Linus Tech Tips Video was released today, however it isn't a proper apology video, but just an attempt to salvage the PR. Here are some of the cringe moment...
Dont even need to watch the whole video. This is all you gotta see.
Oof, you wanna TL;DR half a week of “influencer” drama? I’ll bite.
On July 28th, Tim “Big Bald Mouth” Holowachuk decided, of his own volition, during the LTX labs tour, to entirely undeservedly diss friendly tech youtubers GN and HUB in a MurfsGaming video released the same day (timestamp: 8:30).
During LTX, a full copper block, artisan prototype owned by Billet Labs (apparently their best performing), previously inaccurately (of course) “tested” by Linus, was fraudulently sold on the silent auction.
Linus responded within hours essentially reading “Yeah, you don’t really deserve an answer, be happy you got one privately. As for the guys we wronged, they don’t matter, and they made an absurdly atrocious product, so who cares. And I didn’t sell it, I auctioned it to profit a charity; plus we already have an agreement on how to compensate Billet Labs.” (that last part was a lie).
LMG decided to then publish a sort of “Apology” video (sort of, because not only they managed to sound nauseatingly bland, dishearteningly corporate, incredibly unconcerned, they also plugged their merch, and threw goofy jokes with sexual references around, proving the absolutely laughable extent of their seriousness).
Freeman decided to make a video montage of the much worse, much more boring, much longer video released by LMG, and posted it here. And he’s right. That’s all you really need to see.
I keep seeing people saying that the LTT video came out first when all I can find supports that Madison’s tweet came out first. Its likely LTT made and released the video before they were aware of the tweet.
The timestamps I can see (in my local time of -7) Madison’s tweet 11:09 PM · Aug 15, 2023
Madison’s tweet came out 4 hours and 24 minutes before the video was published.
Additionally the Verge article states a similar timeline.
Linus Tech Tips posted its latest video at approximately 7AM ET. However, last night, at approximately 2AM ET, a former employee, Madison Reeve, posted a thread on X
Maybe you pull your apology video with sexual innuendo in it and remake parts without it if you end up cross-posting with SA allegations, just saying it’s not a great look
Gamers Nexus (another highly respected tech YouTuber) called out LTT for their mistakes and performances over the last few years, the overall point being that they’re moving too fast and causing multiple mistakes in their content.
There’s a current controversy with a company called Billet who gave LTT a custom water block to test and instead of testing it properly with the 3090 it was made for, they tried it with a 4090 card (and it obviously didn’t work)
Linus doubled down on their results saying it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because it’s a rubbish product and no one should buy it (which came across very poorly, why even agree to test a product if you know your going to trash on it)
The whole situation specifically looks like it’s triggered some upcoming changes in LMG and hopefully the outcome is better, more accurate video content
The Billet stuff is even worse because he trashed a startup company (that could be crushed by bad press from someone with so much reach) for his own mistakes, then doubled down to avoid blame saying that they couldn’t spend a few hundred dollars to test it correctly with the right card (despite having millions of dollars) and that the results wouldn’t change anyway (though it clearly would). Then, LTT auctioned the block off without Billet’s permission, then tried to not pay Billet for it.
Billet also sent them a 3090 Ti with the block and they lost it. They had the hardware and they screwed up, and then just went “we’ll just talk shit about it because it wouldn’t have worked anyway, right? trust me bro”
Colin said in his tweet that the prototype sale “has an element of occam’s razor” (he really means Hanlon’s razor). So it would seem to be the former.
However Linus’s reaction to the incident was the latter. He should have put his company on the line, bought it back at whatever ridiculous price would have convinced the buyer, and sent it back all expenses paid to Billet Labs. That’s how you own a fuck-up.
Seems the general discussion burries what I sense is perhaps the more agregious part; LTTs business ethics.
It is inexcusable to become too big or too busy to care about how you represent those you partner with. Steve poiniently outlined significant instances where LTT took actions that negatively and unfairly impacted the vendors that expected more of a partnership in the exchange.
The Madison info just heaps onto the poor business practices.
The worse part is that the GN video was triggered by someone in LMG name dropping GN trying to cast shadow on their journalistic integrity and methods during a video and then indirectly by Linus himself during a wan podcast. GN only did the video as a self-defense roast to stand their ground. Accidentally happened to blow a giant hole on the top of the company. Because that’s how bad they are as an organization.
Look - you just don’t get it. It was a hit job so using the actual hardware as intended didn’t matter. Why can’t people just understand that and be okay with it?
I will not try to summarize these different events, since that risks not covering all of the finer details in the issue.
Then there is also some very recent issue that has been raised about a former employee at LTT that allegedly has been the victim of sexual abuse, and very harsh working conditions, but I’m not fully read up on that yet.
Everyone can’t learn everything. When you watch the news, do you fly down to Maui to interview victims and analyze the state of power lines yourself?
You have to remember where you got something and learn to evaluate the bias of a source, but going on an active forum full of people with various levels of knowledge on the topic is the best way to get a complete picture in a reasonable time frame. They’ll call out inaccuracies in reporting, give background that might speak to problematic motivations or conflicts of interest, and argue bad takes.
Is it perfect? No. It’s DD though, more and more usernames are quoted in the news - hell, even in this video forum posts are referenced frequently
Sorry, I’m out of the loop on this one. Would anyone mind elaborating on what happened exactly? Thank you for your time!
Oof, you wanna TL;DR half a week of “influencer” drama? I’ll bite.
Legend for putting that all together with links and everything.
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I didn’t know that Colin came out and said that about Madison’s allegations. Thank you for including that, and I’m glad he did.
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Yea, I’m not as invested in this story as others seem to be. I’m on a work trip abroad and am a bit hyperstimulated
It’s okay. Enjoy the calm moments of your trip, take the opportunities to chill and have a good one. I didn’t mean to be condescending.
Is that the guy who looks like Andrew Tate? (Who also kinda looks like that ogre in Harry Potter 1)
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Who is Colin and where can I see this account? Please?
Colin Worobetz, you can find him on twitter (Not sure what’s there tho, twitter is completely locked down now).
Damn! You have done more research than Linus Labs does for a product test!
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Allegations were around 2am and video was around 7am, but considering how often they get data wrong, im not surprised they didn’t notice it.
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6 and 7 are in wrong order, and it makes a huge difference. They didn’t have anything about Madison in the video because it was released first.
Tweet: 2023-08-16T06:09:52.483Z
Video: 2023-08-16T10:33:44Z
That’s four and a half full hours prior. Wanna try again?
I keep seeing people saying that the LTT video came out first when all I can find supports that Madison’s tweet came out first. Its likely LTT made and released the video before they were aware of the tweet.
The timestamps I can see (in my local time of -7)
Madison’s tweet 11:09 PM · Aug 15, 2023
LTT video 2023-08-16 / 03:33:44
Madison’s tweet came out 4 hours and 24 minutes before the video was published.
Additionally the Verge article states a similar timeline.
Maybe you pull your apology video with sexual innuendo in it and remake parts without it if you end up cross-posting with SA allegations, just saying it’s not a great look
Gamers Nexus (another highly respected tech YouTuber) called out LTT for their mistakes and performances over the last few years, the overall point being that they’re moving too fast and causing multiple mistakes in their content.
There’s a current controversy with a company called Billet who gave LTT a custom water block to test and instead of testing it properly with the 3090 it was made for, they tried it with a 4090 card (and it obviously didn’t work)
Linus doubled down on their results saying it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because it’s a rubbish product and no one should buy it (which came across very poorly, why even agree to test a product if you know your going to trash on it)
The whole situation specifically looks like it’s triggered some upcoming changes in LMG and hopefully the outcome is better, more accurate video content
The Billet stuff is even worse because he trashed a startup company (that could be crushed by bad press from someone with so much reach) for his own mistakes, then doubled down to avoid blame saying that they couldn’t spend a few hundred dollars to test it correctly with the right card (despite having millions of dollars) and that the results wouldn’t change anyway (though it clearly would). Then, LTT auctioned the block off without Billet’s permission, then tried to not pay Billet for it.
Billet also sent them a 3090 Ti with the block and they lost it. They had the hardware and they screwed up, and then just went “we’ll just talk shit about it because it wouldn’t have worked anyway, right? trust me bro”
They literally agreed to review the product just so they could shit on it. That’s pretty dishonest.
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Colin said in his tweet that the prototype sale “has an element of occam’s razor” (he really means Hanlon’s razor). So it would seem to be the former.
However Linus’s reaction to the incident was the latter. He should have put his company on the line, bought it back at whatever ridiculous price would have convinced the buyer, and sent it back all expenses paid to Billet Labs. That’s how you own a fuck-up.
Seems the general discussion burries what I sense is perhaps the more agregious part; LTTs business ethics.
It is inexcusable to become too big or too busy to care about how you represent those you partner with. Steve poiniently outlined significant instances where LTT took actions that negatively and unfairly impacted the vendors that expected more of a partnership in the exchange.
The Madison info just heaps onto the poor business practices.
The worse part is that the GN video was triggered by someone in LMG name dropping GN trying to cast shadow on their journalistic integrity and methods during a video and then indirectly by Linus himself during a wan podcast. GN only did the video as a self-defense roast to stand their ground. Accidentally happened to blow a giant hole on the top of the company. Because that’s how bad they are as an organization.
Hey now, be fair. LTT also lost the video card Billet sent to run the test on and sold their prototype.
Look - you just don’t get it. It was a hit job so using the actual hardware as intended didn’t matter. Why can’t people just understand that and be okay with it?
(I know I’m gonna need this: /s)
Regarding the initial drama, the timeline is as follows:
I will not try to summarize these different events, since that risks not covering all of the finer details in the issue.
Then there is also some very recent issue that has been raised about a former employee at LTT that allegedly has been the victim of sexual abuse, and very harsh working conditions, but I’m not fully read up on that yet.
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Everyone can’t learn everything. When you watch the news, do you fly down to Maui to interview victims and analyze the state of power lines yourself?
You have to remember where you got something and learn to evaluate the bias of a source, but going on an active forum full of people with various levels of knowledge on the topic is the best way to get a complete picture in a reasonable time frame. They’ll call out inaccuracies in reporting, give background that might speak to problematic motivations or conflicts of interest, and argue bad takes.
Is it perfect? No. It’s DD though, more and more usernames are quoted in the news - hell, even in this video forum posts are referenced frequently
I would just like to thank all the kind souls that helped recap the situation. It is very appreciated.