I unsubscribed immediately. What a horribly toxic work environment and unpleasant company. Where I work, and I work for a place far bigger than LTT, no matter your seniority, you’re out the door the same day if you treat a member of staff the way Madison was treated. I’ve seen it happen. The fact she suffered such abuse for years from so many members of staff is indicative of a company so heavily poisonous, they shouldn’t exist. Hopefully other fans can see through their parasocial relationship and cut the cord.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, it wasn't for years. But yes, the Madison situation needs to be addressed. Can only hope that the culture is rectified, and whoever assaulted her is found, investigated, and fired if need be.
Having worked at quite a few startups that grew to LTT’s size, there are basically two kinds of CEO/COO; those who want to drive the culture, and those who don’t believe in corporate culture.
I feel Linus is of the second brand, and I’ve seen it enough to know that culture emerging in those conditions get out of control and becomes almost impossible to rectify.
Good luck to LMG, but the top is where culture starts.
Honestly, I am not sure the culture issue can be corrected unless Linus is forced to at the very least take a BIIIIIIIG step back from day to day operations… because his (lack of) ethics and leadership are, in my eyes, the proximate cause of pretty much all the weird bad shit that’s coming out about LMG - both the provable and public-sphere ethics and data issues, as well as their internal (and admittedly less easily provable, though still extremely concerning) HR/cultural problems.
The apology video has such an off vibe to it. They continue making jokes about sponsors, the store and more when it clearly is not the time to do so. It feels unprofessional. After reading Madison's thread it feels even more... wrong. I see what they were going for but it clearly is not working. They should have just stayed serious, addressed the issues and kept the video short. There's more stuff coming to light now and it seems like they need more than this one video now.
Blocktube once I started using it quickly became an essential extension. Biggest impact is improved search results if you don't have interest in videos of certain big youtubers for some topics that always get push them to the top.
It’s basically caused by crunch culture. Everyone is stressed out and there is no time to breath and reflect. The constant grind turns the environment toxic. And I doubt they have a proper HR team, probably run by a family member.
Madison replied today on X (twitter), haven’t figured out yet how I can copy the link, but a quick search for former LTT employee does the job at the moment.
Yeah I've brought this up in the comments on the recent LTT videos. Asking for them to address how they're treating workers. Both comments were deleted by [presumably] LMG staff on the youtube comments. And if you scroll long enough you'll see dozens of people saying their comments on this matter have been deleted too.
Any company that drives a person to self-harm to take a day off... That's just sick.
Maybe it's because I'm old and have worked at a number of different sized companies. But, Linus always struck me as very fake and inauthentic.
He gives off the vibe that he's one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee - while completely ignoring the fact that he (and his wife) own the company and are YouTube millionaires and run a relatively large and influential company.
I can easily see Linus being an abusive, toxic person to work for.
I've worked for people like him before and their public and private personas are often complete opposites. In my opinion, this is Linus' mask slipping and we're getting to see the real him.
The home improvement videos always rubbed me the wrong way, it didn’t feel right to watch him use his employees to do all these renovations to his home for them
The one that really bothered me was one where he went to one of his employees houses to work on a project and was super disrespectful the whole time. At the beginning of the video the guy was talking about how he's just bought the home and was so proud, then there were multiple parts in the video of Linus making fun of different parts of his house. And I recall a part where the guy specifically asked him not to put something on a table he was afraid would break and Linus was like "no, it's fine" and does it anyways. The whole video made me super uncomfortable, I think it was actually one of the last videos I watched from the channel
I remember a few years back when Dennis almost fell through his roof while he had him running cables and there was no concern for his wellbeing, just shitting on him for being useless. Made me super uncomfortable to watch
Yeah I'm firmly on the anti-linus train at this point... But this one I don't get. If I hire you... and the whole point is we make videos... If the best video idea we have at the moment is to upgrade the wifi in my house... You bet that's going on the list as it has direct appeal to the community because every one of us will be thinking about upgrading at wifi at some point. The fact that it's in my house has no real bearing on any of it except as an excuse to do it at an actual location that actually needs it... Unless the dude is writing it all off 100% as business expenses... Then that's a bit shady. But considering they do the $5k rig reboots for their people it doesn't seem like he's wholesale limiting videos to just his own property/assets. I'm sure if/when his employees have ideas on their personal stuff it comes up to. One video in particular I remember is the guy that did wedding camera work.
It's written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
Replace "CEO" with "employee". Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company? Can an employee independently take that decision without anyone being able to question it?
It’s written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
You cannot say this with ANY degree of certainty. You don't know what he's attempting to write off. And it's Canada.... what is he even allowed to write off. But he certainly cannot write off 100% of the equipment he's buying, as it's going to live long lives outside of the video as non-company assets in his home for personal use. I cannot write off 100% of my cell service unless I show that it was ONLY used for business purposes.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise anyway. It's up to the ownership what to do with the money that the company makes. It's not the employee's decision at all... period. In this case those decisions were made by the CEO who happens to be the owner. CFO's garner their power for handling the money through delegation from the owner(s).
But in this case... it's actually true.
Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company?
Yes... They can choose to participate in the $5k upgrades that LMG does. At this point I doubt Linus has any real direct interaction with the planning of these videos and just shows up at the personality on screen for shoot time.
He gives off the vibe that he's one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee
This is a behaviour Linus has simply failed to grow out of.
At one point, he was just one of the little guys; sharing that common ground with his audience. That dynamic has vastly changed, but Linus has not adapted to it.
I genuinely didn't see that. He seemed like a cool dude and wanting to do the best and figuring things out.
So for me, this news is disappointing. Although, it'd be more disappointing if I was still watching. The thumbnails really got to me over time. I know why people do them, but you know, still...
That was the trend for me too. Avoided his videos because of thumbnails. Saw some youtubers I watched on scrapyard wars and liked the series then came to like LTT after giving it a chance. But then over time his thumbnails and shill vibe of do everything possible to monetize got to me and I stopped. That strategy for their videos is so ingrained in their culture that even their apology video is monetized and has affiliate links and sponsor segment jokes. Just a fatiguing channel.
This is Linus Sebastian, not Linus Torvalds. Has nothing to do with Linux. In fact, he tried running Linux a few months ago and made a huge mess of it.
Hahaha - okay, that makes a lot more sense. I had so completely lost track of the community and have just been getting back into it lately because of the fediverse community, and so when I heard “Linus Tech Tips,” I completely assumed it was Linus Torvalds. I had even talked to him on usenet (iirc) a couple of times, and couldn’t square the reports.
I had fallen off a bit anyway; the amount of click baiting had gone through the roof, quality of videos plateaued. Now caught dead to rights on poor journalistic integrity and allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace?
All so that I can drool over graphics cards I can't afford? Easy choice to unsubscribe.
Their stats were generally upward. No reason to think the clickbait suddenly became too much for people in just the past week. In general, channels do clickbait because YouTube rewards you for it, and that overwhelms a bunch of people complaining about it in the comments.
I unsubscribed after reading Madison's thread. Anyone who's gotten stuck in a toxic work environment knows just how crushing it is mentally. Constant low-level anxiety, feelings of dread, and the inability to even decompress off the clock due to intruding thoughts, replayed arguments, feelings of being gaslit, and the knowledge that it's all going to happen again tomorrow. Combine that with the sexual assault allegations and it's not surprising at all that she'd self harm.
If even 10% of her story is true we're looking at systemic failures in the entire management chain both to recognize and triage toxic behavior, and to demonstrate professionalism and lead by example.
As someone who’s “dream job” has devolved into something I’m now actively looking to leave (albeit for somewhat less severe reasons than Madison described), I deeply empathize with what she’s feeling. Hope she can find some success in the future despite how much of a shitshow her tenure at LMG turned out to be.
Is there more to this than just a reddit screenshot posted on what’s clearly a clickbait shithole of a website?
I remember seeing the video of the play button, and kind of expected the guy to get a lot of hate. It resulting in harassment and suicide wouldn’t surprise me considering how Youtube people are. However, I’m not going to accept such a wild story without some credible evidence, especially since this is also the type of hoax internet losers would make up for clout.
Can someone explain to me followers and the seemingly weird cult that forms. LTT, Sony, Microsoft, Apple etc. Why are people weirdly defensive of these companies and ignore evidence, death threats etc?
People make something stupid (and usually toxic) the center of their identity, and develop a parasocial obsession with it due to having nothing going on in their own lives and want to latch onto someone elses success.. especially if that someone else displays the same unhealthy/bad traits that they personally have and identify with, to the point that any threat to, or criticism against, their idol, is seen as the most egregious of personal attacks on them as a person. So they strike out as if they've been personally done the worst wrong imaginable.
I forget the name of the bias/fallacy, but it's something like "I love and support X. If X is bad, then I support something bad, then I'm bad. Since I'm a good person, and I support X, then X must be good or I wouldn't support them"
It's probably a quirk of how we make decisions - we don't consciously make decisions. Instead, we might weigh out the options and that affects our choice, but in the moment we choose subconsciously. It might feel like we made a decision consciously, but sometimes at the last second we deviate from the course we chose (or upon choosing, realize that despite our thoughts we actually have already made up our mind otherwise)... Then we have to rationalize that choice, or start down a long and challenging road of constant introspection
Be more careful when putting things like that in videos. He’s said many times not to go attacking people he talks about, but he should know the minority of his fan base won’t listen, and he should just not mention it instead.
While I don't doubt for a moment that LTT fan base is likely filled to the brim with fanatics... I don't want to completely go all in on that story as much as the Madison story. That kid's youtube channel has a dubious history on it's own. It appears that the channel was purchased with all the subs that it had, not actually grown. I don't necessarily believe that they "deserved" the play button if they bought subs. Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can't expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
I could be wrong... I dunno. But I'd encourage a little more research before accepting this story.
No, but you did suggest you should expect this level of abuse for the "shady" act of buying subs and buying a YouTube button someone else feels they're entitled to.
Ultimately if a group of people whose unifying property is you and they're hounding a child in your name you are absolutely responsible for doing everything in your power to stop them abusing that child.
Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can’t expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
Is what I said. As in I don't believe that they should have been harassed, but the internet being the internet... we know that's what happens when people do shady shit like that.
Linus can't control idiots that just watch his videos. He was on record as "don't bother this person" in several places. And I've not seen any case where Linus "sent" people to harass this kid. So yes... even if the group is ultimately unified by Linus... I can't necessarily blame him.
Unsubbed too. I knew Linus had some management practices I didn't agree with, and he comes across as a bit stubborn a lot of the time, and their click baity thumbnails and titles kinda bugged me, and it seemed like every time I refreshed YouTube there was a new LTT video posted...
Buut, most videos were entertaining and informative so my my rose tinted glasses kept me thinking that SURELY the employees were pretty happy there and were so productive because they enjoyed it that much.
I don't watch or follow their content and was impressed that they get at least a million views for every video, and they post almost everyday I guess. Holy shit
I remember hearing about this guy enough that I was interested so I subscribed, and checked out a video of his once, I forget the topic but the title sounded pretty interesting. This was a few years ago.
Within 3 minutes I had unsubscribed. Why?
Well, he spent the first few minutes of the video being an annoyingly arrogant rich guy whilst also wasting time on things that had nothing at all to do with the topic of the video.
It was when he had his camera man follow him through his house or office or whatever it was, tacky "check out my millionaire crib" style, like a show for kids, and he went into a room, pointed at a big wall of NAS racks and said something like "I've got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hard drives and I don't even use them! Hahaha", and I was like.... Yeah. Screw this guy.
Some people might like a guy who baits grown up tech viewers with an interesting topic only to then waste their time with childish, arrogant behaviour, but I clocked him as a tosser within 3 minutes and never bothered with him again.
That's just my personal experience, I can't imagine what having to be around someone like that every day would do to a person, my gosh :-(
It's really unfortunate because their early content was actually pretty entertaining. They'd document the fun projects they were doing, or showcase some wacky PC build they were doing, or they'd have PC build competitions where they'd have to build a themed PC within a certain budget, and they'd be judged at the end. I don't think those competitions had prizes, they just did it for fun. Most of their content was just for fun. They'd do sponsored stuff or reviews here and there, but for the most part it was just for fun.
Then Linus became a multi millionaire, and the whole thing went to shit.
I never got the appeal of any influencer flaunting their shit. Look, I'm happy your successful, good on you, but I watch videos to learn and grow, I really don't give a shit how many cars you have unless you're going to be teaching me about each one's internals and unique features.
Exactly! If he'd started with "look at how many hard drives I have set up in here" and then went on to show a really interesting novel use for them, I'd have maybe stuck around.
Though his personality was a little over the top regardless, but that can be forgiven in small doses if the content is particularly unique and engaging.
Funny you should mention Top Gear! As someone from the UK, I'm embarrassed that Jeremy Clarkson is famous globally, he's such a bigoted, xenophobic, sexist man, and an embarrassment to our country :-(
It's interesting that you talk about top gear because top gear was an entertainment show first and a car show 87th. If you think top gear was a car show you missed the point.
I completely understand why others are unsubbing, but I enjoy the content and want to see how the new CEO ends up handling all of this. Threads like this seem to be inviting everyone to post about how they never liked LTT in the first place, but I wanted to write this down because I'm sure I'm not the only one who actually enjoyed the content and the cool technology and unique solutions they found when building PCs and cooling them.
I mean I don't watch GPU reviews because they are mostly boring anyways. I only watch for the janky videos and pushing the boundaries and building wanly stuff.
The Madison claims need to be taken serious, but it's not like this couldn't be individuals that need to be singled out and kicked out.
I unsubscribed to show them how seriously I take the issues. If they improve and the investigation succeeds, I will resubscribe. And I did enjoy LTT, which is why I was subscribed.
I really do like his content, I put it on generally when I get home from work and Im cooking dinner.
I'm willing to buy that this was a series of unintentional fuckups and accidentally bad business practices. But I'm also not going to support them if they cant conduct their business ethically, so thats why I unsubbed and shitcanned my Floatplane subscription.
If I feel that they addressed this shit to standards that I'm willing to support their business I'll probably click the buttons again.
Yeah I think LTT has done a lot of great stuff and could do some really amazing stuff yet. I enjoy the content and have supported them, but nobody's perfect. I don't think anything they've done is worth an unfollow at this point, personally, but I understand why some may not agree.
I think Linus has gotten lost in the sauce. It's been apparent that everyone there has been exhausted for a while, and I think Linus hasn't cared for the people working for him as much as his desire for a media empire, which has led to overworking and an unsustainable work environment.
Linus' take on unions was shitty. IDK if a union could ever start there, but it seems like it could really help the company become more sustainable and keep it on course, because it seems like if the employees had their voices heard things might not have got so bad.
I agree, though I stopped taking their hardware reviews seriously. I could tell they were rushing and being sloppy. One of the things I was starting to get excited about was their pushing of manufacturers to improve repairability. I love what framework is doing, for example. Steve is big on this as well, but the more voices the better. The amount of stuff going into landfills is really starting to bother me.
the cool technology and unique solutions they found
Cool technology they barely know how to use. The storage server and Linux challenge videos demonstrated that very nicely. These guys are not tech experts.
More pointedly: the only thing Google cares about is making money. If what you’re doing doesn’t detract from that goal in any way (mind you, that’s a VERY broad brush), they don’t give two shits.
It doesn’t, though. All that matters (and this covers most journalism these days, not just video) is ad views, clickthroughs, and engagement. So if you make something “fun” or otherwise emotionally engaging (coughFOX NEWScough), your ad monetization is going to be more successful.
Emotions are high right now. It's not a trend. I bet most of their subscribers don't know about what's going on and wouldn't care either way. If lmg promise to do better and nothing big comes out, this will be forgotten in two weeks.
I was one of those that unsubscribed. I feel like the show quality has been dropping for a while now and the excessive advertising always got under my skin a little bit. I almost unsubscribed about a year ago when Linus went on his Twitter rant about how "adblockers are technically piracy" because it's sickening how many ads we have to look at every day and we have to sit though a sponsor segment every video and his plug to his own merch store.
But now after seeing his half-assed apology (that is also monetized and sponsored) AND seeing how terrible of an environment it is to work for him and the treatment Madison had to endure working under him was enough to push me over the edge. My views won't be giving him another dime of revenue.
Ad-blockers are technically piracy. It doesn't matter how unfair the ads are, they are what fund the creators (or the creators through YouTube). I don't seem to recall him berating people for ad-blocking, he just said that people should accept that they are pirating the content. I guess people don't like self-reflecting when they are labelled.
So me, using an ad blocker to prevent incorrectly vetted ads (that contain malware), stealing my information or compromising my computer, tracking my moves, or outright spying on what I say/type/consume is piracy? Then call me fucking Jack Sparrow baby
Maybe you are young, or incredibly naive (I am not trying to be offensive), but the internet used to be RIDDLED with unsafe ads. There is absolutely no reason you should ever believe they are safe now. Companies do very little to ensure their ads are safe as long as the money rolls in. Skype straight up served malware in their ads for years and never gave 1 fuck. (source: https://www.onmsft.com/news/skypes-traditional-desktop-program-is-spreading-malware-through-ads/)
Going on the internet without an adblocker (I suggest multiple layers, DNS level [Pihole/adguard] as well as device level [Extensions/browsers]) is like having unprotected sex with random strangers. Yes, you may end up fine, but you also could get some very nasty viruses (with long term damage, such as your SSN being leaked) all because you dont see the value in protection
I roll with an ad-blocker for the reasons you mention as well as because I hate seeing ads. I know I'm part of the problem and part of the reason news sites are putting up paywalls now. Granted, even if nobody used ad-blockers, I'm not sure how sustainable everything online being ad-supported would be. The point is, they are expecting to be supported by ad revenue and I'm likely helping to screw that up.
It's something that I'm not going to stop doing, but I don't make any excuses: I'm pirating their shit and rarely offering a different form of compensation. I'm subscribed to YouTube Premium even though I can easily block those ads too. I'm not, however, going to throw money at every website I find useful.
I would advise anyone to run an ad-blocker but they should also consider the moral aspect of it too. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm a pirate in the meantime.
You are absolutely right that this won't lead to their collapse. But i would still say that in both reddits and LTT's case, even if the numbers revert back, it will have an affect longterm.
For reddit the content quality has likely gone down and suddenly there is a viable alternative in Lemmy, which might have never gotten the chance to get of the ground otherwise. Within a month Lemmy suddenly has a decent amount of content, some communities have migrated here, and we have a number of high quality apps to choose from.
With LTT i think this does also have the potential to hurt them, even if the subscriber numbers come back up. They've been in a process of rapid expansion for a while now, so merely getting back to those numbers or slightly growing won't cut it. Additionally i think with floatplane and the lab they've been heavily investing into their image as a reputable and trusted company for consumers. Particularly the lab where they've heavily invested. Even if ultimately the average less informed consumer is their target market, for that they will also need enthusiasts to recommend them to those.
Just being the messenger here. The problem is that it's 100k of 15.6 (previously) million. People don't care, which means nor will Linus. It's incredibly likely that the "resolution" will amount to nothing, and the channel will remain dead to me.
I've said this on another thread, but how had video of several employees confessing to feeling rushed and not putting out product that will be open to critique slip by him. Did he chalk it up to just bros being bitches **(bro speak)
I am positively surprised by everbody's takes around here. They all seem mostly reasonable and people are rightfully concerned about the well-being of their workers, something that hasn't even made it into todays apology video.
The thing is, although LTT is important to Linus, his wife, and with direct ties, the viewers have many choices today with regards to the tech YouTubers of different nature. This makes it easy to just move one. LTT is a mass marketed channel, not particularly niche in any area of tech and there are many like it.
I can't tell you how disappointed I am on how this ended. I really thought the "Landed Gentry" quip would have had the pouring gasoline to be out a fire effect.
The Billet Labs thing was unfortunate but I think they are capable of apologizing, learning lessons, and turning things around.
But that's not just a toxic work environment that Madison is describing. That's CRIMINAL. That's actually unforgivable. Just given how many people knew about it, I don't think it can be fixed by firing some people. And don't even think about a sorry video.
Yeah the Union is a big one for me, my current employer is also like that. “Hey guys you can share your voice here and speak open about it…” Yes, that’s the problem, it’s open and not really anonymous so what can we talk about. If you can open talk about everything, you don’t have to fear unions.
Where did you hear that? From what I have heard he was in full support of the unions, all he said he wanted to create a company that doesn't require/need a union.
Not to be that guy, but in relation to being anti union, he specifically has said that if his employees feel like they needed a Union, then he has failed as a boss. In the sense that it should never get to the point where wanting a Union should come up as LMG should be a good enough work place to where it would be unnecessary to have.
There is a difference. I would want my employees to be happy and compesated enough to where needing a Union is just completely unneeded.
Yeah I get why he thinks that and it's a great goal to have as a boss. But who says that a union is always and entirely set up against him as a boss? If he is such a great boss there could very well be a union that doesn't have to do much. It's a defensive measure for worker's rights and working conditions, not an instituition for offense.
I get your point, but it's more of a bigger picture for me.
Remember that WAN segment about quiet quitting? The vibe was off on that one. Especially keeping the previous remark about unions in mind. Why would he think that he can be owner and main manager of such a big company with gigantic daily content output AND keep his workers best interests in mind at all times? If he is not anti-union he is at the very least wrong on why they are necessary. In the worst case he actually realizes that he could do much better for his workforce.
The following is a transcript if you'd rather avoid Reddit:
(speaker 1, Linus) So we called this meeting because it's come to our attention that we need to have a quick chat about the best way to handle HR related feedback and rumors. We won't be giving any names for what I hope are extraordinarily obvious reasons, but what we can do is give you the following guidelines for problem solving and conflict resolution.
Sorry that this is all boring and corporate, but here we are. Number one, always stand up for what's right. We're only a team as long as we're all working together and working for each other. That's the most important one. Number two, always reflect on your own personal experiences and use your common sense. Few things in life are truly black and white. Number three, always wait to hear both sides of a story before passing your own judgment. Be cautious when you know that one side is bound by legal and ethical disclosure guidelines, when the other is not. Carefully consider what it says about the character of someone who would engage in that type of gossip against someone who has no power to defend themselves.
Number four, always encourage openness and transparency. If you have a problem, you need to speak up. We want to fix it. If you receive feedback about somebody else at this company, the first response is, have you spoken with this person? Followed closely by, you need to speak with this person. We don't solve interpersonal issues here, or really anywhere in your life, if you wish to live in a drama free zone, by engaging in water cooler politicking. So, if for any reason that individual is not comfortable approaching the person they're having a conflict with, we have a chain that they're supposed to follow.
So first, you advise them to take the problem to their manager. Followed by me or Yvonne, followed by our third party HR firm. I hope that you all trust that we're here to make this a safe, fun, and productive workplace, and we won't tolerate mistreatment of any of our team members.
If you have any reason to believe otherwise, then I refer you again to point number four, which is to address the issue with the individual directly, or bring it to me or Yvonne, or bring it to our third party HR firm. Since I'm not at liberty to share any details about what occurred, uh, all I can do is ask that you trust me and Yvonne.
Um, some of you know us very well, I've been here a very long time, um, some of you have not been here for as long, but I like to think that whether you've been here for nine years or nine days, you're here for a reason and you believe that we are utmost to run this company with integrity and compassion.
Um, We can't solve problems we don't know about though, so on that note, I'd like to invite anyone who has concerns about a fellow team member or about a manager to submit their feedback either by speaking with their manager, me or Yvonne directly, or if you would prefer to provide your feedback anonymously, we have an option for that as well.
It's the manager and co-worker feedback form. Uh, Yvonne, if you're not aware of it - show of hands who is not aware of it? Hey, a lot of people aren't aware of it. Good, so now we all know. There's an anonymous form, if for whatever reason you're not comfortable either talking to me me or Yvonne directly about it - and that's okay, that's fine, we understand, that's why we have these options - Yvonne's gonna post it in the general chat.
It's a safe space to provide us ideas for improvement, or if you're consumed by the holiday spirit and you want to say nice things, you can do that too. Does anybody else have any questions?
Not a single question? Wow, that must have been a really good speech.
(speaker 2, James) You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?
(speaker 1, Linus) That's it! So, um, Yvonne, did you have anything you wanted to add?
(speaker 3, Yvonne) (inaudible) Somebody said (inaudible) if you guys want to sanitize your hands, help yourself with free (inaudible)?
(speaker 1, Linus) Yeah, that was actually just totally random timing. It came up the stairs a moment ago. Dennis is on it. Alright. Thank you everyone. Have a wonderful and, uh, productive rest of your day. And weekend.
Being transparent about your business, comes with pros and cons. Right now a female employee shared her end of the story to the web on why she quit, and you're seeing the reaction to it.
Edit: This amplified the ongoing issue about LTT and their information integrity, which is very likely due to root causes that Linus repeatedly ignored, or worse, believed he was right and everyone was wrong.
It seems she didn't speak out both because she thought she had an NDA and also because she was getting lots of harassment anyways and didn't want to add to it while in a bad place.
If the alleged facts are indeed true, it is incredibly difficult to even manage to get the police to care, let alone act. Not to mention the social stigma and the trauma.
Given the number of people involved, other people might be compelled to come forward. Then we will know for sure.
No doubt lol. There's bigger fish to fry. I'm so glad I'm learning to not participate in trendy drama. Especially when the activists won't even take time out of their super righteous elite life to tell you what's going on. It must be huge! Lol
Nah, nothing big outside of it being LTT and Gamer’s Nexus calling them out.
In a nutshell, LTT was given a prototype of a product that they basically said was shit due to testing the product outside of the specified parameters that company told them to test in and, instead of sending the prototype and other stuff that the company sent to LTT for testing back to said company, LTT auctioned the prototype off. Gamer’s Nexus made a video calling out stuff like this happening as well as the inconsistency of LTT’s testing lab data to point out that LTT is basically doing rush job videos for money and is starting to do more harm than good. Linus himself gets involved and shifts blame to everybody else except himself and his staff. On top of all this going on, a former LTT employee started going off about workplace harassment with some pretty serious accusations (but no hard evidence).
There’s a lot more stuff going on with the nitty-gritty, but that’s more or less the gist of things.
It gets worse, the company actually sent the correct graphics card to test the device on, but they still used the wrong model which doesn't fit properly.
What needs to be in the fine print of LTT confirming they're going to return it... to then turn around and sell it after confirming they're going to return it?
From LTT's own video. They show an email from "Felix"
I'll transcribe so you're not wasting time trying to pause the video if you're on mobile or something. Bold is my edit.
Right. We Originally said you could keep it because we thought it would be good for you to have it for future builds - it wasn't so you could sell it (whether for charity or not). Then when Linus clearly didn't like it, we asked for it back and you agreed. That was a [redacted] prototype and we're a very small company. Do you plan to reimburse us for the money it cost? You agreed to send it back and we planned our finances accordingly. This is not okay at all."
Edit: For completeness. The redacted portion was the cost of the prototype itself.
Well on monday it started off with another channel pointing out that their data is systemically crap, overworked crunching empolyees, and they robbed some indie startup company, and now it's all about how they have an incredibly toxic work enviroment and sexual assault alligations.
I unsubscribed immediately. What a horribly toxic work environment and unpleasant company. Where I work, and I work for a place far bigger than LTT, no matter your seniority, you’re out the door the same day if you treat a member of staff the way Madison was treated. I’ve seen it happen. The fact she suffered such abuse for years from so many members of staff is indicative of a company so heavily poisonous, they shouldn’t exist. Hopefully other fans can see through their parasocial relationship and cut the cord.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, it wasn't for years. But yes, the Madison situation needs to be addressed. Can only hope that the culture is rectified, and whoever assaulted her is found, investigated, and fired if need be.
Having worked at quite a few startups that grew to LTT’s size, there are basically two kinds of CEO/COO; those who want to drive the culture, and those who don’t believe in corporate culture.
I feel Linus is of the second brand, and I’ve seen it enough to know that culture emerging in those conditions get out of control and becomes almost impossible to rectify.
Good luck to LMG, but the top is where culture starts.
100% agreed, and can anecdotally confirm.
Honestly, I am not sure the culture issue can be corrected unless Linus is forced to at the very least take a BIIIIIIIG step back from day to day operations… because his (lack of) ethics and leadership are, in my eyes, the proximate cause of pretty much all the weird bad shit that’s coming out about LMG - both the provable and public-sphere ethics and data issues, as well as their internal (and admittedly less easily provable, though still extremely concerning) HR/cultural problems.
Agreed. Their response made it worse. Watching the PR response today is why I’ve unsubscribed. No thanks.
The apology video has such an off vibe to it. They continue making jokes about sponsors, the store and more when it clearly is not the time to do so. It feels unprofessional. After reading Madison's thread it feels even more... wrong. I see what they were going for but it clearly is not working. They should have just stayed serious, addressed the issues and kept the video short. There's more stuff coming to light now and it seems like they need more than this one video now.
Blocktube once I started using it quickly became an essential extension. Biggest impact is improved search results if you don't have interest in videos of certain big youtubers for some topics that always get push them to the top.
It’s basically caused by crunch culture. Everyone is stressed out and there is no time to breath and reflect. The constant grind turns the environment toxic. And I doubt they have a proper HR team, probably run by a family member.
This. I’ve done crunch. I’ve worked in high stress environments. Ain’t a ticket for assaulting colleagues.
Madison replied today on X (twitter), haven’t figured out yet how I can copy the link, but a quick search for former LTT employee does the job at the moment.
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/347639/Madison-on-why-she-quit gives you a long list of screenshots of them.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741?refresh=1692174340
Here's Madison's take on it. There will likely never be concrete proof. And Linus' team is actively deleting comments on their channels about it.
Wow that was a tough read. Thanks for the link.
From the tweets:
Yeah I've brought this up in the comments on the recent LTT videos. Asking for them to address how they're treating workers. Both comments were deleted by [presumably] LMG staff on the youtube comments. And if you scroll long enough you'll see dozens of people saying their comments on this matter have been deleted too.
Any company that drives a person to self-harm to take a day off... That's just sick.
Maybe it's because I'm old and have worked at a number of different sized companies. But, Linus always struck me as very fake and inauthentic.
He gives off the vibe that he's one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee - while completely ignoring the fact that he (and his wife) own the company and are YouTube millionaires and run a relatively large and influential company.
I can easily see Linus being an abusive, toxic person to work for.
I've worked for people like him before and their public and private personas are often complete opposites. In my opinion, this is Linus' mask slipping and we're getting to see the real him.
The home improvement videos always rubbed me the wrong way, it didn’t feel right to watch him use his employees to do all these renovations to his home for them
The one that really bothered me was one where he went to one of his employees houses to work on a project and was super disrespectful the whole time. At the beginning of the video the guy was talking about how he's just bought the home and was so proud, then there were multiple parts in the video of Linus making fun of different parts of his house. And I recall a part where the guy specifically asked him not to put something on a table he was afraid would break and Linus was like "no, it's fine" and does it anyways. The whole video made me super uncomfortable, I think it was actually one of the last videos I watched from the channel
Do you know which one?
I don't, it was maybe 2 years ago so I'm having a hard time searching for it
I remember a few years back when Dennis almost fell through his roof while he had him running cables and there was no concern for his wellbeing, just shitting on him for being useless. Made me super uncomfortable to watch
Remember how they all treated him in the beginning? Felt like bullying, but in front of a global audience.
Yeah I'm firmly on the anti-linus train at this point... But this one I don't get. If I hire you... and the whole point is we make videos... If the best video idea we have at the moment is to upgrade the wifi in my house... You bet that's going on the list as it has direct appeal to the community because every one of us will be thinking about upgrading at wifi at some point. The fact that it's in my house has no real bearing on any of it except as an excuse to do it at an actual location that actually needs it... Unless the dude is writing it all off 100% as business expenses... Then that's a bit shady. But considering they do the $5k rig reboots for their people it doesn't seem like he's wholesale limiting videos to just his own property/assets. I'm sure if/when his employees have ideas on their personal stuff it comes up to. One video in particular I remember is the guy that did wedding camera work.
It's written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
Replace "CEO" with "employee". Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company? Can an employee independently take that decision without anyone being able to question it?
That's the ethical quandary here.
You cannot say this with ANY degree of certainty. You don't know what he's attempting to write off. And it's Canada.... what is he even allowed to write off. But he certainly cannot write off 100% of the equipment he's buying, as it's going to live long lives outside of the video as non-company assets in his home for personal use. I cannot write off 100% of my cell service unless I show that it was ONLY used for business purposes.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise anyway. It's up to the ownership what to do with the money that the company makes. It's not the employee's decision at all... period. In this case those decisions were made by the CEO who happens to be the owner. CFO's garner their power for handling the money through delegation from the owner(s).
But in this case... it's actually true.
Yes... They can choose to participate in the $5k upgrades that LMG does. At this point I doubt Linus has any real direct interaction with the planning of these videos and just shows up at the personality on screen for shoot time.
This is a behaviour Linus has simply failed to grow out of.
At one point, he was just one of the little guys; sharing that common ground with his audience. That dynamic has vastly changed, but Linus has not adapted to it.
I genuinely didn't see that. He seemed like a cool dude and wanting to do the best and figuring things out.
So for me, this news is disappointing. Although, it'd be more disappointing if I was still watching. The thumbnails really got to me over time. I know why people do them, but you know, still...
That was the trend for me too. Avoided his videos because of thumbnails. Saw some youtubers I watched on scrapyard wars and liked the series then came to like LTT after giving it a chance. But then over time his thumbnails and shill vibe of do everything possible to monetize got to me and I stopped. That strategy for their videos is so ingrained in their culture that even their apology video is monetized and has affiliate links and sponsor segment jokes. Just a fatiguing channel.
This is Linus Sebastian, not Linus Torvalds. Has nothing to do with Linux. In fact, he tried running Linux a few months ago and made a huge mess of it.
Hahaha - okay, that makes a lot more sense. I had so completely lost track of the community and have just been getting back into it lately because of the fediverse community, and so when I heard “Linus Tech Tips,” I completely assumed it was Linus Torvalds. I had even talked to him on usenet (iirc) a couple of times, and couldn’t square the reports.
Thanks for the clarification.
I had fallen off a bit anyway; the amount of click baiting had gone through the roof, quality of videos plateaued. Now caught dead to rights on poor journalistic integrity and allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace?
All so that I can drool over graphics cards I can't afford? Easy choice to unsubscribe.
Be better, LTT
Their stats were generally upward. No reason to think the clickbait suddenly became too much for people in just the past week. In general, channels do clickbait because YouTube rewards you for it, and that overwhelms a bunch of people complaining about it in the comments.
No, the drop is attributable to recent events.
I unsubscribed after reading Madison's thread. Anyone who's gotten stuck in a toxic work environment knows just how crushing it is mentally. Constant low-level anxiety, feelings of dread, and the inability to even decompress off the clock due to intruding thoughts, replayed arguments, feelings of being gaslit, and the knowledge that it's all going to happen again tomorrow. Combine that with the sexual assault allegations and it's not surprising at all that she'd self harm.
If even 10% of her story is true we're looking at systemic failures in the entire management chain both to recognize and triage toxic behavior, and to demonstrate professionalism and lead by example.
As someone who’s “dream job” has devolved into something I’m now actively looking to leave (albeit for somewhat less severe reasons than Madison described), I deeply empathize with what she’s feeling. Hope she can find some success in the future despite how much of a shitshow her tenure at LMG turned out to be.
I requested refunds from all their sponsors products. Hit em in the wallet where they seem to actually pay attention.
Is there more to this than just a reddit screenshot posted on what’s clearly a clickbait shithole of a website?
I remember seeing the video of the play button, and kind of expected the guy to get a lot of hate. It resulting in harassment and suicide wouldn’t surprise me considering how Youtube people are. However, I’m not going to accept such a wild story without some credible evidence, especially since this is also the type of hoax internet losers would make up for clout.
Dude, WHAT? I knew about the first part, but the rest is horrific!
More than 0? Yes. All you’ve provided is a link to an article with more ads than words.
Holy shit. It just keeps getting worse.
Not surprised. Toxic people have toxic followers.
Can someone explain to me followers and the seemingly weird cult that forms. LTT, Sony, Microsoft, Apple etc. Why are people weirdly defensive of these companies and ignore evidence, death threats etc?
Same as with politics.
People make something stupid (and usually toxic) the center of their identity, and develop a parasocial obsession with it due to having nothing going on in their own lives and want to latch onto someone elses success.. especially if that someone else displays the same unhealthy/bad traits that they personally have and identify with, to the point that any threat to, or criticism against, their idol, is seen as the most egregious of personal attacks on them as a person. So they strike out as if they've been personally done the worst wrong imaginable.
I forget the name of the bias/fallacy, but it's something like "I love and support X. If X is bad, then I support something bad, then I'm bad. Since I'm a good person, and I support X, then X must be good or I wouldn't support them"
It's probably a quirk of how we make decisions - we don't consciously make decisions. Instead, we might weigh out the options and that affects our choice, but in the moment we choose subconsciously. It might feel like we made a decision consciously, but sometimes at the last second we deviate from the course we chose (or upon choosing, realize that despite our thoughts we actually have already made up our mind otherwise)... Then we have to rationalize that choice, or start down a long and challenging road of constant introspection
Be more careful when putting things like that in videos. He’s said many times not to go attacking people he talks about, but he should know the minority of his fan base won’t listen, and he should just not mention it instead.
While I don't doubt for a moment that LTT fan base is likely filled to the brim with fanatics... I don't want to completely go all in on that story as much as the Madison story. That kid's youtube channel has a dubious history on it's own. It appears that the channel was purchased with all the subs that it had, not actually grown. I don't necessarily believe that they "deserved" the play button if they bought subs. Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can't expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
I could be wrong... I dunno. But I'd encourage a little more research before accepting this story.
There's absolutely no excuse for hounding a child to suicide.
Correct, but I can't blame LTT for that. That's the raving zealot LTT fanbase.
No, but you did suggest you should expect this level of abuse for the "shady" act of buying subs and buying a YouTube button someone else feels they're entitled to.
Ultimately if a group of people whose unifying property is you and they're hounding a child in your name you are absolutely responsible for doing everything in your power to stop them abusing that child.
Is what I said. As in I don't believe that they should have been harassed, but the internet being the internet... we know that's what happens when people do shady shit like that.
Linus can't control idiots that just watch his videos. He was on record as "don't bother this person" in several places. And I've not seen any case where Linus "sent" people to harass this kid. So yes... even if the group is ultimately unified by Linus... I can't necessarily blame him.
None of which contradicts anything I said.
Makes sense. All these toxic people unsubbing before hearing both sides. Very toxic community indeed.
You are the worst fanboy
I never noticed you until today and every single one of your comments is just fanboy defends his idol against anything and everything.
You are an excellent example of the problem.
Unsubbed too. I knew Linus had some management practices I didn't agree with, and he comes across as a bit stubborn a lot of the time, and their click baity thumbnails and titles kinda bugged me, and it seemed like every time I refreshed YouTube there was a new LTT video posted...
Buut, most videos were entertaining and informative so my my rose tinted glasses kept me thinking that SURELY the employees were pretty happy there and were so productive because they enjoyed it that much.
NGL was kinda disappointed to hear all this.
I don't watch or follow their content and was impressed that they get at least a million views for every video, and they post almost everyday I guess. Holy shit
I wonder who are all these million people per video. Stopped watching LTT years ago.
I'm one. I support LTT even after this
Name checks out, well played.
I think you forgot a "/s"
The username is Spez, they are a parody account.
Edit, I am dumb. I didn't read your username
😂
Not to mention they have so many channels that act as "fluff" that (lack of a better word) normies view casually and move on.
I remember hearing about this guy enough that I was interested so I subscribed, and checked out a video of his once, I forget the topic but the title sounded pretty interesting. This was a few years ago.
Within 3 minutes I had unsubscribed. Why?
Well, he spent the first few minutes of the video being an annoyingly arrogant rich guy whilst also wasting time on things that had nothing at all to do with the topic of the video.
It was when he had his camera man follow him through his house or office or whatever it was, tacky "check out my millionaire crib" style, like a show for kids, and he went into a room, pointed at a big wall of NAS racks and said something like "I've got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hard drives and I don't even use them! Hahaha", and I was like.... Yeah. Screw this guy.
Some people might like a guy who baits grown up tech viewers with an interesting topic only to then waste their time with childish, arrogant behaviour, but I clocked him as a tosser within 3 minutes and never bothered with him again.
That's just my personal experience, I can't imagine what having to be around someone like that every day would do to a person, my gosh :-(
It's really unfortunate because their early content was actually pretty entertaining. They'd document the fun projects they were doing, or showcase some wacky PC build they were doing, or they'd have PC build competitions where they'd have to build a themed PC within a certain budget, and they'd be judged at the end. I don't think those competitions had prizes, they just did it for fun. Most of their content was just for fun. They'd do sponsored stuff or reviews here and there, but for the most part it was just for fun.
Then Linus became a multi millionaire, and the whole thing went to shit.
I never got the appeal of any influencer flaunting their shit. Look, I'm happy your successful, good on you, but I watch videos to learn and grow, I really don't give a shit how many cars you have unless you're going to be teaching me about each one's internals and unique features.
Exactly! If he'd started with "look at how many hard drives I have set up in here" and then went on to show a really interesting novel use for them, I'd have maybe stuck around.
Though his personality was a little over the top regardless, but that can be forgiven in small doses if the content is particularly unique and engaging.
I don't understand how the channel even got that popular in the first place with Sinus' personality being what it is
Sinus Lebastian? Never heard of that guy.
UK?
Haha yeah :-)
He's literally the male version of the Kardashians. Tech bros are super obsessed with him
Funny you should mention Top Gear! As someone from the UK, I'm embarrassed that Jeremy Clarkson is famous globally, he's such a bigoted, xenophobic, sexist man, and an embarrassment to our country :-(
It's interesting that you talk about top gear because top gear was an entertainment show first and a car show 87th. If you think top gear was a car show you missed the point.
I completely understand why others are unsubbing, but I enjoy the content and want to see how the new CEO ends up handling all of this. Threads like this seem to be inviting everyone to post about how they never liked LTT in the first place, but I wanted to write this down because I'm sure I'm not the only one who actually enjoyed the content and the cool technology and unique solutions they found when building PCs and cooling them.
I mean I don't watch GPU reviews because they are mostly boring anyways. I only watch for the janky videos and pushing the boundaries and building wanly stuff.
The Madison claims need to be taken serious, but it's not like this couldn't be individuals that need to be singled out and kicked out.
So I really don't get the rage
I unsubscribed to show them how seriously I take the issues. If they improve and the investigation succeeds, I will resubscribe. And I did enjoy LTT, which is why I was subscribed.
I really do like his content, I put it on generally when I get home from work and Im cooking dinner.
I'm willing to buy that this was a series of unintentional fuckups and accidentally bad business practices. But I'm also not going to support them if they cant conduct their business ethically, so thats why I unsubbed and shitcanned my Floatplane subscription.
If I feel that they addressed this shit to standards that I'm willing to support their business I'll probably click the buttons again.
Yeah I think LTT has done a lot of great stuff and could do some really amazing stuff yet. I enjoy the content and have supported them, but nobody's perfect. I don't think anything they've done is worth an unfollow at this point, personally, but I understand why some may not agree.
I think Linus has gotten lost in the sauce. It's been apparent that everyone there has been exhausted for a while, and I think Linus hasn't cared for the people working for him as much as his desire for a media empire, which has led to overworking and an unsustainable work environment.
Linus' take on unions was shitty. IDK if a union could ever start there, but it seems like it could really help the company become more sustainable and keep it on course, because it seems like if the employees had their voices heard things might not have got so bad.
I agree, though I stopped taking their hardware reviews seriously. I could tell they were rushing and being sloppy. One of the things I was starting to get excited about was their pushing of manufacturers to improve repairability. I love what framework is doing, for example. Steve is big on this as well, but the more voices the better. The amount of stuff going into landfills is really starting to bother me.
Lemmy (just like Reddit) loves a good dog-pile. It was pretty predictable to see coming tbh
Cool technology they barely know how to use. The storage server and Linux challenge videos demonstrated that very nicely. These guys are not tech experts.
I mean, they are purveyors of clickbait. LTT doesn't need to exist based on that alone.
More pointedly: the only thing Google cares about is making money. If what you’re doing doesn’t detract from that goal in any way (mind you, that’s a VERY broad brush), they don’t give two shits.
It doesn’t, though. All that matters (and this covers most journalism these days, not just video) is ad views, clickthroughs, and engagement. So if you make something “fun” or otherwise emotionally engaging (coughFOX NEWScough), your ad monetization is going to be more successful.
Floatplane Tracker
Oof. Losing 5% of your paid subscribers in a day is nothing to scoff at. I understand they weren't exactly trending upwards prior to this either.
Now 7%.
Good.
Emotions are high right now. It's not a trend. I bet most of their subscribers don't know about what's going on and wouldn't care either way. If lmg promise to do better and nothing big comes out, this will be forgotten in two weeks.
I’m curious if findings do come out. Would YouTube cancel or demonitize them?
Google only cares about money and LTT pulls lots of views, so no
I was one of those that unsubscribed. I feel like the show quality has been dropping for a while now and the excessive advertising always got under my skin a little bit. I almost unsubscribed about a year ago when Linus went on his Twitter rant about how "adblockers are technically piracy" because it's sickening how many ads we have to look at every day and we have to sit though a sponsor segment every video and his plug to his own merch store.
But now after seeing his half-assed apology (that is also monetized and sponsored) AND seeing how terrible of an environment it is to work for him and the treatment Madison had to endure working under him was enough to push me over the edge. My views won't be giving him another dime of revenue.
His apology video has a sponsor?!That's very fucked up.Issa joke by them got it.. I don't watch apology videos usually.
No, just youtube ads (that were disabled an hour after upload), as well as like 5 tone deaf 'and now for our sponsor! Jk!' segments.
This year has just turned out some incredibly poorly thought out apology videos from various YouTubers.
I hope people meme the crap out of this like they did for that lady with the ukulele.
No it doesn't, they make jokes about how they got offered to be sponsored by dbrand but no it itself is not sponsored however it is still monetized
Ty for sharing, now that’s greedy as fuck
Ad-blockers are technically piracy. It doesn't matter how unfair the ads are, they are what fund the creators (or the creators through YouTube). I don't seem to recall him berating people for ad-blocking, he just said that people should accept that they are pirating the content. I guess people don't like self-reflecting when they are labelled.
So me, using an ad blocker to prevent incorrectly vetted ads (that contain malware), stealing my information or compromising my computer, tracking my moves, or outright spying on what I say/type/consume is piracy? Then call me fucking Jack Sparrow baby
Maybe you are young, or incredibly naive (I am not trying to be offensive), but the internet used to be RIDDLED with unsafe ads. There is absolutely no reason you should ever believe they are safe now. Companies do very little to ensure their ads are safe as long as the money rolls in. Skype straight up served malware in their ads for years and never gave 1 fuck. (source: https://www.onmsft.com/news/skypes-traditional-desktop-program-is-spreading-malware-through-ads/)
Going on the internet without an adblocker (I suggest multiple layers, DNS level [Pihole/adguard] as well as device level [Extensions/browsers]) is like having unprotected sex with random strangers. Yes, you may end up fine, but you also could get some very nasty viruses (with long term damage, such as your SSN being leaked) all because you dont see the value in protection
Source that ads continue to be unsafe:
-https://www.itpro.com/security/malware/369892/google-ads-malvertising-campaign-prompts-questions-around-search-security
-https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2022/07/google-ads-lead-to-major-malvertising-campaign
-https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/google-ad-scam-warning/847823/
And these are sponsored search results so that they appear first. You might think google should give a fuck about vetting those.....but nope
edit: Spelling/grammar
I recently had to set up a new machine at home - so I briefly got to experience it without an adblocker. It's worse now than before.
I roll with an ad-blocker for the reasons you mention as well as because I hate seeing ads. I know I'm part of the problem and part of the reason news sites are putting up paywalls now. Granted, even if nobody used ad-blockers, I'm not sure how sustainable everything online being ad-supported would be. The point is, they are expecting to be supported by ad revenue and I'm likely helping to screw that up.
It's something that I'm not going to stop doing, but I don't make any excuses: I'm pirating their shit and rarely offering a different form of compensation. I'm subscribed to YouTube Premium even though I can easily block those ads too. I'm not, however, going to throw money at every website I find useful.
I would advise anyone to run an ad-blocker but they should also consider the moral aspect of it too. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm a pirate in the meantime.
Let's see what happens in a month or 3.
Even Reddit lost viewers, but they are almost back to original.
People will forget and carry on with LTT subscription.
That is a very bleak prospect. Let's make sure it doesn't come to that.
You are absolutely right that this won't lead to their collapse. But i would still say that in both reddits and LTT's case, even if the numbers revert back, it will have an affect longterm.
For reddit the content quality has likely gone down and suddenly there is a viable alternative in Lemmy, which might have never gotten the chance to get of the ground otherwise. Within a month Lemmy suddenly has a decent amount of content, some communities have migrated here, and we have a number of high quality apps to choose from.
With LTT i think this does also have the potential to hurt them, even if the subscriber numbers come back up. They've been in a process of rapid expansion for a while now, so merely getting back to those numbers or slightly growing won't cut it. Additionally i think with floatplane and the lab they've been heavily investing into their image as a reputable and trusted company for consumers. Particularly the lab where they've heavily invested. Even if ultimately the average less informed consumer is their target market, for that they will also need enthusiasts to recommend them to those.
Just being the messenger here. The problem is that it's 100k of 15.6 (previously) million. People don't care, which means nor will Linus. It's incredibly likely that the "resolution" will amount to nothing, and the channel will remain dead to me.
While youtube hasn't had much impact (I'm not sure that tracker updates subscriptions very fast either tbh); Floatplane probably will.
From ~42k subscribers down to
36k. A 16% drop ($30k/mo at $5 per sub)Floatplane tracker
Should have spent $500 on employee time!
I've said this on another thread, but how had video of several employees confessing to feeling rushed and not putting out product that will be open to critique slip by him. Did he chalk it up to just bros being bitches **(bro speak)
I never really liked ltt but I just don’t care how he treats employees. People can quit.
What a pro-worker stance you have considering the instance you're on.
Bullied
happy to contribute to the unsub count
Well then you are lost.
Goodbye LTT, social media has proven to be a corrupted version of social networks.
Though Lemmy isn’t the supremely popular setup that Reddit was, it seems to have, on average, better company.
I am positively surprised by everbody's takes around here. They all seem mostly reasonable and people are rightfully concerned about the well-being of their workers, something that hasn't even made it into todays apology video.
The thing is, although LTT is important to Linus, his wife, and with direct ties, the viewers have many choices today with regards to the tech YouTubers of different nature. This makes it easy to just move one. LTT is a mass marketed channel, not particularly niche in any area of tech and there are many like it.
Maybe, but with their size LTT can do crazy shit like water-cooling an entire server room with a pool.
These things are always temporary. They'll lose subs for a moment, but then it'll bounce back like nothing
Yep... it surprises me that people still think that the internet has principles or cares. Haven't we seen how weak people are for reddit already?
I can't tell you how disappointed I am on how this ended. I really thought the "Landed Gentry" quip would have had the pouring gasoline to be out a fire effect.
I was never subbed anyway, but I also made sure to find a LTT vid and click on “don’t recommend channel” on YouTube.
Nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure.
I'm not very into the tube and had no idea this is an option. I'll use this going forward. Thanks!
It's great for when a video that you don't want to watch just will not get off your homepage.
I just unsubbed from the $10 Floatplane group too
I unsubscribed from all LMG channels after the harmful practises came to light. That's just not on.
OOTL, what's going on here?
WHOA WHOA WHOA WHAT
The Billet Labs thing was unfortunate but I think they are capable of apologizing, learning lessons, and turning things around.
But that's not just a toxic work environment that Madison is describing. That's CRIMINAL. That's actually unforgivable. Just given how many people knew about it, I don't think it can be fixed by firing some people. And don't even think about a sorry video.
It’s hardly shocking though.
He’s outspokenly anti-worker and anti-union. Who is surprised that someone who is against workers rights would mistreat their workers?
Yeah the Union is a big one for me, my current employer is also like that. “Hey guys you can share your voice here and speak open about it…” Yes, that’s the problem, it’s open and not really anonymous so what can we talk about. If you can open talk about everything, you don’t have to fear unions.
Where did you hear that? From what I have heard he was in full support of the unions, all he said he wanted to create a company that doesn't require/need a union.
Not to be that guy, but in relation to being anti union, he specifically has said that if his employees feel like they needed a Union, then he has failed as a boss. In the sense that it should never get to the point where wanting a Union should come up as LMG should be a good enough work place to where it would be unnecessary to have.
There is a difference. I would want my employees to be happy and compesated enough to where needing a Union is just completely unneeded.
Yeah I get why he thinks that and it's a great goal to have as a boss. But who says that a union is always and entirely set up against him as a boss? If he is such a great boss there could very well be a union that doesn't have to do much. It's a defensive measure for worker's rights and working conditions, not an instituition for offense.
I get your point, but it's more of a bigger picture for me.
Remember that WAN segment about quiet quitting? The vibe was off on that one. Especially keeping the previous remark about unions in mind. Why would he think that he can be owner and main manager of such a big company with gigantic daily content output AND keep his workers best interests in mind at all times? If he is not anti-union he is at the very least wrong on why they are necessary. In the worst case he actually realizes that he could do much better for his workforce.
Sexual assault, a toxic frat-bro culture, and open misogyny isn't a personal failure?
Additionally, here's a video from an all-hands meeting the day after she quit. (Reddit, sorry.)
The following is a transcript if you'd rather avoid Reddit:
(speaker 1, Linus) So we called this meeting because it's come to our attention that we need to have a quick chat about the best way to handle HR related feedback and rumors. We won't be giving any names for what I hope are extraordinarily obvious reasons, but what we can do is give you the following guidelines for problem solving and conflict resolution.
Sorry that this is all boring and corporate, but here we are. Number one, always stand up for what's right. We're only a team as long as we're all working together and working for each other. That's the most important one. Number two, always reflect on your own personal experiences and use your common sense. Few things in life are truly black and white. Number three, always wait to hear both sides of a story before passing your own judgment. Be cautious when you know that one side is bound by legal and ethical disclosure guidelines, when the other is not. Carefully consider what it says about the character of someone who would engage in that type of gossip against someone who has no power to defend themselves.
Number four, always encourage openness and transparency. If you have a problem, you need to speak up. We want to fix it. If you receive feedback about somebody else at this company, the first response is, have you spoken with this person? Followed closely by, you need to speak with this person. We don't solve interpersonal issues here, or really anywhere in your life, if you wish to live in a drama free zone, by engaging in water cooler politicking. So, if for any reason that individual is not comfortable approaching the person they're having a conflict with, we have a chain that they're supposed to follow.
So first, you advise them to take the problem to their manager. Followed by me or Yvonne, followed by our third party HR firm. I hope that you all trust that we're here to make this a safe, fun, and productive workplace, and we won't tolerate mistreatment of any of our team members.
If you have any reason to believe otherwise, then I refer you again to point number four, which is to address the issue with the individual directly, or bring it to me or Yvonne, or bring it to our third party HR firm. Since I'm not at liberty to share any details about what occurred, uh, all I can do is ask that you trust me and Yvonne.
Um, some of you know us very well, I've been here a very long time, um, some of you have not been here for as long, but I like to think that whether you've been here for nine years or nine days, you're here for a reason and you believe that we are utmost to run this company with integrity and compassion.
Um, We can't solve problems we don't know about though, so on that note, I'd like to invite anyone who has concerns about a fellow team member or about a manager to submit their feedback either by speaking with their manager, me or Yvonne directly, or if you would prefer to provide your feedback anonymously, we have an option for that as well.
It's the manager and co-worker feedback form. Uh, Yvonne, if you're not aware of it - show of hands who is not aware of it? Hey, a lot of people aren't aware of it. Good, so now we all know. There's an anonymous form, if for whatever reason you're not comfortable either talking to me me or Yvonne directly about it - and that's okay, that's fine, we understand, that's why we have these options - Yvonne's gonna post it in the general chat.
It's a safe space to provide us ideas for improvement, or if you're consumed by the holiday spirit and you want to say nice things, you can do that too. Does anybody else have any questions?
Not a single question? Wow, that must have been a really good speech.
(speaker 2, James) You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?
(speaker 1, Linus) That's it! So, um, Yvonne, did you have anything you wanted to add?
(speaker 3, Yvonne) (inaudible) Somebody said (inaudible) if you guys want to sanitize your hands, help yourself with free (inaudible)?
(speaker 1, Linus) Yeah, that was actually just totally random timing. It came up the stairs a moment ago. Dennis is on it. Alright. Thank you everyone. Have a wonderful and, uh, productive rest of your day. And weekend.
The account that initially posted the video has been suspended by Reddit as well.
Being transparent about your business, comes with pros and cons. Right now a female employee shared her end of the story to the web on why she quit, and you're seeing the reaction to it.
Edit: This amplified the ongoing issue about LTT and their information integrity, which is very likely due to root causes that Linus repeatedly ignored, or worse, believed he was right and everyone was wrong.
Didn't she leave about two years ago?
It seems she didn't speak out both because she thought she had an NDA and also because she was getting lots of harassment anyways and didn't want to add to it while in a bad place.
Yes of course but my point was: what's to say that nothing has changed since then?
Yes, she expands on why she didn't feel safe speaking out
"Not a good look" should be the least of her concerns if she was indeed sexually harassed.
This looks a lot like victim blaming.
If the alleged facts are indeed true, it is incredibly difficult to even manage to get the police to care, let alone act. Not to mention the social stigma and the trauma.
Given the number of people involved, other people might be compelled to come forward. Then we will know for sure.
Are you a professional sexually harassed person? Do you understand what is the right course of action to take here?
I had to look it up myself. These two links seem to cover the controversy pretty well.
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-recent-criticism-of-linus-tech-tips-explained/
https://fandomwire.com/the-linus-tech-tips/
Edit:
Found this one too which is straight from the horse's mouth: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html
I did a little googling and found this
https://www.dexerto.com/tech/ex-linus-tech-tips-employee-alleges-mistreatment-and-poor-conditions-2251613/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741
Drama
Hobbydrama, which is always enjoyable.
No doubt lol. There's bigger fish to fry. I'm so glad I'm learning to not participate in trendy drama. Especially when the activists won't even take time out of their super righteous elite life to tell you what's going on. It must be huge! Lol
You must have an elite life too then, because the links to what happened are posted everywhere.
Nah, nothing big outside of it being LTT and Gamer’s Nexus calling them out.
In a nutshell, LTT was given a prototype of a product that they basically said was shit due to testing the product outside of the specified parameters that company told them to test in and, instead of sending the prototype and other stuff that the company sent to LTT for testing back to said company, LTT auctioned the prototype off. Gamer’s Nexus made a video calling out stuff like this happening as well as the inconsistency of LTT’s testing lab data to point out that LTT is basically doing rush job videos for money and is starting to do more harm than good. Linus himself gets involved and shifts blame to everybody else except himself and his staff. On top of all this going on, a former LTT employee started going off about workplace harassment with some pretty serious accusations (but no hard evidence).
There’s a lot more stuff going on with the nitty-gritty, but that’s more or less the gist of things.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
Shitty of him to sell the device but that's the biz if you don't put every little thing in fine print.
Them's the breaks.
It gets worse, the company actually sent the correct graphics card to test the device on, but they still used the wrong model which doesn't fit properly.
What needs to be in the fine print of LTT confirming they're going to return it... to then turn around and sell it after confirming they're going to return it?
They admitted it in their own video... GN also showed emails that came direct from the company.
https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY?t=800
From LTT's own video. They show an email from "Felix"
I'll transcribe so you're not wasting time trying to pause the video if you're on mobile or something. Bold is my edit.
Edit: For completeness. The redacted portion was the cost of the prototype itself.
https://media.tenor.com/p_J3gkVOvK8AAAAC/starship-troopers-im-doing-my-part.gif
Thanks for the reminder.
I unsubbed a couple of weeks ago because they released that always live video thing and it gave me the shits seeing the icon
I was one of them o7
Don’t forget about shortcircuit, techlinked, techquickie and Gamelinked
He's a narcissist so I don't think his subs have high expectations.
Well, it seems like they've finally admitted to a lot of this from GN (thanks Steve). But, can we at least give them a chance to correct?
Have a read through the pinned post in this community, then ask again.
/edit: https://lemmy.ml/post/3412121 (it's not pinned anymore)
Uh, wow. Was not aware of this, at all. I was aware of some previous workplace stuff from what, a few months ago. But dam.
Little behind, eh?
Who is this Linus Sex Tips and what he did?
Okay, now seriously, I know who he is but I'm too lazy to check what he did.
Well on monday it started off with another channel pointing out that their data is systemically crap, overworked crunching empolyees, and they robbed some indie startup company, and now it's all about how they have an incredibly toxic work enviroment and sexual assault alligations.
He gave bad sex tips
Aren't those run by the same people?
I disagree after the Madison stuff, but I'm not judging you for it.