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Various instances of clearly wrong tests (coolers that suddenly in a single test perform significantly worse than the average, newer GPU models that run much faster than the average)
And he didn’t point another problem with a video published a few hours earlier: LTT reviewed a virus removal Stick and the conclusion was that even if the ads are misleading and the website is scammy, the product itself isn’t that bad. But he tested on a diy computer. Any prebuilt computer released in the last two years has secureboot and automatic bitlocker encryption with keys in the Microsoft account, meaning that this antivirus removal USB drive wouldn’t even boot, and if it could, it couldn’t access any file on the computer
Any prebuilt computer released in the last two years has secureboot and automatic bitlocker encryption with keys in the Microsoft account, meaning that this antivirus removal USB drive wouldn’t even boot, and if it could, it couldn’t access any file on the computer
I was disappointed this issue was not addressed at all during its review. The type of person this product is aimed at wouldn’t have a clue this was potentially the case.
Thank you for your detailed reply! I personally view LMG videos as purely entertaining, they shouldn’t trash other people for data quality or accuracy, since they are rather weak in that field as well. Rather they should focus on entertainment for entertainment’s sake, where they are - at least in my opinion - stronger than a lot of the rest.
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Not a great look here overall. Was definitely hoping they would take a little bit more accountability. The solution seems simple. Spend less money on egregiously expensive equipment and spend more money on making sure things are accurate before they go out the door.
I think that is the most frustrating part, is the main criticism is take time, get it right, and that seems to be something that Linus totally ignored in his response.
He is laser focused on the criticism of a single video and missing the greater concern being raised.
This read more like a “We did nothing wrong. And what we did do wrong we already discovered ourselves and have been working to improve. And those self improvements are not showing an effect because we just need more time. But I promise we try to be better. Please just ignore that the quality hasn’t improved recently and believe me.” than a “We done fucked up, gonna have to see how to fix this. Will report back with an action plan to make sure this doesn’t happen again once we have it laid out”
Very disappointed in Linus here, haven’t been watching them recently but it’s sad to see him fall to what seems to be greed.
The critiques that Steve laid out in this video were perfectly fine, highlighting the shortcomings of LMG when it comes to actually reviewing content (which is what they’re pivoting to, away from 100% entertainment content). A typical Linus arrogant take where he’ll learn nothing.
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we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication
I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making
Linus does this all the time, he makes excuses based on some technicality that only he understands. He’s said in the past that “it’s only a review if we explicitly say it’s a review, and if it’s not a review we don’t have to be held to the same standards”, despite the fact that most of their viewers won’t assume that distinction, and it’s not exactly obvious with their nonsense clickbait titles on all videos. His ego is way too big and he cares more about being right than making good content.
Also, Linus is technically wrong on several counts. GN said where it was sold (at an event auction).
also auction == sell: webster definition of Auction: “a sale of property to the highest bidder”
GN even starts by saying it was “auctioned”, only later it says it was sold at an auction.
If that’s how Linus is going to defend “proper journalistic practice”, by ignoring the material he’s criticizing, then he’s lost his North.
Absolutely no excuse that this happened, but I believe the point he is trying to make is that they didn’t make any money on it. Still a shitty thing to let happen, and it should simply never have happened at all, but it’s still better than if they had sold it and made a profit, I guess.
Selling it for clout rather than money doesn’t make it better in any way.
It’s a really shitty defense, as they still profited off of it, just not monetarily. And he should realize that and not make excuses.
Is it though? That amount of money is meaningless to a company, which Linus loves to talk about these days.
The problem is, he shit all over a startup company, failed to return the prototype after multiple requests, then when called out on it offered to pay for it and phrased his response to make it seem like he hadn’t spent months ghosting them until another YouTuber brought attention to the issue.
Shitting on it - fine, he’s extremely harsh every time it’s brought up, but he can have his own opinion. I think it’s a bad take, he doesn’t even entertain the idea that they might lower the price, improve it to work on multiple models, or maybe this fits a high end niche for PC ricing - it sounds impractical now, but maybe a few sales would be enough for them to make a more practical version
But whatever, I can get over that. The fact that he didn’t say “we had some miscommunication in my team, this is our bad, we’re having growing pains and I never would have sold it if I knew they wanted it back. We reached out to them to make them whole, but we’ll do better” is pretty incriminating.
That’s not owning up to their mistakes - either they knowingly ignored requests to give it back, which is fucked up, or someone made a mistake and he made excuses instead of owning up to it, and tried to quietly bury the problem and fire back on the guy who called them out
That point didn’t need to be made in the first place because Steve already specifically noted that it was auctioned for charity in his video.
To me, this is just evidence that Linus didn’t even watch the video.
Why would he? You can get most of a videos information by just reading the comments. And those probably all said he sold it.
Wow. I felt so stupid just writing this. I still cant believe he unironically says shit like this
Well, not watching the video would mean not doing due diligence, which would be on-brand for him.
The point isn’t the profit, the point is that a new, maybe secret prototype could have fallen into competitors hands. LMG made a thousand on it? The small, indepedent company that made the water block just lost their main product
This. I’m not sure what the ramifications are, depending on what law may be applicable (like US-american or canadian), but apart from having given away something that in all likelihood they had no right of ownership over, they might even be liable for some sort of confidentiality breach due to that.
I mean, I get the point that Linus was trying to make, but man he really could have worded it better. As it stands it feels like an “akshually” merged with a technicality-gotcha
If you want to discuss this more and feel like that would be outside the scope of Beehaw’s Technology community please feel free to enjoy this segue to our Unofficial community:
https://discuss.online/c/linus_tech_tips
*shameless plug
Can we not spam advertise our communities? TY
How am I not surprised this is how he would respond. This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,” he doubles down on every shitty take he has.
I still don’t get his fame and how deeply embedded ge is in the pc/gaming community.
Haha he’s so funny because he drops expensive things and pushes expensive products.He’s the CEO of Linux, it’s even named after him.
TIL
Satan’s making a joke. Linux was developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds of Finland. LTT is Linus Sebastian of Canada.
I was just following the joke. Linux, the kernel and Linus Sebastian are probably the same age, from my point of view (yeah, I’m old).
Never heard of before and dgaf about whoever Linus Sebastion is. All this stuff I’ve been seeing about what an asshole “Linus” is thinking it must be some kerfuffle about Linus Torvalds but the bits and pieces I read made no sense. Even less now I’ve figured out it’s just some random asshole named Linus. How did I end up here? Take me back to my room, please.
Same for me. I have been reading Linus (Torvalds) posts since decades and it really seemed out of character to me. I even clicked on the link but I admit that I haven’t yet understood what is going on. I have decided that it’s not for me…
Reddit always had such a boner for him. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I clicked on one of his videos a decade ago, when people were posting gifs of him dropping things. I found the grating and annoying, and never went back. It also really looked like all of the drops were for quick popularity via Reddit gifs. It worked well.
Yeah I mean it’s kind of wish fulfillment innit? Like Scrapyard Wars, or Whole Room Watercooling, or building 5-figure rigs, or his tech’ed out data collection mansion, that’s all stuff most people won’t be able to do themselves, but they want to watch someone do it.
His fame, like most fame, is the duality of a carefully curated persona as cool and hip, and an arrogant micromanaging back half. Most people are only going to see Wish Fulfillment Linus, and Egomaniac Linus only comes up rarely (and mostly on his podcast).
I mean it’s kind of wish fulfillment innit?
Not really, most of the crap they build is completely impractical and gets disassembled after they are done with the videos anyway, including this water cooling block. No reasonable person would spend $800 on that thing, but it might still be fun to see what it can or can’t do. It’s just messing around with tech and having some fun, just sometimes they overstretch the fun part and the review side of things suffers.
Wish fulfillment is what I’d call something like MKBHD, as that’s has all the latest hottest tech gadget nicely presented, just like an ad.
Yes, the impracticality is one of the major points of wish fulfillment. It’s fantasy and most reasonable people don’t actually want the crap Linus builds. They just want to see it, it’s make-believe.
And I wouldn’t call destroying a startup’s intellectual property, ignoring their requests to return it, and then selling the detritus as “merch” at an auction “just having some fun.” That’s what I would call negligent and unprofessional.
And I wouldn’t call destroying a startup’s intellectual property
Intellectual property doesn’t get stored in copper blocks. They can load up their CAD files and machine a new one. That thing might have sentimental value, but that’s about it.
“IP” or not, this is costing them money to manufacture a new prototype.
With respect, whether it can properly be called “intellectual property” or not, is not the point.
It was a one-of-a-kind engineering sample that LTT agreed to send back when they were done with it. LTT did not fulfill their obligation, and when Billet Labs asked about it, they got stonewalled.
Billet has those blocks on preorder, shipping in Sep-Nov, yet somehow has only a single prototype one of them in existence? Sound rather sketchy to me. Also next time maybe put a label on the thing “Prototype Not for Sale. Property of Billet”, like every other prototype.
The thing worth criticizing is that LTT “reviewed” a water block that didn’t even exist as a pre-production run.
they got stonewalled.
They mailed at the end of the week, got a reply on monday.
This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,”
Spot the difference:
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You download a video from a pirate site.
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You download that video from Youtube and skip the ads.
In number 2) Youtube had to pay for the bandwidth and got nothing, so it’s literally worse for them than just pirating it from an unofficial source. You might not like “AdBlock is piracy”, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
You’re right, there’s no difference. Downloading a video “from a pirate site” that is freely available is also not piracy in the colloquial sense. Otherwise it’s also piracy for me to download a tiktok and sent it the mp4 to a friend directly. Your argument’s great but doesn’t make the point you want it to.
If TikTok doesn’t allow you to download their videos and share them outside of their website, based on the EULA agreed to when you made your account, then yes it’s piracy. Justifiable piracy, but still piracy.
(I have no idea if TikTok allows this)
So Piracy is not a matter of law, but a matter of TOS now?
Youtube had to pay for the bandwidth and got nothing
This is not entirely true because youtube gave your ISP some server appliances to install in their network that locally cache and serve youtube videos to minimize actual traffics to youtube. When you watch a youtube video, your video traffic is most likely being served locally from your ISP’s datacenter instead of from youtube’s datacenter. Youtube doesn’t pay your ISP for hosting their appliances in their network (not for bandwidth, electricity and cooling). You, as a customer of your ISP, are the one that pay for the bandwidth.
It is wrong, actually. Piracy is illegal, adblocking is not.
That’s what they want you to believe, but piracy is not illegal in itself. Making copies is the illegal part. But that’s something you only do when you upload, not when you just download or stream.
PS: Some exception do apply, but that depends a lot of the content and the country you are in. Interestingly, Youtube does not explicitly disallow adblockers in their ToS, they do however disallow the access “using any automated means”, which would fit for
yt-dlp.Creating adblockers, hosting those adblockers, using adblockers, or providing a service that removes ads is not illegal (in countries I know of). Piracy, like you said, can vary. For many places, downloading pirated content is not illegal (although in some places, I believe intent is also a part of this story), hosting content you don’t own is illegal (even if it has ads, and of course there is nuance here when it comes to user-submitted content and where you are), etc. Generally, adblockers never involve any kind of “is it legal” consideration, while piracy does.
Looking at it from a different point of view, piracy is the act of acquiring content that requires payment without paying for it, while blocking ads is basically the opposite - you’re denying content you don’t want while accepting the rest. Taking something without permission generally raises ethical questions for the receiver, while forcing someone to take something they don’t want generally raises ethical questions for the sender. (Of course, this also comes down to whether the receiver agreed ahead of time to receive both the content they wanted and the content they didn’t want, but that’s not the case here.)
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How am I not surprised this is how he would respond. This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,” he doubles down on every shitty take he has.
He just uses the same excuses that GN talks about being issues in the video. It would not be “impossible” to test the water block properly, he just doesn’t want to spend money to make proper journalism.
Didn’t he hire a whole bunch of testing experts and built a “lab”? Hard to see he has all that talent and equipment behind him with results like these.
But they couldn’t find a 3090 to test it with! Not even the 3090 that the company sent with the cooling block. Cough.
When organizations mess up, why is their first response to the critique to say “Why didn’t you come to us first?” when they really mean “Why did you make this public so we actually have to do something?”
I get really frustrated with the response because it doesn’t come across as a company actually interested in improving, but just throwing accusations back and trying to beg off the responsibility of actually holding themselves accountable.
“Why did you make this public so we actually have to do something?”
That works both ways. Should they have contacted the waterblock company with their bad test results and waited for approval? Or should they have published them as is? What should an Honest Tech Journalist™ do?
Were the bad results genuine or caused by incorrect testing?
Incorrect testing They didn’t use the GPU board the block was designed for as they apparently didn’t have one available from their inventory Linus found out about that at the start of filming the video review then decided to go full steam ahead anyway Gotta get that video out Didn’t even mention or reference the included manual and other documentation Concluded it was a crap product, a prototype installed on the improper GPU, in the video and also on the WANshow That had to have caused untold damage to the company in revenue and reputation
To make it worse, the company actually sent the block together with a matching GPU and they somehow lost it.
Sold the block. Kept the GPU
They are probably too many people and trying to push the videos out to sustain and grow that further. Quality and detail can suffer because of that. They probably need to scale back a bit, and spend more time on producing the videos (sort of go back to their roots).
Fuck you Linus. Your actions and your company’s actions might have resulted in the death of startup because you didn’t like the product and think people shouldn’t buy it. You don’t get to just apologize and give some money out and think that makes it okay. You should be horrified that something like this could happened. You should be bending your self over backwards, doing everything you can do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. Instead you put out this dumb shit
not a good look, Linus. If he were actually serious about handling mistakes and issues head-on, none of this would’ve happened because he would’ve publicly corrected his employee when he claimed their testing methods are superior to others’
Pretty sure he did that on the WAN Show
Man, I’ve had a feeling that LTT and LMG’s content more generally has been less and less about consumers and more about selling things to people. I guess it’s called “advertainment” - but it’s just so intolerable now. I don’t feel connected to, or like any of the content is relevant anymore to a regular person.
When your employees are complaining that they can’t create the content to the standard they want to because of time, it really sounds like a management problem. One they Linus seems determined to ignore so that they can keep raking in big sponsorships and sales of their overpriced over hyped merch so they can buy ever bigger mansions.
The whole tone of the enterprise is off and the vibes are bad.
One they Linus seems determined to ignore so that they can keep raking in big sponsorships and sales of their overpriced over hyped merch so they can buy ever bigger mansions.
I don’t think it’s that bad; Linus’ heart seems to be in the right place but his ego and occasional lack of self-awareness does definitely hurt at least the image. But that’s something the new CEO can actually fix, potentially.
As for the need to make money and churn out content, I kinda get the need; he probably feels immense pressure because in order to sustain 100+ people they do actually need to put out a shittin of content and can’t really take a break.
With that being said issues like these should be a very strong signal that change needs to happen, and dismissing people’s concerns and not being able to put his ego aside will hurt them a lot if this continues.
I think you nailed the response here. They need the new CEO to be there full time too.
What’s ltt and lmg?
Linus Tech Tips, Linus Media Group
I believe it stands for Linus Tech Tips and Linus Media Group
We need “Linus Responds to GN Responding to Linus Responding to The Problem with LMG” 🍿
Did he respond to the response to his response to the controversy?? His forum account at least hasn’t posted in 23 hours.
Nope
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY
There are some steps mentioned that they will take, like not making any videos for a week and reviewing internal processes. Getting some Southpark-y “I’m sorry” vibes there, at least it’s something though.
But the video (at least its creation if not its release) seems to predate the Twitter/X thread of a former LTT employee alleging sexual harassment and other toxic workplace behaviour: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741
So not very surprisingly most Youtube comments I’ve seen refer to that bomb dropping.
This isn’t “something”. This is a “we’re sorry (not really)” video. If you watch it in the context of “I have no favorites in this game” and look it it pretty objectively, it feels like just a bait to try to stop the bleeding.
A week? To refine all the processes in that size of a company? No. I’ve gone through these processes before and it takes months to evaluate, talk to employees, get processes down properly, especially when you need to really start over from the standpoint of “this isn’t working”. They even mentioned they are still having scheduled videos coming out… Did they check those for errors first? I doubt it.
A week to get their inventory control back on track? With the size of their warehouse? No way.
The fact that they let Linus get on there and make the tone deaf statement he did, still backtracking on the billet labs fiasco. He acted like a petulant child who doesn’t have remorse.
They are going to post their updates to their processes on floatplane? What. The. Fuck. So no communication through YouTube. You have to pay in order to see how they will do better.
And. They monetized the apology video. They knew they would get the most views ever out of that one. And they monetized it.
I’ve watched quite a bit of their content and had trusted it in the past… but I have the same feeling about them now that I had when I found out about Jared from adventures with purpose and his whole “I’m just here to make as much cash as I can” attitude, aside from the fact that he’s a child rapist. It just feels scummy to me.
This isn’t “something”. This is a “we’re sorry (not really)” video. If you watch it in the context of “I have no favorites in this game” and look it it pretty objectively, it feels like just a bait to try to stop the bleeding.
Yeah that’s what I meant with “Southpark-y ‘I’m sorry’ vibes”. For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
P.S.: And that’s… “something”.
A week? To refine all the processes in that size of a company?
No, a week without videos to get started with reviewing processes. I agree with you in general though, if it stops there it’s nothing more than PR. Remains to be seen what will come of it, but the allegations by that former employee are certainly a dampener on an optimistic view of the situation.
Lol I never saw that episode of South Park. That’s hilarious.
One week will get nothing done, but for the people who buy it - it works.
Linus is an entertainer foremost, but his personality is … well, yeah.
Not a huge fan of LTT and their setup, but they seem to reach a lot of people.
Not at all surprised to hear that it’s a toxic workplace. Matches the vibe of the “we’re sorry” video, and the “trust me bro” warranty shit.
All true, and maybe I have been understating my negative estimation of the whole ordeal a bit, but we are like five levels of escalation deep at this point, and all I’m saying is it’s getting harder and harder to gain a nuanced understanding of the situation. Which is important.
Anyway, given the totality of what I have seen so far LTT has either always been or just devolved into an entirely toxic work environment. Their reaction so far doesn’t inspire any confidence in the slightest. On the contrary, it reinforces all of the accusations.
Oh boy, here we go
