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Comment on Youtube deletes and strikes Linus Tech Tips video for teaching people how to live without Google. Ft. Louis Rossman

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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Quick summary, probably missing a lot, but…

Two-ish years ago they decided to sell an overpriced backpack with no warranty. This was criticized considering everything else in the same price/quality categories would have lifetime warranties. This led to Linus Sebastien going on a rant about how warranties are worthless and people should just trust him and that anyone who wanted a warranty was going to threaten his wife (the CFO and one of the major shareholders) were he to die. LMG eventually walked back and provided a pretty good warranty but this is largely considered the “masks off” moment
One-ish years ago, during a fan tour one of the engineers in Lab (LMG’s hardware testing warehouse) criticized Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus with some (actually false) nonsense claims about how LMG do their testing and why it makes them better than everyone else. After this blew up, Linus went on his podcast to say he stands by the engineer.
Needless to say, GN and HUB took that personally and it led to GN doing one of their industry takedown videos (usually reserved for MSI or ASUS) on LMG with lots of documented examples of downright comedic levels of incompetence in how they review hardware and present results that point toward systemic issues that undermine all the orgs who actually take benchmarking and the like seriously.
Also, GN pointed out that one of the most egregious examples was the recent one where LMG were sent a prototype GPU cooler and a GPU to review. LMG proceeded to “lose” the card they were sent and use a random different model for the test and then shit on the product endlessly while insisting it doesn’t matter that they didn’t actually test it because it was a shit product. They then sold the prototype at their convention to an unknown party. All while ghosting the company and ignoring their requests for the prototype back.
This led to “drama” where Linus, on the LTT Forums, accused Steve (GN) of being biased and a horribly unprofessional reporter for not giving LMG a chance to get ahead of the accusations and insisted they had already addressed all the issues. Which was later revealed to be that they finally replied to the GPU Cooler company literally minutes before Linus posted to gaslight people.
Also, as part of this, a former employee (Madison) who had left mysteriously spoke out about the sexual harassment and assault she experienced at LMG.
The harassment was corroborated by other former staff (one has since recanted after he couldn’t find a new job) and audio of her manager (James Streib) making stripper jokes to the entire company during the company mandated sexual harassment seminar THE DAY AFTER MADISON QUIT BECAUSE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT re-surfaced. Streib is still the face of one of the LMG channels.
This ALSO reminded people of when, OG of Maker Youtube and 3d Printing, Naomi Wu spoke about how Linus had insisted she come to his hotel room at like 3 am if she wanted to do a collaboration and that it made her feel uncomfortable. Allegedly this was all a big misunderstanding and Linus only accidentally removed his wife from the email chain, but Naomi is used to that shit and had much bigger stuff (like the CCP…) to deal with when this was resurfacing.

And just general douche-baggery.

But mostly? It just means to take anything LMG does with a massive grain of salt. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not above manipulating their audience and influence to push anti-consumer behavior. So a video where they were “too spicy” for Google for promoting alternatives (some of which LMG themselves operate) is, to quote the children, sus. And yeah, it sounds like the issue has nothing to do with “don’t use gmail or youtube” and all to do with “use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube”.

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chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

“use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube”.

This has always been my beef with Rossman. He always has something to sell–not just sponsored content–his own apps and solutions. He comes off like a used car salesman, just pushing the hard sell and making you feel like an idiot for not jumping at the chance to give him money. I’m sure he has made some positive movement in privacy and right to repair, but every time he talks I just feel like he’s going to try to get me to sign up for a timeshare. I don’t trust him.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Rossman is a different mess, but I think it is undeniable that he has been a net positive on r2r over the years. And I think he will continue to be as long as he is someone that outlets like GN and even LMG collaborate with or reference but minimally platform.
  
  But yeah. I think Rossman is genuinely a free speech absolutist with strong libertarian tendencies. Stuff like his “I don’t care if that amazon delivery driver was racist or not, this is unacceptable” just undermines his efforts. Same with his never ending hatred of NYC because he ran a business into the ground. Also his tendency to push immediately from “ads bad” to “STEAL THAT SHIT”.
  
  Like, I immediately think of THAT Dril quote, but I do have to give it up to LMG from like three or four years ago. The idea that people SHOULD be aware of how to run adblockers and even dns level adblockers. But to also understand that they are pirating content (whether that is bad is up to the individual) and that some sites are going to block them or not work. Because that is honest and “real”. And it provides a conversation that can be had between companies and consumers.
  
  Whereas Rossman has increasingly been “If they aren’t going to let you block ads, fuck 'em. Pay a different company to let you access their content without ads or giving them money” which just paints everyone who cares about privacy as a childish pirate with no respect for the work of others.
  
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  - xenoclast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I agree. He’s not perfect but I think he’s coming from the right side of things.
    
    Ultimately antics that get clicks still motivate what he does tho
    
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dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Great summary! Here is the other side of the debate:

The backpack is overengineered and spares no expense in materials and durability, making it expensive. It is not overpriced. It may be unreasonably costly and not worth the purchase. The reason being it costs a lot to manufacture, not because it’s overpriced.

Linus was stupid in his “no warranty needed” claim, as most people won’t (and shouldn’t) take his word for it. Nevertheless, it is true his store always replaced items without issue and continues to do so, warranty or not. The customer experience is generally much better than the average store, where you may have to fight for your warranty claim only for it to be refused anyway. This is what he meant. If stores are not honoring warranties, and his store is accepting returns without a warranty anyway, then what’s the piece of paper worth anyway? But people like the piece of mind it provides, they learned the lesson and are providing it now. Of course the warranty never mattered either way.

I did buy the backpack. Months later I received a replacement set of zippers. There is nothing wrong with the original zippers, they just felt these ones are better and people who bought the backpack before the change should get them too. This has never happened to me with another purchase in my life, where the store decided to upgrade it for free and ship it to another continent for free, without me asking.

Months later they discovered the material used for the backpack floor isn’t what they wanted. So they offered me (and all purchasers) a full refund and additional store credit. Nobody noticed the issue, nobody asked for refunds. They discovered it and offered refunds proactively, even though it’s a non-issue. Again never happen in my life with another purchase.

Shitty for the employee to shit on GN. Commendable for Linus to stand by his employee publicly instead of blaming him.

You are correct they had lot of quality issues. It is also worth mentioning their overhaul that happened after that, improved processed, slowed down upload cadence, and the formation of volunteer “beta tester” viewers who watch videos pre-release to find errors not found internally. Good for them to try to improve.

Auctioning off the prototype cooler was quite egregious! As usual Linus took the heat on himself and never named the responsible employee who misallocated the cooler in their inventory.

A third party investigation found the sexual harassment allegations unfounded. Due to the nature of this we might never know the details though.

Linus invited Naomi to meet him in the meeting rooms of his hotel’s lobby, which exist specifically for business meetings. She later untruthfully misrepresented it as an invite to his hotel room.

I agree with these of your points I didn’t address.

Hope this provides both sides for readers, and thanks again.
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- TBi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wish this was a top level comment. People just want to hate on LTT. Is it because they are successful? People misunderstand his arguments about warranty. I.e. a warranty means nothing if the company won’t uphold it.
  
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  - uranibaba@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I.e. a warranty means nothing if the company won’t uphold it.
    
    Is that even legal? If you provide a warranty, you have to uphold it. Since LTT is in the USA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act.
    
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    captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    LTT is in Canada.
    
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    silentknyght@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Have you even looked at the computer electronics business? Or lived a few decades? Otherwise how can you have no experience of a company deciding your use of a product doesn’t meet THEIR expectations and so they invalidate your warranty claim? Heck, look at what Intel is doing right now with its 13 and 14 series chips.
    
    Legality is nothing without enforcement, and there’s like none of that for warranties in the US, and even less for global companies with overseas HQs.
    
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    Contramuffin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Technically not legal, but depending on the wording, there’s a ton of gray area in what’s considered warranty-covered damage and what’s not warranty-covered damage. Companies absolutely take advantage of the gray area, even lying in some instances because they know that their users would rarely have the know-how to call them out on it and demand rightful warranty coverage. LTT’s argument is that if there is such large legal gray area on the warranty, it is meaningless to provide one to begin with
    
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- Metalemming@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Didnt they find out about the backpack floor BECAUSE one of the customers wore through the floor? I believe i remember linus telling them that “wasnt possible” or something to that effect before recieving the backpack in question and finding out the manufacturer removed the second layer they had requested because they thought it was a mistake
  
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  - dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I hope I recall correctly: I was watching an episode of wan-show where they looked into a backpack returned from a miner after heavy wear, but little real damage. Live on the show they wanted to showcase the double bottom, so they cut into it (can’t recall if this was in the miners backpack or another one) and were surprized to realize there wasn’t a double bottom. Linus quickly assured, still live, that this would be handled for all customers.
    
    LMG did blame the manifactures of the backpack for removing a layer in a late stage design adjustment, but LMG have also alledegly taken a huge cost on assuring customers that they can receive a new backpack for free if the bottom fails for any reason.
    
    My memoery of this might be fuzzy, and the story I have heard comes fully from LMGs perspective, so take everything with a grain of salt.
    
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PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I love how they only ever really paraphrased the report and never showed us on the sexual harassment allegations.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The one where they hired a lawyer (that i think was infamous for protecting the Canadian logging industry)?
  
  Yeah. That is always bullshit. Unless you are doing REALLY illegal stuff AND are documenting it to an insane level, lawyers are not mandatory reporters. Their job is not to prove there was no wrongdoing. Their job is to investigate what risk the company is at to wrongdoing that, as far as they have been told, did not exist. And their report is the risk based upon documented evidence and interviews with employees.
  
  So when a company does a third party investigation from a law firm they paid? They are not getting a clean bill of health. They are having all potential risks identified and doing what they can to mitigate that.
  
  A very good friend of mine who tends to be on the other side of the court room when this stuff happens likes to describe it as: Paying a law firm to investigate your company is not an STD test. It is confirming that you don’t have any weeping sores and making sure you have plausible deniability for why all your condoms keep “falling off” while you stealth people.
  
  But people hear “We investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing” and think it means… anything.
  
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RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Oh man, I totally forgot about the Naomi Wu drama. I remember it kind of resolved in some way with some explanations of Linus maybe making some sense if you were generous. But under the light of everything that came after, eh, maybe it was serious after all.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus’s excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC’d to some of those emails anyway.
  
  I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with…) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which… okay.
  
  As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the “where there is smoke…” range. And it is why I point out that Madison’s harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.
  
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  - Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Honestly when they first launched Channel Super Fun while at the Langley house they really were acting more like a fraternity than like employees at a company sponsored event (and I’ve been to some interesting company-sponsored events with virtually unlimited free alcoholic drinks and none have concerned me as much for the company culture as LTT’s early channel super fun videos)
    
    They also really harassed Dennis a lot, to the point where he, not yet a citizen of the country he’s on a work visa in, looked close to tears and seemed to not be enjoying it. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in any videos for quite a while, so I wonder if he bounced as soon as he got Canadian citizenship…
    
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    IronKrill@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Wouldn’t he have got citizenship ages ago? I thought he transitioned to a sponsor-focused role. I know he was in sponsor spots for a while but I block those so don’t know if he still is, but his Twiiter bio lists him as still being LTT sponsor creative lead.
    
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M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“Trust me bro” and “I think individual smart light bulbs are a good idea” were when I had to put LTT in the Jays 2 cents corner of shame.

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- huquad@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Now I’m out of the loop, what happened with Jay?
  
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  - M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As a person, nothing Jay is fine.
    
    As a tech consumer advice channel, he is a joke. I still remember when ryzen first was getting good and after going over all the data on why it was better and cheaper he cuts to himself sitting behind a desk and tells everyone that they should do the “right” thing and buy intel, as it is the clear choice.
    
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    huquad@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Damn haha, trash. I watched him way back in the day, but now I’m on the GN train
    
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Sudomeapizza@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Im curious, as mentioned in another comment mentioned here, what other/better courses of action would they have to take in order to “make better” with the communuty? They have taken lots of measures and changes to address all these concerns, but sounds like this is irredeemable from your point of view. Are there any points in this comment linked that you disagree with and why?

Im not trying to take a side, but rather see your comment as one sided of only accusations and not mentioning what they’ve done to make ammends.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not “subscribers go up” but actually show that you are better.
  
  I’ll skip the anti-consumer stuff regarding merch because that has always been the brand and they at least learned to not tell people to argue against their own rights.
  
  Antagonistic behavior toward competitors: They are still doing the “we are the best because we are the best” bullshit in their marketing. They’ve at least started collaborating with Wendell from Level1Techs again which is nice. But just reaching out to the other channels would go a long way. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are basically the kings of technical reviewing and would actually benefit Lab for a collab. And GN and HUB are very open about having group discords where all the tech youtubers talk to corroborate strange behavior or let people know that AMD fucked everyone over and they need to re-do all their work for the past week.
  
  Gross incompetence in their own tech reviews: They apparently have made it a subscriber benefit for Floatplane that people can pay to error check videos which… okay. And they’ve taken down a few videos where they REALLY cocked up basic facts and conclusions. But it is still the same mess they have always been.
  
  Fucking over small businesses: They eventually gave the cooler company money which I guess was nice? But it looks like they still do a “Linus is made and hates this horrible product” every few months when they want a viewership bonus and it isn’t like they are going to do that to the companies that sponsor the LMG convention…
  
  As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?
  
  A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about “people out for blood” all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn’t do a “What the fuck is wrong with you?” to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.
  
  But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.
  
  Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer’s name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of “this wouldn’t be a problem if he were a white man” level responses. So… I guess they already got the memo.
  
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  - Zyansheep@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Could you link to the James Streib audio clips, blatant threats towards employees and Linus going to bat for D-Brand’s racist jokes? I haven’t heard those allegations before.
    
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    NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    reddit.com/…/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons… is james sexually harassing people during the seminar
    
    Here is the verbose “We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” post x.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057 with a real nice bit threatening anyone who ever dares to be a whistleblower again
    
    At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
    
    And here is Linus playing the “what about the white man” card x.com/linusgsebastian/status/1778165221414347053
    
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  - SuperSleuth@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t why people bring up the allegations like they had any backing whatsoever. They were debunked by a 3rd party investigation.
    
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    NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    People bring it up because they are smart enough to understand “we investigated ourselves and found no signs of wrongdoing” is not a defense.
    
    Already explained it elsewhere but, the super short version is: Law firms are nor mandatory reporters outside of the most extreme cases. They are not investigating wrongdoing. They are investigating liability. They are looking for what was done in writing and what can be explained in the event of a lawsuit (and discovery).
    
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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The warranty thing makes me think of a line from Tommy Boy.

“I can take a shit in a box and put a guarantee on it. Believe me, I’ve got the time. My point is all they’ve done is sold you a guaranteed piece of shit.”

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.
  
  It is also very telling that the concerns over warranties came up when:
  
  The previous owner of the company who everyone knew and trusted died
  
  There was active concern over the future of the company
  
  The person trying to sell them that is a deranged lunatic with a sex pest best friend
  
  The company is actively under threat of a hostile takeover spearheaded by people who might have killed the previous owner.
  
  Are warranties foolproof? no. But they give you something so that you are only deciding if a lawyer is worth it when circumstances change significantly. Rather than by default any time anything goes wrong.
  
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  - Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.
    
    Where? They’re not in this thread.
    
    This also isn’t in defense of LTT; it’s basically Linus’ argument.
    
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BallShapedMan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Thank you for taking the time to type this whole thing out! I thought I knew everything but I clearly only knew the GN takedown piece, wow.

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