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simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

LTT vs Google.

I’ll side with LLT on this, but that doesn’t mean I want to support their channel.

shoulderoforion ,
@shoulderoforion@fedia.io avatar

same²

cyborganism ,

Ditto

casmael ,

Can I get a same to the power of three

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

same³

Now you got it.

(By the way, same⁴)

casmael ,

Incredible I’ll save these for lunch tomorrow x

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Ctrl+S a sandwich too.

oxideseven ,

same⁵

Potatisen ,

Why? What did LTT do?

Out of the loop on this.

NuXCOM_90Percent , (edited )

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. Look up the video, but it is stuff like not taking the plastic off a mouse (and then complaining about how it feels) or listing complete nonsense numbers for RAM that anyone with half a (computer parts) brain would have said “that can’t be right”.
  • 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. This was consistent with vagueposting by other female former staff when referencing their time at LMG.
  • The harassment was corroborated by other former staff (one has since recanted after he couldn’t find a new job in the kind of blog post that would make even John Xina himself raise an eyebrow) 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”.

PopOfAfrica ,

I love how they only ever really paraphrased the report and never showed us on the sexual harassment allegations. Bill Barr behavior

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

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.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

“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.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

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.

xenoclast ,

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

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

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.

BallShapedMan ,
@BallShapedMan@lemmy.world avatar

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.

dev_null ,

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.
  • In general, the transparency at which their business operates makes it very easy to point out flaws. I think it’s better than the opaque businesses where this can’t happen.
  • I agree with these of your points I didn’t address.

Hope this provides both sides for readers, and thanks again.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

“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.”

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.

It is also very telling that the concerns over warranties came up when:

  1. The previous owner of the company who everyone knew and trusted died
  2. There was active concern over the future of the company
  3. The person trying to sell them that is a deranged lunatic with a sex pest best friend
  4. 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.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

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.

SacralPlexus ,

Apparently posted a video about how to avoid ads on YouTube using adblockers, etc.

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

They’ve been criticized of rushing and skimping on accurate / ethical review practices. There are also allegations that LTT is a fairly toxic work environment, but, the former has more concrete evidence since the janky reviews were recorded and uploaded.

And on a more subjective note, a lot of people aren’t really into the way that Linus behaves on camera. I’m in this camp. I find that he often comes off pretty arrogant and belittling when he’s interacting with his staff on camera.

drcobaltjedi ,

And on a more subjective note, a lot of people aren’t really into the way that Linus behaves on camera. I’m in this camp. I find that he often comes off pretty arrogant and belittling when he’s interacting with his staff on camera.

I remember on the old site years ago saying that Linus came off as a bit of a douchebag and being downvoted to hell for it. Like, I get having relationships with friends where we’re always bullying each other a bit, but it never seemed to me like he was ever on the recieving end of that.

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, as someone who has been in people management for a long time, he has a way of interacting with people that makes my HR spidey sense tingle.

It’s very subtle, but there some ways of collaborating and communicating with his employees that I’ve seen before, and are often associated with people who get shitty reviews from the ICs and peers.

Contingencyfork ,

HR Spidey sense! Love it.

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

After years on the job you have an eagle eye for the subtle hints that slip out. Talking over people, dismissing options that are different than yours, playfully teasing people that don’t reciprocate, etc.

Maybe it’s nothing, but when I watch his videos I have flashbacks to problematic leaders who often get shit reviews when employees are allowed to submit feedback anonymously.

Rai ,

I saw one of his videos like a decade ago and was immediately turned off.

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Other than the stuff already mentioned here, people (probably fairly accurately) thought Linus was a salesman douche with no real knowledge of computers back in the NCIX days.

It was partially true, he was basically a warehouse manager who happened to get lucky making a successful youtube channel which he turned into his own media business after NCIX died.

But that’s what the key term is. It’s Linus Media Group. Their top goal is to create content that generates views for revenue, and not content that might be useful or takes a lot of effort to do.

Which is why you will almost never see any heavy IT people watching his videos. There are so many examples of people running entire data centers in their house better than LMG could do with actual budget, server space, and hardware. They used to use windows server for everything because they didn’t have anyone who knew linux lol.

beefbot ,

Lied about a review of a product prototype they’d been sent. “Lost” it, gave a bad review based on tests of it (but it was a different product, not the actual one). Then later apparently they SOLD this prototype & told the company who had lent them it that they’d lost it.

So you can totally trust them claiming they didn’t sexually harass women employees. /s

yesman ,

I left when every other video was about the personal lives of Linus or his staff. I know that developing the parasocial is important to any channel, but it turns me off.

deafboy ,
@deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

I actually like those, and started to watch the channel regularly after the house remodeling series.

What’s barely sufferable are the “we bought stuff from the internet and here it is. check out our sponsor…” videos that’s been published a lot lately.

xenoclast ,

Right? I learned how to block channel in FreeTube motivated entirely so I don’t have to see his stupid face in my recommendations

I feel like we’ll find out this was engineered for clicks by them.

mesamunefire OP ,

Here is the video in question.

Hopefully it stays up. If not, someone might want to push to archive.org / peertube /etc…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPa8NpmhKM0

Beacon ,

I hope this gets the streisand effect, but it's probably too geeky of a topic for that

sheepishly ,

https://preservetube.com/watch?v=gPa8NpmhKM0

tpihkal ,

I just bought a Google Pixel!

So that I can install GrapheneOS on it.

cyborganism ,

It’s just a shame it doesn’t have any extra micro SSD card slots for extra storage…

tpihkal ,

I do find that disappointing but I don’t store many pictures on my phone so I think the 256gb will probably be more than enough for me.

phoneymouse ,

I wish it didn’t have to be that way, lol. Can’t we have some quality third party hardware?

Quik ,

This is sooooo incredibly sad!!! I’m currently on an older iPhone and probably getting a Pixel next month; I would really have liked it if there were a bigger variety of phones where I could live truly Google-free, and I would much prefer not having to give Google money to not be reliant on Google…

theskyisfalling ,

Buy second hand or refurbished. Better for the planet, cheaper and you aren’t directly giving google anything :)

harrys_balzac ,

This is the route I’m probably going to go. Once I’m comfortable getting Graphene set up the way I need to. I do a lot of electronic payments and such so I need to make sure all those will work.

Foni ,

Look at the Nokia (yes, those Nokia) have models with android asap

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Was it about how to live without Google or how to bypass ads on YouTube?

mesamunefire OP ,

both

B1ackmsth ,

The video that was removed talked about blocking ads on YouTube which goes against contract terms for YouTubers. The one about switching away from Google service is still up.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Had suspicions with Rossman involved and a quick check of the ltt subreddit means I both need a shower and likely know why it was delisted:

The issue isn’t “how to live without google”. Plenty of those videos exist

The issue is encouraging people to use third party apps that violate the TOS and let you watch youtube without ads. That is not “living without google”. That is “You should ‘steal’ from google”

But honestly, not surprising. Rossman has pretty much always been on the “Fuck em, just pirate it” side of things for better or for worse.

Whereas LMG are still desparate to get back their viewership after all the harassment and incompetence accusations. So nothing better to make people think the company that encourages its users to advocate against warranties is pro-consumer than to pick a pointless fight with google. Which has the added benefit of advertising floatplane (see also: gun youtubers hamming it up over what youtube will let them do to advertise Ian McCollum’s latest side hustle).

NocturnalMorning , (edited )

If YouTube wasn’t infested with ads that start in the middle of videos and force you to watch 2-3 minute ads constantly it wouldn’t even be an issue. Calling it stealing is a bit of a stretch.

Edit: I like how you edited a good 2/3rds of your comment.

cyborganism ,

They already steal all my personal information for profit. So fuck 'em. I got no sympathy for that company.

100 ,

ads are full of scams, malware and other harmful content because they are barely moderated

blocking them is basic security

_sideffect ,

Fuck google, steal from them anyway you can

ZagamTheVile ,

No way this wasn’t calculated by LTT.

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

Although I agree that this content should be up on YT, I wouldn’t be surprised if LLT were well aware that this was a high risk video that could get struck down.

I hate conspiratorial thinking, but LLT is likely to benefit from this attention, and they have a history prioritizing subscriber counts over getting useful information into the hands of people.

ZagamTheVile ,

I’d bet dollars to donuts it was planned. They’re all about views, sponsors, and subs. The “info” they publish is hack at best. They’re entertaining at times but it’s just that, entertainment, not tech news.

sunzu2 ,

I think most discerning readers know this but trick or not, he did do the thing and exposed Google for a monopolist that they are.

Although the courts already deemed them a monopoly.

Either way, BREAK UP Alphabet!!!!

dukatos ,

The fact Louis had to disable comments on that video tells a lot 😄

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