Holy shit
This is Billet labs all over again, they’ll literally only do something if they’re publicly called out
Statement from Linus Tech Tips about Madison's accusations
Submitted 1 year ago by briongloid@aussie.zone to technology@lemmy.world
https://aussie.zone/pictrs/image/39c384d2-9db9-464a-89ee-eccb47ff60b6.png
Comments
MuThyme@lemmy.world 1 year ago
dustyData@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, it’s called lack of ethical integrity.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I don’t know if Madison felt safe expressing all her concerns internally, so this might be the first time they realize the extent of the issues.
sab@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You should read the thread she posted. Half of it was about management telling her to stop whining when she brought up any of the misconducts against her.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Possibly not even then. Gamer’s Nexus called them out in that video for several errors involving their testing, methodology, and results and the sheer amount of content being pushed out the door with little to no oversight and no real meaningful attempts to correct themselves to the public, using features that other YouTube channels don’t even have access to, and Linus responded by doubling down on the less important bits while not addressing any of the main points. The accountability, logical and scientifically unbiased testing, and their propensity to post information knowingly that is not true and make weak attempts to “correct” that info after millions of people have viewed the content. There doesn’t seem to be a plan to do anything. Linus and the new CEO have not addressed any changes to be made. They were also called out for essentially double dipping (reviewing products from companies they are actively promoting or have partnerships with while also reviewing those companies competition). That was also never addressed. Linus himself has an objectivity problem and that seems to have filtered down through the entire LMG as a whole.
rizoid@midwest.social 1 year ago
I’m starting a new conspiracy that Linus knew all this was coming and that’s why he hired the new CEO. I have no facts but I said it on the internet so people will believe me.
ominouslemon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I know you’re kinda joking, but I think there is some truth to that. I think he made the decision because he could not manage the whole thing alone, and the workplace environment Madison described could well be caused by general stress and mismanagement
unscholarly_source@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Linus has a track record and proven history of doing/saying stupid shit. I think in this case, he recognizes that he’s just shit at his job and wants help. He most likely didn’t expect the Billet issue (no way he would have known Steve would have released a vid) and if he knew about Madison coming out, he’d have tried to prevent that sooner. Hiring a CEO won’t fix the Madison problem, as that event had already occurred.
traveler@lemdro.id 1 year ago
No, he called a new CEO because he knows he’s way over his head for years now. He even spoke about retiring some years ago, that’s how much signs he was showing. The fact he got a new CEO to handle the corpo bs is just a hint that he prefers to mess around with the hardware and just doesn’t want to handle more management shit.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
He took the blame for it in the video because he was in charge when these things happened. I don’t think he’d do that if he whole point was to blame it on the new CEO.
deleted@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Managing a startup could be hard and stressful. But I couldn’t think Linus would go to this extend.
After this worker coming forward, I unsubscribed from all LMG channels.
islandmonkeee@kbin.social 1 year ago
Ah yes, the Tony Blair move
Anonymousllama@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s a good conspiracy! I call dibs on the next one
superkret@feddit.de 1 year ago
I don’t know why some drama about a borked GPU install has been at the top of my feed for a week, and at this point I’m afraid to ask.
golli@lemm.ee 1 year ago
If you are interested there are essentially 3 problems:
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the GPU fiasco: Where they didn’t just bork a install. A small 2 man startup send them their (I think only or at least best) prototype for testing and even included the correct GPU to use it with in their packet. LTT for some reason tested it on a different one (obviously not working well there) and came to the devastating conclusion that NOBODY should ever buy this. Then instead of as requested sending it back they auctioned this prototype off at an event they hosted. To top it of after being called out
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the second problem that was also called out in the video published by gamers Nexus was a consistent pattern of publishing data errors in their reviews. And if such errors are caught, they would be inadequately handled. Maybe through a post under the video or by later replacing part of the video. If they caught an error before publishing they also often would just add a small onscreen text correction with an * instead of redoing that part. All problematic as many people will miss those corrections and thus be influenced by wrong data.
Those two points are especially problematic given the reach of LTT, since they are by far the largest tech YouTube channel. And thus influence a lot of people, especially beginners. Their initial response to these problems was also extremely bad.
- the third problem was a former employee coming forward with allegations of them being an extremely toxic place to work at. With sexual harassment, intense workload and so on.
Lurkerloo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thank you, I spent so much time combing through posts and comments and your comment is the first time it has been succintly explained.
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thurstylark@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This isn’t about that specifically, but the gist of it is that they basically got a one-of-a kind prototype GPU water block from a boutique startup to review, and instead of reviewing it with the correct model GPU and sending it back as requested, they did their review on the wrong card, concluded it was crap, and then sold it at auction during their convention.
decadentrebel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And to make matters worse, insist that no amount of modification would justify buying that cooler ever. It’s literally covering your ears and muttering la-dee-da repeatedly.
ours@lemmy.film 1 year ago
And GN calling them out on this and a pattern of getting many things wrong with Linus doubling down on the whole thing as a response.
TDCN@feddit.dk 1 year ago
I also don’t fully understand why people are so furious. Yes it’s some pretty serious alligations from Madison yes, and some dumb faults has happened from overworked stressed employees because of some bad company policies. Manny big companies have these issues at some point but you don’t hear about it because it’s handled internally or the company just slowly dissolves. LMG are at least open and a million times more transparent than I’ve seen many other companies be. Then own up to their mistakes now and are at least trying to fix things. Shutting down for a week is pretty drastic and for me it shows that they care.
dandi8@kbin.social 1 year ago
It's not owning up of you've been caught red-handed, denied any wrongdoing, and only made an apology video once your subs started tanking. At this point it just feels like damage control.
FireTower@lemmy.world 1 year ago
TLDR: The LTT fan base has a culture of calling out bad actions by the company not because they hate them but because they hold them to standards.
A small company Billet Labs sent them a prototype to test. That prototype was designed for a 3000 series graphics card. LTT didn’t have that card at hand so they asked if it was ok to use a 4000 series card. Billet said they could try but it wasn’t designed for their card. LTT published a review of the prototype based on a scenario it wasn’t designed for and Linus told people it was a bad product. They later agreed to return it to Billet. They ended up auctioning it off at a convention (where some of Billet’s competition was).
Ultimately LTT paid an undisclosed amount to Billet. The actual damages of selling off a start ups only prototype (possibly to their competition) after agreeing to return it, after telling people not to buy a product (which was only a prototype) based on how it performed in a situation it wasn’t intended to be in is unmeasurable. They could have effectively destroyed years of work and killed the future of those people.
Linus said he didn’t use the correct card because it would have cost ~$800. The issue isn’t that he didn’t buy that correct card it’s that he didn’t decide to not publish a video on it if he couldn’t do it right.
On a podcast the other week Linus praised the LTT fans for not just agreeing with everything he does, creating a toxic positive feedback loop. This is them calling him out on his errors.
Yes other companies make these same terrible decisions. But their bad actions don’t justify LTT’s bad actions.
vreraan@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
They threw shit at a small company by testing their product the wrong way.
Rouxibeau@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As I understand it, it’s not actually about this entirely. it’s that this has caused people to look into things and see that there is a long running history of poor content being pushed out due to issues in the workplace. The mishandling of the Prototype and the accusations by the employee are just extra icing on top of this already fucked up cake.
quadropiss@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Everything you’re told + they put ads into their “apology” video
kftX@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The end result will likely be something like: “We have investigated ourselves and found that we are blameless of any wrongdoing”. Which is usually how these things end up.
Also, weird to not see them saying they’ll reach out to Madison to get the story from her, but I guess that might be one of those obvious things so not mentioned. I hope.
Stumblinbear@pawb.social 1 year ago
It being a third-party investigator means they aren’t “investigating themselves.”
hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah I think they have dug themselves in deep shit and this will not go away until they make everything public and take action. And Linus as well as Terren Tong know this.
kftX@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My point is that when you are the one ordering an investigation on yourself, usualyl the results are bound to be highly skewed towards what you want.
I’ve seen my government recently do this in a pretty big corruption case that would have made heads roll, as well as a couple other private entities I can think of who have hired “outside investigators” to investigate themselves only to go like what I said.
I’m obviously open to being proven wrong in this case, but the track record of such things isn’t very positive.
Sorry I wasn’t very clear, I just didn’t want to make my comment too big.
FarmTaco@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Third-party investigator is just a long handed way of saying, I’m still paying this person. Unless someone is being investigated by an outside source, get ready for some bullshit.
Saneless@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Nah it’ll be “negative” but generic
“We’ve found that we were set up in a way for people to have suboptimal experiences. We thought we had a good culture and a program to minimize harassment but we obviously failed so we are hiring a new chief se sensitivity officer to address these concerns and ensure that current and future employees feel welcome,. comfortable, and respected”
Or some shit. Basically a “yeah things got out of hand but since we’re being scrutinized, we’ll hire an adult to keep us in line, maybe”
MrBusiness@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
It’s like, c’mon Linus ‘If my employees need a union, I have failed as a boss’ Sebastian, you have failed as a boss and your employees need a union.
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Other some youtuber should. Not LTT.
CanofBeanz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No a professional should, not a drama/attention farming YouTuber.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 year ago
Yeah yeah yeah, standard response. It won’t work. People won’t come forward and nothing can/will be done if anyone does come forward. It’ll just be awkward for them for a while. Maybe someone will get blamed, fired or resigning … and then… it’ll happen again.
The damage is already done. There’s no way to undo it.
They can’t handle this by just asking people to snitch. Allowing or encouraging individuals to snitch on other individuals is not the way to stop this.
The proper way for a company to handle harassment cases is to prevent them from happening in the first place.
The proper damage control is to admit that they didn’t do enough to prevent it from happening and then tell everyone about how they’re going to follow proper OSHA guidance from here on. Let’s hear about how they let their employees elect a representative and how the plan to implement preventive actions, and what he procedure is to handle any potential situations before they escalate into a shit show like this.
I guess their union representative could have told them this a long time ago, but hey, they don’t have one, because they also thought they could handle everything without any. Look at where that got them.
WashedOver@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
With them being in Canada they have a potentially big bogeyman in the human rights tribunal to worry about. Over the years outside Labour relations lawyers I’ve been in touch with have advised no employer wants to end up there as the rules of law sort of no longer apply and the penalties can be off the charts beyond legal precedent.
Employers need to do better jobs regardless of this bogeyman or a unions being needed avenue as they can present their own challenges for staff and employers with the additional level of bureaucracy. The more layers, the more complicated everything becomes beyond the egos of the various layers involved.
It’s a shame to read all that’s going on or alleged to have gone on. I love tech but I’ve not worked in the tech specific industry. I was aware of Linus back to my PC building days and seen some of his videos over the years and the surprising overlaps into the auto channels eventually.
I wondered what it would have been like to work in a smaller at the time company like his, but I saw some of his frustrations in a media system setup video a couple of years back that kind of had me wonder what is he like to work with? Linus seems really high energy and not super polished in his interactions. Being honest tech people don’t always have the best social skills, much like those that excel at social skills are not the best tech people in broad terms.
I’ve heard rumblings of (as they aren’t a part of my online world) gamer gate and heard of other issues for women in tech. Thinking about it more I could see how a lack of social awareness and tech bros culture not being a good mix in a growing environment trying to include women. They can’t just think of them as being just another one of the guys with the usual stupid crap they do to each other. I’m getting old now because that statement leads to all kinds of new world issues with the extra gender labels that need to be accounted for today and there are other concerns that arise which the old bros culture cannot accommodate. The locker room behaviour was questionable at best and it’s always been dangerous to have in a workplace, which can really be a huge issue for them to change (if it exists). There is some smoke without a doubt and it reinforces its not easy to be a woman in these types of tech environments especially when companies grow beyond the initial friends group.
Since I did not really watch more than a couple of videos a year of the LTT I did not realize how large they have become. Their converted warehouse space must just be jammed full of people at 100+ staff now. It was kind of small when they were smaller as it was. With the work load, overhead to cover, the youtube grind, the issues of trying to run during Rona, and the brave new world of big company issues and accommodations needed for a not friends anymore workforce with the workloads, it is easy to see how things can spin out of control with all that is going on. The silos that have developed could have become big blind spots along with the other issues discussed in the social media posts. Wolves of public opinion and of the disgruntled are at the door now.
I suspect at some point it will be mentioned in hindsight that it would have been better for them to sell with the 100 million offer they had received but I wonder how much of this stuff would have surfaced before the sale went through from due diligence by the potential buyer?
It’s going to be a big mess ahead to sort out and I hope they are sincere in their intentions to figure this out, make the changes needed (if they are needed, which it sounds like they are) and to repair the damaged incurred to those along the way. It’s a bloody big job and its going to be tough to do in the court of public opinion making their own decisions along the way about what is really going on inside the situation.
Like that meme of the person trying to make the exit from 4 lanes away on the highway, Good luck everyone! The pile up is going to be big.
banneryear1868@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Employers need to do better jobs regardless of this bogeyman or a unions being needed avenue as they can present their own challenges for staff and employers with the additional level of bureaucracy.
Union I would say is important because when employers take this on, and this is openly advertised by HR/diversity consultants, it’s often with the intention of absolving the employer from liability in these matters, rather than improving the employee’s experience.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah, they need a new robust HR system focused on workplace culture. I hope they’ll realize that it’s necessary if they want the company to still exist.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 year ago
Yes HR is necessary, but they also need representatives for the employees, who can speak to HR and management freely on behalf of employees, so that any individual doesn’t have to address these kinds of problems personally.
The easiest solution for management is always to fire the one reporting problems, because then the problem goes away. That situation has to be dismantled before they can have an honest discussion of these sort of things. That can only be done by an employee representative.
franklin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Exactly, what are they doing to ensure the are no future stories like Madison’s?
That’s how we know you’re talking responsibility.
DrPop@lemmy.one 1 year ago
What a corporate answer that says, now that the public knows we suck I guess we need to address it.
TDCN@feddit.dk 1 year ago
What kind of answer would you rather have. I’m seriously asking what should the comment have been in order for you to be happy?
gmtom@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Maybe an inclusion of the word sorry.
And wording it so it sounds like it was written by an actual human being that gives a shit and not a dressed out HR drone that only knows corpspeak.
Anonymousllama@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I feel a good majority of people are just in the outrage phase and there’s literally no response that would have been good enough.
GigglyBobble@kbin.social 1 year ago
There is no way. Too many corp answers that were nothing but words have been published before for anyone to not be cynic about it.
emax_gomax@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This, but maybe not after what we got from Linus to begin with. This is clearly damage control and also is probable detracting from what limus actually feels which is f*ck you I can do what I want and I don’t owe you anything.
DrPop@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Oh I’m fine with the answer. With the information I gathered that same day this is probably the best they can do now. I would like to know more info about this outside investigation.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
If they’re smart, they’ll realize they need to address these issues in order to exist as a company people want to work at going forward. It’s in their best interest to not appear as a toxic work environment.
Vinnyboiler@feddit.uk 1 year ago
They recently got a new CEO a month ago because Linus the owner realized he was unfit for that purpose. It should have been dealt with years ago but I wonder if some benefit of the doubt can be given here seeing as the company was in a state of transition and probably would of cleaned up the work culture in private.
Or not because Linus still owns the company and the buck stops at the absolute top. He put his friend in high positions so it would cause a uncomfortable position when someone who wasn’t his friend lower down the ladder were to speak out. He has also consistently showed toxic masculinity in the way he acts and has spread it within the fabric in the company,
I have no strong opinion one way or another, but please tell me if I’m being unfair here on either side here. I think the company can still clean itself up and has shown actions before it was publicly known to address it, and I also think the company has misogyny in it’s corporate structure and DNA which will constantly be problematic.
Extrasvhx9he@lemmy.today 1 year ago
“Damage control, its there when you need to cover your ass. Speaking of covers this is the perfect segway to our sponsor, Dbrand…”
stephenc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh my fucking lord, who cares? Linus has always been a manipulative shitlord and a bastard hyping and doing whatever clickbait will make him millions of dollars this week. Unsubscribe from his manipulative trash and stop talking about him and let his scammy, garbage little YouTube enterprise die as it should have years ago.
Discoslugs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unsubscribe from his manipulative trash and stop talking about him
Peoeple who do bad shit should be exposed before they are forgotten about.
SysWOW64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
[deleted]Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My Pillow?
traveler@lemdro.id 1 year ago
Every single one and more.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
This is likely to quickly become a problem.
LinusSexTips@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We’ve got Smile Makers and Goop lined up, stay tuned for our new channel.
reallynotnick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Finally a normal safe corporate response rather than further digging a hole for themselves.
Saneless@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
“Now that people are watching and are angry, we care too, people”
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
It sounds like they are taking her harassment allegations seriously, but not the allegations of excessive levels of work expected, which IMO sounded far more serious. Like having someone grope you is no joke, but having to cut yourself just so you can request a day off is insane
postmeridiem@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz 1 year ago
Wonder how many international and domestic workers they’ve contract rugpulled, since this will probably be the one that flies under the radar due to all the other issues.
Anonbal185@aussie.zone 1 year ago
I always thought his channel was really dummed down. I watched a video or two and then noped out of it. Wasn’t many if at all any tips from the so called tech tips site.
GustavoM@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Am I a complete dumbfuck idiot or Linus is trying to diverge/twist this whole shit flinging into a “We got bullied bois!” situation?
solstice@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I had literally never heard of this company before now and all the threads on Reddit have thousands upon thousands of posts. Why is this such a BFD? Not saying it isn’t, I just live under a rock.
cokane_88@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“fuck Linus” when Eli the computer guy made that video a few years ago I stopped watching his videos fuck Linus
ineedaunion@lemm.ee 1 year ago
We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong. The Home Depot allows rapes and retaliation. HR is a scam. All they deserve is violence.
Smacks@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They’re getting close to bedrock
Maya_Weiss@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What a classic response. Classic and soulless. Ugh.
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 1 year ago
lol
decadentrebel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Linus just needs to miss the Denslow cup and play ball, and he’ll be just fine.
jetsetdorito@lemm.ee 1 year ago
that fucking comment 💀
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
It’s great because of how serious that post is then there’s a totally tonally different killer joke lol