Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t...

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• ImperialATAT@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  So despite the recent “reactions” from LTT, and just to bring this all back to the beginning… Thank you to Gamers Nexus for doing some damn necessary journalism, which couldn’t have been done without a high level of ethical, and technical competency.

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  • dueuwuje@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And courage, because this could have really been twisted and clouded, Gamers Nexus really went out on a limb (albeit justified).

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  • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What they did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to stop corrupt/incompetent reviewers from misleading people.

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    • pachrist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They really should, especially since LTT was trying to be GN by adding the Labs. Claiming to be better than GN while making basic mistakes was just super unprofessional, which is why Steve’s response was so awesome. Anyone who has watched his channel knows he has a standard, and it’s massively important to him. I don’t think he would mind more competition in the space necessarily, even coming from LTT Labs, but the bedrock of GN is data, even if it’s a little bit dry as content sometimes. If you’re going to try to compete with or dunk on Steve, best meet the bar he’s set.

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  • dwks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    As much as this is Linus fault as the leaders, if LTT goes down for this. More than 100 of the employees will be out of job at the end of this.

    Either way the outcome won’t be pretty for LTT staffs.

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    • Icaria@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Most of those staff are going to have no trouble finding new jobs. It’s a highly technical and specialised crew, many would already be in demand elsewhere, and a void left by LTT would be quickly filled by other groups producing similar content, who suddenly find themselves in need of more staff. Hell, a lot of former LTT staff would be gobbled up by LTT’s own sponsors.

      This is a terrible argument whenever there’s any public controversies within the private sector. It’s not worth thinking about ‘the jobs’ because that’s not how the economy works. If there’s fire behind this smoke, and LTT did fold, those left long-term unemployed are probably fewer in number than those who are currently being exploited and mistreated. It’s almost always a zero-sum game.

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    • JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I get the concern. And I’ve been part of enough layoffs to know how much it sucks. But a company being held to its responsibility and a standard and held to the light like this to show it’s failings, would be an acceptable condition. That said though, I really don’t see anyone losing their jobs over this. This is a failing on the higher end of LMG, not the rank and file.

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    • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Linus is not the only one to blame. The people who work there could have done something to stop the unethical behavior or quit. But some of them stayed there for years and enabled Linus.

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    • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They’re not going anywhere. He’ll take a hit from it. Now that the heat is actually on and he can’t just say whatever he’ll apologize he’ll outline what they’re going to do to make it better and then it’ll all be back to where it was in another couple months, maybe with a little extra effort on the data.

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• Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Other than “this should never have happened” I see this as the best possible outcome.

  Now we wait and see I suppose.

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  • Hazzard@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Agreed. The upload schedule has been a holy grail within LTT for a long time, and I truly believe it’s the root of all of this, yes, even the sexual harassment. When do you have time to make good HR policies? Pull people into HR for reprimanding? Have opportunities for others to second guess decisions? Do training? Or heck, even just have less tired and irritable people making in-the-moment stupid decisions?

    This uncompromising maximum velocity hurts everyone, and I hope they keep never bring it back to this pace, even after the process improvements they have planned.

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    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This was my take as well. To add to it, on an individual level, the way to avoid biases is to step back and think critically for a second. In the interest of time, if you just blurt out every thought that comes to your head you’ll say insensitive stuff every now and then. Or you’ll unconsciously express favoritism out of convenience. The work culture there that tries to pass it off as “just the odd mean joke between friends” needs to change too, but having time to foster a positive environment involves taking away time from cranking out the next video.

      Linus has got to look inside a little and find integrity again for his company, because that’s what they lost years ago in pursuit of a constant churn of content.

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    • oryx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My take as well. I hope after their break, they cut things down to have fewer videos with higher quality. We know from what Linus has said openly that they’re set with money, so sacrificing some earnings to establish themselves as a channel that can truly be trusted seems like the obvious move.

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  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think this mess is just a sign of a company experiencing growing pains. Seems like they are still figuring out what kind of processes the company needs to have and who is the right person for each task. When a company grows quickly you tend to bump into (or more like crash into) unexpected issues like this. In the case of LMG, it got particularly nasty, but I’m glad they are finally addressing the issues.

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    • stappern@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I mean that’s the understatement of the week. Nice way to describe sexual assault and bullying XD

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• garretble@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Hopefully things will get better, and also let’s hope the “shocked face” thumbnails for the videos go away. I don’t care if the algorithm says they convert better. I skip right over.

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  • avater@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    here for you: lemmy.world/post/1569801 An addon to make thumbnails good again.

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  • Anders429@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Really hits weird when a video talking about something so serious has a thumbnail that looks like it could be on a video about Fortnite.

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    • PmMeFrogMemes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And the title is an ambiguous clickbait question. Bad look for sure

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• MuThyme@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The thing I don’t get is all these random LMG apologists saying “actually here is exactly why it happened and is actually completely okay” despite absolutely no one having a true inside view of the company.

  Like I saw someone just randomly guessing really stupid reasons why Madison is in the wrong, and acting like they have secret knowledge.

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  • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But Steve didn’t contact Linus to give him time to prepare an explanation in which he would blame everyone else and say how sad he is! It’s just a poor $100M company, they are just humans and they make mistakes. :D

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    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      ngl you had me in the first half. It’s too early in the morning for me.

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  • FrasseFisk@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah but sometimes you have to make up some facts to base your opinions on!

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  • CeeBee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Someone replied to their apology video saying “I’m not entirely convinced that Madison isn’t half making this up for attention.” Followed by “as someone who works long hours in manual labor” then uses that as a reason the workers shouldn’t be complaining about their work schedules.

    I’m convinced half of LTT’s fans are incels.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  The company has currently paused all production to improve its review processes, and CEO Terren Tong tells The Verge an outside investigator will be hired to examine the harassment allegations.

  “We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” said Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke.

  According to Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips reviewed a copper cooling block from Billet Labs on the wrong GPU, then auctioned it off at a recent fan event without the company’s permission.

  The afternoon after Gamers Nexus posted its video, Sebastian began responding to concerned fans in the Linus Tech Tips forums.

  Reeve went on to accuse the company of barring her from videos after she reported being “grabbed multiple times in the office” and being told to “calm my tits” and “stop being such a bitch.”

  He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”

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  I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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  • IceMan@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The grabbing part is clear - but “calm your tits” and “stop being such a bitch”? At least where I live both are gender neutral, first one even used most often male to male. Am I missing something? Would it not have been sexual harassment but just toxic culture if it was another cuss? E.g. when you say “motherfucker” you don’t actually mean “somebody having sexual relations with one’s mother”. Can somebody with more knowledge about US legal system explain this to me?

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    • virtualras@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You can make a distinction between gender when it comes to the phrases. To my male friends, yeah. Depending on the situation I can see myself saying both of those phrases. But to my female friends? They don’t mean the same thing.

      “Calm your tits” is a maybe depending on the circumstances and how close we are, but never in an aggressive tone.

      “Stop being such a bitch”, downright out. Never to those friends. So many better ways to phrase it depending on the circumstances.

      And finally, all of these were to my friends, NOT A FUCKING COWORKER. You never say these things to coworkers. The whole goal of team management is promoting teamwork, these phrase foster nothing but animosity. I try to say anything even remotely close to those phrases and my ass will be out of a job before lunch (and for good reason).

      In terms of legal, IANAL, but as far as I know you would have to present this to a jury or judge, and the bar that they’d have to pass in the US is “more likely than not”. In other words: “is it more likely than not that this comment was made to harass the individual based on their sex?” Pretty low bar to cross.

      Also, LTT is a Canadian company, so the above paragraph is kinda moot to the whole situation.

      TL;DR: those phrases are rude to women, LTT would likely have a rough time in court (if they were a US company)

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    • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If I said either of those things to any of the women I work with I’d likely get fired before the end of the week. And they really do not want to fire me

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    • CanadianNomad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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    • Sonofliberty776@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It has to do with how the parties involved interpret it. Between friends I have said the same things, but not everyone will be comfortable with these things said to them and can even interpret them maliciously. They can be seen as workplace harassment for this reason.

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  • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good bot

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• scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s great to see that this has bumped up one level in the media and is actually getting wider attention than just us YT and forum nerds.

  Linus thought he could just swipe back at this and make it go away but not. this. time.

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• cornstar@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  In for the comments

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