TWiT only has any value because of the rest of the employees: the engineers, the co-hosts, and everyone else that puts it all together. Leo is not what makes the network have value (though of course he was at its founding). I think the network would be better off without him now. I too used to watch since the network started and was there for some of it live, and eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t watch any show with him in it (which sucks because I happened to like SN a lot, among others).
the characterization of some of these events is a bit misleading
If you mean the editorializing from that drama website, then I’d agree that it has a very clear bias. That doesn’t discount what I really wanted to stress though: the video clips and screenshots, which are primary evidence that themselves are not editorialising, very clearly show a pattern of problematic behavior. There is no excusing a lot of what I linked to in my previous comment.
I think he has his faults and they sometimes interfere with my enjoyment of the podcasts but if he was a truly horrible person, I don’t think many of the people I respect in the tech space would associate with him offline. “A man is known by the company he keeps” often rings true to me but it has also steered me wrong at times.
I’m curious who you have in mind here. But I’ll say that people have various reasons for associating with others, even if they’re not great people. Money, opportunities/connections/contacts, convenience, etc are all reasons that sometimes make people spend time with bad people.
All I really care about is good insightful content about the things that matter to me and (fortunately/unfortunately depending on your pov) twit is one of the few places to get the kind of long form discussion that I like.
The long-form discussion is not solely enabled by Leo; it would happen just as well without him. In fact, in many situations, it would probably happen better without him. I’m not saying for a moment the network doesn’t have value or produce some quality content. My point was, and is, that Leo is a rather nasty person and that if I were an advertiser I would not want to be associated with him.