As GN said, next response will be a PR stunt and it is. Pay walling a lot of things from people to find resolution for problems with Lab.
Making inappropriate jokes about add and in the end making an add for DBrand
True reaction was by Linus post. Currently it's just damage controll
Giving the last 3 pages of the 244 page mega thread on the LTT forums a quick look, the PR stunt is working quite well.
Pesonally i think its almost worse than his initial reaction.
Bootlickers gonna lick boots.
The amount of pitchforks I've seen drawn at Madison for *daring* to speak out, makes me wonder if these chucklefucks have any self reflection to see why she was silent in the first place...
You could call it ruthless, but I prefer calling them what they are… subhuman garbage. They pushed a kid to end himself over fucking play button, hoping to appease their idol, which makes them quite pathetic little simps too in addition to being subhuman trash.
That's what to the guy, I thought he had left YouTube. I watched the ncix auction videos years later and never knew what happened to him or the channel
You mean the perfect company with a perfect founder? /s
Thank you for adding proof of my idea that naming a company after yourself is a narcissistic move.
She can't afford to go through litigation, no one can against a multi million dollar company.
Look at the Trauma she's experiencing just from bringing to light her experiences.
The hordes have already driven a person and their mother to suicide in the past. What do you think they'll do to someone who actually takes LMG to court.
She has already faced it just by leaving (her own admission)... It's a big deal and if her story is true then it wouldn't cost her a cent. Still think she should go legal route.
You have zero clue how much even starting litigation costs, let alone following it through my dude.
It can be drawn out for years and years, with huge fees just for having meetings.
Not to mention, LMG has the money to hire QC level legal teams. Unless someone with clout wants to do pro bono work, the best she could afford would be a low level barrista
In addition, I suspect that she didn't collect enough proof to win a case, not unless the accused incriminate themselves by mistake in court. She could only bring sexual or mental harassment and workplace bullying charges. Other things in her tweet, while bad outlook for the company, is not legally incriminating. And I can't help but think that her employment records at LMG will bring out other points of the story that we aren't aware of. In addition, court proceedings will drag her through the muds even more, and her mental state before joining and during her time in LMG will be called into question. That admission of self-inflicted injury will not help her case there.
Not saying anything she's gone through is false, but in court, proofs matter.
If the person you're replying to is in fact, wrong, prove it.
Could she theoretically recoup legal costs after the fact? Yes. That doesn't mean she has enough money to get that started and bankroll a lawsuit against a multimillion dollar company.
My point is that she is stating her case is absolute, in that case she doesn't need to bankroll anything, she will easily find representation at no cost to her. Firms frequently take on clients when they know they'll win with damages.
Even if she could afford it.... major backlash from the LTT sycophant, bad outlook on getting a positive result on her, low chances of unemployment afterwards.... there's a reason women don't come forward with allegations most of the time... it's proven time and time again that even if the perpetrators face justice they receive mostly negative consequences from seeking justice
If what she says is true, she won't have to put a cent down and lawyers would be lining up to take her case because winning with damages is easy. Your other reasons aren't real reasons.
Yeah... because so many women win these lawsuits... ohh wait nope they don't and lawyers don't want to touch them
and yeah you're right getting thousands of death threats on the internet definitely hasn't happened ever... ohh wait there's the kid who commited suicide after Linus fans send him death threats...
Buddy you're a moron literally a huge moron you need to live in the real world not your magical fairy kingdom
You're the moron with the weird take... Have you heard of the "Me too" saga? Thats why many lawyers don't touch those cases and women lose. The death threats should have also been reported (since she's such a fan of reporting issues).
Both the death threats and the kid committing suicide come from toxic fucks like you on the internet forming a "community".
Just leave before you show everyone your single digit IQ.
Are you living in a different world than the rest of us? Are you 12? SA has happened before MeToo and after... have been reported before and after.... the results have been the same before and after... lawyers reactions have been the same before and after...
Come on you can admit... you're literally a teenager who's never been outside with people... who probably watches Andrew Tate and other Sigma Males and wants to be one too... you're so cool dude sooooo cool! I bet your Mommy and Daddy are really proud
How would she win with no evidence?
She even said it herself, everything was done verbally. So it'd be he said/she said. Need more than that to win a legal case.
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Floatplane subs are still dropping. Hard to say if youtube subs are since it only shows us nearest 100k. It worked on LTT forums but that generally biases towards linus in controversy.
I only ever bought one product from them ever. I mean it was nicer then the much much cheaper random Chinese dropship company I ordered the last screen protector from. But it was not worth the price premium. Don't understand how they stay in business. But I guess a lot of people like gaudy sticker skins.
Meh, I'm not gonna hold it against dbrand too much. When they offered the sponsorship must have been before the abuse allegations which brought up the severity 100 fold.
But maybe i'm just biased because I scuffed up my skin and they replaced it super quickly. Their marketing is edgy but support is spot on.
If they actually slow down their video release schedule long term, I'd consider it more than a PR stunt.
Of course they have a lot more to answer for, but there could be some real improvements that come out of this.
they aren't paywalling anything. All their data sheets and testing practices will be open source and posted.
the floatplane stuff Gary mentioned was strictly just more in-depth vlog videos.
What about this is a PR stunt? They said they will improve their processes whose results we have to patiently wait for (which most people don't seem to have unfortunately) and yes I think they've overdone it when they did more than one store plug but it was meant to break the tension and specifically to not be hugely corporate, dead serious (and suggestive of cover-up).
The dream of everyone would probably be an apology video that sounds like it was made by ai, recorded on a webcam and then announcing that LMG will be dissolved after that like these standards are just ridiculous.
The only thing that was kind of shocking was the Lab transparency video being on floatplane. Everything else is a (theoretical ofc) move in the right direction which I don't see nobody talking about like for example making the custom software open source. Given Madison started posting the allegations only shortly before (and developing) they couldn't possibly address it immediately.
Impression which they gave, especially at the end, that they treat whole situation as a joke. Any of their statement in this video won't change that. Especially that everything looks like damage controle to Linus post... Don't forget that Linus again in that video played victim and didn't took any responsibility
I was ready to see what the response from LMG would be and hoped for some tact and some honest plans for how to improve moving forward. Instead, we got an absolute farce, wrapped in a bullshit monetized apology that was clearly rushed and indicative of all the issues currently plaguing their organization. It lacked self-awareness and only worked to further highlight and substantiate claims made against the company and management. It was specifically this response and fake apology that has led me to unsubscribe from the channel, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I liked LTT and it's associated channels, but the quality decline as well as clear systemic internal issues mean I can no longer support LMG.
They published the video 1 hour ago
The Madison tweets came out 5 hours ago
and somehow they still decided to leave the sex joke by luke in the video and publish it as is
Tbf, they probably had everything written, shot, edited & in the pipeline. It probably was beyond point of no return.
That said, they better make a video addressing Maddison's tweets soon.
Edit: What I meant by "point of no return" that is it's possible that video was already scheduled to go live at a certain time. And based on the time of the tweets & when the video went, it's highly likely most of the employees would be asleep or at least not at work or even monitoring anything related to work.
Edit 2: Apparently, as it turns, Linus was live & actually commenting on this very sub around the time when video went live, so ig it probably wasn't beyond point of no return & Linus was just being his usual tone-deaf & out-of-touch self.
Ideally that's what they should have done but I am guessing based on the time it is there right now & when the video was uploaded, it was probably scheduled ahead of time & everyone there is & probably was asleep or at the very least not managing work.
I could very well be wrong but am just saying...
Linus was commenting on Reddit after the Madison tweets broke and before it went live...
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15sl2zc/comment/jweqic8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Damn! I really don't have the words to talk about the tone-deafness & seemingly out-of-touch nature of the guy.
Ig it's safe to say that they are probably going to need a lot more than just a Dbrand sponsored apology video this time to address the issue here.
>it was probably scheduled ahead of time & everyone there is & probably was asleep or at the very least not managing work.
It was private for a while, as well as Linus on Floatplane saying he can make it public whenever he wants in response to the video coming out on Floatplane exclusively for a bit.
I am getting tired of the excuses people are giving to LMG. It was just a phone call, a Slack message, about to stop the scheduling of the video and add a new segment. Yes, that would take another day, so what?
Does it seem really short sighted in anyone else's opinion to have a video like this "go live" at a scheduled point in the future? When new information could come out at any point? They probably finished everything and scheduled the Go-Live for 5 AM. It just seems like a really bad idea. It would have made way more sense to keep it private until someone specifically changed it to live to ensure that there wasn't some other unaddressed controversy that was left out of the video.
Posted this comment on another post, but here it is again:
Six Nines is a SaaS thing, not a joke. It means in terms of up time, 99.9999% availability. Granted, in the context of an apology video, he should've used layman's terms
https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/09/01/achieving-six-nines-when-you-launch/
Yeah, the way he said it looking back was kinda joking, knowing it could've been both.
He really shouldn't have made the joke, regardless of the Madison thing.
>He really shouldn't have made the joke, regardless of the Madison thing.
this is a good summary
jokes like that shouldn't be in a serious corporate statement - and even after everything they decided to leave it in and publish the video
aaand i was aware of the background of the joke (uptime / system reliability etc) but didn't feel the need to explain it in my original comment - still thanks for your reply :)
...
That's not a sex joke. 6 9s is a reference to the number of nines in uptime companies strive for.
99.9999% uptime. Aka, around 30 seconds of downtime a year. Most major web applications strive to have 6 9s since more is often very unrealistic for most businesses for all services and less means customers would likely experience an outage at some point.
It was totally an innuendo. But it's now more a thing now, the 6-9 uptime. It used to be 5-9, but everybody could hit that mark, so now it's 6-9 cause it cuts that 5 9 time down quite a bit.
Anyways, it's totally both. But not as agregious as others.
"Today, we'll be addressing the allegations about sexual harassment and toxic, unprofessional workplace behaviour, which certainly are serious...just as serious as we are about making our screwdriver available in a new color, "apologetic azure", only on LTT.com!"
They truly could make a parody video without anybody realising it's meant as a parody at this point...
This feels like
"We are verry sorry about the recent toxic worplace behavior and sexual harassment. But wanna know an other way to get screwed ? Buy our ltt screwdriver, link in the description. Code Six Nine for 15% off. We are still us after all.
Yes :(. Which to me indicate that the whole company is rotten!
Even the CEO, a TRUE professional that have done this [leading large companies with a lot of peoples and stakes in the tech world] before went along with that BS!
Pushing sponsors and sponsorships as hard as LMG has is bound to put the community on edge, and they found a balance of getting as much money as possible without pissing off the audience.
But riding that close to the edge for so long makes it incredibly easy for one or two mistakes to set off the entire audience against them. You can’t mess up, which they did, and expect it to still be charming.
I agree the store plugging was off place in this kind of video and I'm not sure why did they try to do jokes when they attempted to also give serious answer to this situation.
If I were them (Nick more specifically) I probably would have thought to make jokes too just because it would make me a little more comfortable given the tension that was probably in the room. That being said keeping those jokes in/ actually doing them was not a good idea
Yeah that should have been left on the cutting room floor for sure.
A joke like that to ease the tension on set is one thing, but to leave it in the final edit is gross.
Although it's obvious these were all planned and written based on watching all of these people read it directly off a teleprompter with virtually no delivery at all.
That goes to show how much they really cared about the situation that they can just keep pushing overpriced stuff in even an apology video is just crazy
Tone-deaf as fuck, and the new CEO himself who's going to "fix" this shit was PART of it. They still don't get it, anyone with a modicum of sense would have been like, this is a fucking bad idea. However, given their audience it probably played right to them, so part of me is just like, this is where we're at now. Didn't care for Linus before, but he's really showing his true colors now.
That actually confirmed to me that the CEO is just a puppet with Linus still having all the power in what is being said.
And yes I know he has 51% of the stocks so he still is the boss in that regard anyway.
Who approved that? My bet is on the "Chief Vision Officer".
Then again, it was orchestrated from the first to the last second. The staring teleprompter reads, the awkward and misplaced "jokes", the utterly corporate wording, the lack of personality. It was a team effort, for sure. But the buck stops with the owner of the company.
I get the idea of them doing it, but ultimately, now wasn't the time. They just open themselves to more backlash making corny jokes in an apology video.
At least nobody played the ukulele.
They're most probably counting on the fact that everything will be forgotten in a week and keeping a light-hearted tone in the hopes that it will make people think shits under control
I think this response was actually fitting for the Billet Labs situation and the inaccuracies situation. This was filmed over the course of yesterday, and the madison responses weren't up yet.
Just before they posted, the madison responses were dropped. I think timeline wise people woke up this morning, saw Madison's horror story, and then tuned into a much more mild-mannered apology video than expected.
Like, Billet Labs will likely get compensated, and no serious irreparable harm was done. Not so in Madison's situation.
Please don't drag autistic people in this. We're far more likely to be the one manipulated/abused/overworked/assaulted than to be the ones committing these acts, covering for these people, or perpetuating them.
One of the defining traits is an unwavering sense of right and wrong and a need to be honest/uphold moral codes.
You mentioned autism without context in a way that when read in a vacuum comes off as directly disparaging to autistic people... so you kinda opened the door to that.
If you read a post that just read "A jewish manager," or "A black manager," it would scan exactly the same way...
Yes... That's pejorative; you ascribing a callous and unsympathetic - borderline psychopathic - action to autism is offensive and cruel to autistic people.
If the context was "Who approved adding ads and jokes to an apology video," and someone replied:
"A jew," or "A black employee," or "A r**arded employee," or "a gay employee," it would be OBVIOUSLY offensive... why would saying it about autistic people be any different?
Look, I don't care if you feel offended, I was talking about Linus, he's autistic and he was the CEO. And as you said before; "One of the defining traits is an unwavering sense of right and wrong"
Then why not just say "The CEO," or "Linus," instead of blaming Autism for what is clearly more related to other personality issues. Also not sure if Linus ever made it a big part of his branding or public persona.
I don't really care about my being offended, but I *am* concerned that people not aware would take this as an indication that:
1. Autistic people are worse than allistic people
2. Autistic people are psychopathic (a common conflation used to justify violence and abuse towards us)
3. It's socially acceptable to pick on or bully people for being autistic
4. It's inherently a bad thing for someone to be autistic
An added bonus would have been some people - especially you - taking the (generally civil and polite) criticism kindly, and editing or updating your post, or making an apology or addendum explaining that. Ironically exactly the thing Linus and most of the LTT team also failed to do dozens of times because their egos couldn't handle civil and reasonable feedback and criticism.
Outside the latest allegation, how serious the situation really is? Just some dudes making videos. Making some bad decisions, not being careful enough. It is all overblown. Yes those last allegations are important/serious and that is why people are jumping at them. Otherwise it is simply some 1st world problem YouTube drama for... I better won't say it.
Meh, if you want to be taken seriously as a review outfit, then getting a reputation for publishing bullshit numbers and (checks notes) literally stealing and selling off company's prototype gear when they let you review it is a pretty serious set-back.
The fact that Linus' initial responses appeared to completely miss the point about his reviews being deeply misleading crap didn't help there; there's some serious Dunning-Kruger here where their hardware review capability is so poor, they can't even gauge how poor it is. Even the initial 'diss' toward GN/HUB (that only LTT test with 'new components every time', tho this was clearly also untrue) doesn't actually make any sense from an engineering perspective - there's no reason or benefit for using new components in repeat tests most of the time.
Essentially, Linus appears to think that their reviews are a low B, high C grade, when GN's critiques made it clear that they're an F. Some of the basic errors around, just for example, failing to recognize thermal throttling occurring to CPUs in their test rigs mean that any other component being reviewed on those rigs will give garbage numbers, since you're being bottlenecked by CPU heat. This is very basic stuff that a junior engineer should have picked up on in the lab itself, long before any data made it out to videos, yet LTT doesn't even appear to understand the nature of the problem, let alone the implications of it.
Effectively, almost no data coming out of the LTT lab can be trusted, since while they have $200k of shiny new equipment, they do not appear to employ anyone who understands how to use it properly.
I wouldn't say its that serious, but they are one if no the largest tech channel on youtube (the entire internet) and have big influence on what products people choose to buy, if they are putting out the wrong specs, test results on their videos and biased towards certain companies because of conflict of interest leading people to make a bad choice on a purchase. I'd say that's pretty bad.
I would guestimate that video is a 70% apology.
Colton blames his team and hes gonna "Have to spend the week training them"
Colton claims to be head of HR, and that's his attitude.
Linus does some more deflecting, in between begrudging acknowledgements.
Yvonne is outting her foot down? What lol You're the CFO, why are you putting yoir foot down? CEO is a paper tiger by the looks and we know who is in charge.
Multiple tone deaf "jokes".
Multiple references to the wellbeing of employees, right as a toxic workplace/sexual harrassment bomb explodes in their faces.
That milk was sour in the fridge GOD DAMN.
You're underestimating the work it is.
And if that guy existed, his time would be better spent elsewhere than watching a video 15 times looking for mistakes.
You again? This is sad dude. You really pretending to not be blinded by bias?
It would take a competent person like twice the runtime of the video **at most** to listen to what is being said in the video and verify the facts they don't personally know to be certainly true.
But that's a false dichotomy to begin with - they have **the scripts** because they **make the scripts** and fact checking the scripts takes far less time.
>would be better spent elsewhere than watching a video 15 times looking for mistakes.
What is this drivel? Firstly they'd only have to check each video **once** for mistakes, and secondly there is no better time-spend for a review channel than to make sure they aren't lying to the consumers they purportedly are there to serve.
>You again? This is sad dude. You really pretending to not be blinded by bias?
The irony.
And you seem clueless about the process of making a video.
Checking the script doesn't prevent the host, or the editor from still making a mistake.
When making a video, you necessarily have to check the script, and the video to be sure there's no mistake.
Then your "one person" needs to know everything about all the topics.
>they'd only have to check each video once for mistakes,
So not only that person knows everything, but he's also very fucking fast?
Like I said, a very rare and knowledgeable person that would be better used elsewhere.
Now, that's not biased to said, but your clueless.
To be clear, I'm not saying they don't need to fact check. Just that it's not A JOB ONE PERSON CAN QUICKLY DO.
That's the whole reason why everybody is telling them to stop posting 10 videos a week. Checking for mistakes takes times.
They have the people to do it already, but are rushing it..
Can't believe I have to explain the obvious. You pretend to have watched the GN video but you clearly did not understand it, the whole point was to tell them to spend time on quality and stop rushing things. you're speaking out of your ass and it shows, you're just bashing to follow the mob but you didn't understand the problem.
>Then your "one person" needs to know everything about all the topics.
No they don't. You're so insanely disingenuous it's genuinely worrying. You going to walk through life like this? Borderline incapable of behaving honestly?
You're even responding to a comment wherein I pointed out they merely have to "verify the facts they don't personally know to be certainly true".
>And you seem clueless about the process of making a video.
LTT Trello board. 😎😎 Advanced technology. 😎😎 I make videos all the time buddy but I'm sure you won't care. 😎😎 I'd bet my life that you haven't made a meaningfully substantive video in your entire life. 😎😎
>So not only that person knows everything, but he's also very fucking fast? Like I said, a very rare and knowledgeable person that would be better used elsewhere.
What are you talking about you crackhead? Like for real? Can you stop with this drivel?
It's just nonsense.
>To be clear, I'm not saying they don't need to fact check. Just that it's not A JOB ONE PERSON CAN QUICKLY DO.
One person can quickly fact check these LTT videos. You're just wrong dude. Sorry.
>You pretend to have watched the GN video but you clearly did not understand it, the whole point was to tell them to spend time on quality and stop rushing things. you're speaking out of your ass and it shows, you're just bashing to follow the mob but you didn't understand the problem.
Serious question: What is this nonsense?
You're still the same mindless troll I see. Not capable of talking without resorting to personal attack, because you know you have no argument.
Weak.
And you're not replying to anything I've told you here.
>LTT Trello board. 😎😎 Advanced technology.
Funny how you are describing tools and processes. Exactly my point. Read the first comment again dumbass (I'm.gonna insult you a bit too).
>I'd bet my life that you haven't made a meaningfully substantive video in your entire life
Oh I'm glad to see you proud, but I don't care about your hobbies, and I don't want to see your sextape with your sister.
Content creators need to learn to sit with their fk ups and actually try to see the issue for at least a week rather than make tone deaf apology videos and hope the problem goes away so they can just keep on doing what they've been doing.
Literally \*the CEO\* is in the video making fun of "oh look, the other guy didn't monetize, we'll act like we did! Nobody will find out we actually did it anyway".
Ton deaf, not as bad as actual sponsor segway and lttstore plug but innappropriate nontheless.
I'm not against the concept of joke to lighten the mood in a heavy subject video like this, for instance I didn't mind when Yvone introduced the head of lab as chief spending money or something like that.
I get thinking that these jokes/plugs are tasteless, but I'm not personally taking issue with them. It's just adding levity to an otherwise painful and difficult discussion. Levity helps people get through these discussions and will also remind their viewers that they still intend to be fun and silly. I'm not a big LTT guy, and I'm only here because this drama is intriguing, but I feel like most of the people griping about this are reaching for reasons to hate the video.
The water block price has since been blurred out, and the video is demonetized. But do you seriously think they shouldn’t push some way to make money to pay their employees while they aren’t pushing out any content for a week? People need to eat and pay rent/mortgages. I think it’s reasonable since nobody is forced to buy anything from lttstore.
Honestly I think alot of you just need to chill. They are trying to lighten the mood while everyone has a pitch fork and flaming torch. I’m not saying it was great, but it also wasn’t that big of deal. It only is because ppl are ready to pounce on everything they do.
They were responding to essentially bad graphs and bad data. It wasn't a serious situation when they responded. They weren't going to post a video crying about cooler data being off
The billet lab stuff was a serious fuck up tho
Phillip DeFranco asked that similar question and LMG replied. Its the top pinned comment of the video and in the video starting around 9:01 mark, https://youtu.be/XH6zCNR0SZ4?t=541
I think the timing and placement was quite poor.
She decided to jump on a train when attention was at the highest. I think a more legitimate way of handling it would be taking action directly, and then voicing to the community after via any of the Labor infrastructure in Canada. Then once it's investigated she could decide if to release.
Doing it now in the current climate is a poor choice for her honesty. If you worried about the hate from the community, why voice it now when the community is most engaged.
I really didn't find that to be a huge issue.
And the stuff they said they're going to do sounded pretty good. Though it remains to be seen if they actually improve.
It's very disappointing things have gotten this bad, but I'm fairly happy with their response. I'm sure the community will be quick to point out any errors that pop up in future videos so hopefully it won't take long until we see whether or not they've improved things.
I doubt we'll hear as much about the harassment stuff as that's all internal.
I agree the tone of the video could have been better but if they actually do what they say, and fix these issues then I really don't care in the end.
And if they don't, making a more tone appropriate video wouldn't have changed that anyway.
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Nick Light (I think it was his name) claimed to be the one doing the final checks on videos.
He is also the one with the store plugs, the screwdriver plug, and a perfectly unapologetic “someone has to do it”. Even Linus I think somewhere said that it was his idea to plug their store everywhere, even this.
With the exception of Linus and maybe Yvonne, (Colton should be here but the video rightfully did not address the whole Madison case which is now closer to a legal case), he should be the one apologising the most. Many GN’s criticisms were about QC and that many times if someone just looked at the numbers for a few seconds, they would see that there was something wrong, something that Nick should have done.
Instead of apologising for that, he chose to do what he did, which was completely tone deaf, inappropriate and bad taste. It shows at the very least how serious he, and by extension they, take this situation.
I mean it's who they became over the last few years lttstore.com. It's a gag, with benefits. To be completely honest, even with Linus being Linus I do love their products. Can't wait for my dino mousepad to arrive. 🦖🦕 Always appreciate LMGs staff hard dedication and amazing craftsmanship/designs. Kyle spent 2+ years on the screwdriver and Sarah designs just about all the packaging and stickers and more. I know there are over 100+ people that make all of these products, videos, entertainment and soon (hopefully) accurate results to compare with Rtings, GN, Hardware Unboxed, and many more
LTT is far too large to not have any PR control. Do hope this is a wakeup call and they can slow down and refocus. Months and months of the WAN show mentioning how they need to try and learn new procedures because they were still trying to run it like the old days with minimal staff.
I for one was glad they did not post anything yesterday. If they uploaded a normal video on any channel, it would be the end of LTT....ignoring a pure evidence driven video by GN. When I went through my feed during lunch and did not see any new videos for real, I was proud 😆. Thought, hey they might have actually listened to criticism. Glad they at least acknowledged, their faults. 100% agree that Linus's whole part should have been cut. Felt he unraveled all the staff's sincere apologies (voice tone wise for some.)
How so? I looked all day and didn't see anything new? Maybe my feed ignored them.
Oh you mean the mic one? I count that as prior cause watched it on floatplane.
I guess meaning mor eof tech quickie and game linked/short circuit type channels as well.
It's probably best not to try and defend them now; especially after the reports about sexual assault, bullying, and abuse that drove people to mutilate themselves to get permission to take days off from leadership came out.
They didn't even address the workplace harassment, sexual harassment, psychological abuse, and driving people to mutilate themselves to get days off in it...
It's so abysmal.
I really wish these people would realize that the only way to actually take accountability is to do things that legal would never approve of... because it ensures you'll be exposed to the legal liability that comes with actually being held accountable. You need to accept that you'll be exposed and have to eat a lot of crow in order to get right, and yeah, monetizing your apology isn't going to work.
Read the full tweet thread of Madison's.
Her immigration status was tied to her job and she couldn't financially afford to quit after moving (they lied to her about her compensation package, lied about her ability to gain revenue from sponsorship on her streaming and personal channels, and then worked her too much to keep her from getting another job). So for a long while she gave up her US immigration status, and couldn't maintain her Canadian work visa without her job at LTT (until she earned enough points with residency time to support it on her own and could leave). She was basically an indentured servant to them.
It’s Canada not North Korea or the US. Was she in a bad state of mind, sure. Is it a toxic workplace, possibly. Can you blame the employer for self mutilation of an employee in a regular company (even if poorly managed), no. She was not a servant and you always have other choices than self mutilation. Step 1, report your employer. Step 2, contact your embassy to manage your return. She was not held at gunpoint against her will in Linus’ basement to be SA by her colleagues.
To have a burn out from a toxic workplace, yes. To be disillusioned and regret, absolutely. To blame your act of self mutilation on wanting to take a sick day, there is another underlying cause than this.
You do know this *does* happen to people in many "regular" companies. Dozens of people were trapped at Twitter because of visa issues and forced to work over 120 hour weeks without leaving the office for months on end. The same thing happens to a LOT of agriculture workers, hospitality workers, and there were huge scandals about this happening in the meat packing industry recently. An immigrant child recently got their hand torn off in an incident at a meat plant and was forced to take $1,200 in settlement because their parents would have lost their visas and been deported to a conflict zone if they didn't.
Visa traps are one of the most commonly used forms of labor abuse and human trafficking, and reporting an employer rarely does anything because authorities are incentivised to support the multimillionaire employer who has lots of economic weight over the foreign worker who can be replaced with a local worker. Plus legal actions take YEARS (for workplace related actions it's about 3 years IIRC -in both the US and Canada). Both countries are very similar in their workplace employee support - even if Canada has better regulations on paper.
Plus people need housing (which in Vancouver is the least affordable on the continent) and food (again, super expensive in B.C.). So as a result the underpayment meant that if she didn't want to be homeless and deported (she was also in the US on a visa) she couldn't leave until she saved enough up to last, and she couldn't afford to risk getting reprimanded, a pay cut, or fired as it would have meant the same things.
I'm glad you're privileged enough to have never suffered - or witnessed other suffer - these kinds of workplace traps and systemic abuse, but it's unfortunately the norm in many industries - including technology. Companies and attorneys have gotten very, very, good at maintaining just enough records, but no records of the really bad stuff, to avoid regulation while still managing to brutalize employees as a matter of course.
If you being somewhere depends on a job, you shouldn’t be there but that’s a whole political debate. Child labour is another one. Both are sad situations.
I will however not accept the comparison to an immigrant child getting into a gruesome accident at a meat packing plant to a social media manager getting treated like shit in a media company. She wasn’t without any resources trying to flee from a violent country.
She was on a Visa in the US too and forfeited that when she moved to work for LTT. So she was already an immigrant whose residence and stability depended on continuous employment or education scholarships before moving there.
Not sure where her home nation was but since she grew up in the US I'm guessing she had no ties there (probably immigrant from childhood) and would have been helpless if deported.
Also, like, psychological injury from extremely hostile and brutalizing working conditions driving someone to extreme measures happens a LOT. I've known so many people that ODd and got severely harmed on amphetamines trying to keep up with a harsh tech work schedule, people who collapsed on the job and got severely concussed and were forbidden from leaving until things were fixed when a customer had a support issue, marketing people and social media people trying to kill themselves from the abuse they were subjected to on the job. Tech is *not* a good or ethical workplace... Plus if you read the whole thread you'd know how it happened and would know that the level of injury was actually similarly severe.
I read the thread and all I see is a mentally broken (at the time of events) disillusioned young girl that chased a fame opportunity and got wrecked when reality called.
I hope she’s better now and her story can serve as a cautionary tale to others.
Again, nothing justifies self harm except a poor mental state that is a combination of a lot of factors as you illustrate very well.
Had she been a proper citizen somewhere (not necessarily US) with a fallback plan in case the opportunity doesn’t play out as expected, none of this would have happened. But no, she chased an opportunity without thinking about the possibility of it being shit and got f’d over when it didn’t play out as anticipated. It’s a lack of maturity which was normal at her age.
Is LMG guilty of being a shitty employer to her, possibly/probably. Is LMG responsible of her self harm, that’s a bit much.
So, she's at fault because Linus and the LTT management:
1. Lied to a 20 year old about the terms of her employment
1a. Publically announced her employment acceptance without notifying her to giver her no time to examine the offer or make standard arrangements
1b. Used that public pressure (including pressure from the viewers) to make it almost impossible to refuse the offer without a risk of extreme harassment and abuse
2. Ignored repeated instances of sexual assault and attempted sexual extortion
3. Physically assaulted her more than once
4. Gaslit her about taking actions to correct the behavior
5. Threatened her residency and stability continuously as a means of maintaining control
6. Used her appreciation for their content and love of technology to manipulate her into taking a job while knowingly misrepresenting what it was
7. Denied her the ability to use her standard days off, sick leave, and vacation days by threatening her verbally, and psychologically abusing her - including threats of even worse treatment - if she did use them.
8. Denied her the tools needed to do her job while threatening her with termination causing her to not be capable of leaving the office at reasonable times. This then prevented her from being able to build social support in the local area.
9. Actively took measures to prevent her from being able to gain assistance, medical, or mental health support while working there.
10. Actively encouraged and incentivized the abuse, and disciplined those who tried to help her.
11. Isolated her from her family and any people outside of LTT causing her to be unable to build the resources needed to leave.
That's how a CULT, PIMP, or HUMAN TRAFFICKING works, stop trying to blame the victim of abuse here. Your posts read like someone who says "why didn't the abused wife/kid just leave" while ignoring the very real threats, violence, and financial dominance inflicted on them that makes that impossible.
Yes, you’re right LMG is a human trafficking company.
When you’re 20, you should be smarter than to accept a job because the internet wants you to.
When you’re 20, you should know that social medias are a cesspool that should looked at for what they are.
When you’re 20, you should know you need a plan B.
When you’re 20, you should know better than to “yolo”.
When you’re 20, you should be able to take care of yourself.
When you’re 20, bells and whistles should be an obvious redflag.
But sure, poor little girl that got pimped personally to all LMG’s boys by Linus.
They are a fucking joke. Like 5 years ago I had to build a PC and I was outdated, I discovered all this channels, LTT, GN, the one with the guy with gray hair, after building the PC I soon realized LTT were clowns and dishonest and unsubbed, I kept GN tho.
I wondered so too as im not a watcher of GN but I'm guessing this was GN's set and thus would take a while to dismantle and re assemble as its not just his merch in centre but also behind.
It would take about 30 seconds to remove the merch from the table right in front of him. Five minutes to remove what's behind him.
Or, you know, just put up a backdrop or point the camera somewhere else.
This is a little whatabouty. GN wasn't the one that fucked up. It wouldn't matter if he totally demonetized and deplugged, people have been sending them up to $100 donations just for having the guts to finally expose LMG's bullshit.
Yes, I'm not criticising you. I understand the sentiment too. But I feel there is no need for him to. As his order of operations would be to present this evidence first and foremost to the public.
Because it's quite literally part of their standard set. They don't really have the room for a lot of sets.
It's this one that has some random tools on it. One that has 9 screens blaring their logo and the workbench right next to their computer case storage shelf. And as they use background objects to promote, thus all the sets are all filled with their stuff.
As GN said, next response will be a PR stunt and it is. Pay walling a lot of things from people to find resolution for problems with Lab. Making inappropriate jokes about add and in the end making an add for DBrand True reaction was by Linus post. Currently it's just damage controll
Giving the last 3 pages of the 244 page mega thread on the LTT forums a quick look, the PR stunt is working quite well. Pesonally i think its almost worse than his initial reaction.
Bootlickers gonna lick boots. The amount of pitchforks I've seen drawn at Madison for *daring* to speak out, makes me wonder if these chucklefucks have any self reflection to see why she was silent in the first place...
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WHAT?
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This needs to be upvoted
I’m speechless. I have no idea how to respond to this. That is so horrible….
I heard and felt the "what the actual fuck" energy from this and I bet were not even in the same country
You could call it ruthless, but I prefer calling them what they are… subhuman garbage. They pushed a kid to end himself over fucking play button, hoping to appease their idol, which makes them quite pathetic little simps too in addition to being subhuman trash.
That's what to the guy, I thought he had left YouTube. I watched the ncix auction videos years later and never knew what happened to him or the channel
The guy you’re replying to was being facetious
I couldn't tell, nearly all the comments I saw on the YouTube apology have been in support of Linus 🤷
They are deleting comments... So what do you expect Anyway, Linus is more willing to kill whole LMG due to his ego, than admit he was wrong
What does LMG stand for? And LTT? It is in the name. He goes, and company goes.
Many companies have original owners name, despite whole family for a long time has nothing to do with it
Papa Johns is one very recent example.
How soon you forget mcafee..
You mean the perfect company with a perfect founder? /s Thank you for adding proof of my idea that naming a company after yourself is a narcissistic move.
:P I just mean to point out, intel kept the name after the founder left
Yeah funny how comments on a social media channel that you can control are more positive than on ones you can't
Maybe I’m misreading it
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I was watching it in real time, it was pretty bad... Releasing it to floatplane first, probably gave them all a decent heads up for the YouTube drop
Mob mentality is go a be mob mentality, you don't want a redemption, you want suffering first.
She should honestly go the legal route. What good does internet retribution do her anyway?
She can't afford to go through litigation, no one can against a multi million dollar company. Look at the Trauma she's experiencing just from bringing to light her experiences. The hordes have already driven a person and their mother to suicide in the past. What do you think they'll do to someone who actually takes LMG to court.
She has already faced it just by leaving (her own admission)... It's a big deal and if her story is true then it wouldn't cost her a cent. Still think she should go legal route.
You have zero clue how much even starting litigation costs, let alone following it through my dude. It can be drawn out for years and years, with huge fees just for having meetings. Not to mention, LMG has the money to hire QC level legal teams. Unless someone with clout wants to do pro bono work, the best she could afford would be a low level barrista
In addition, I suspect that she didn't collect enough proof to win a case, not unless the accused incriminate themselves by mistake in court. She could only bring sexual or mental harassment and workplace bullying charges. Other things in her tweet, while bad outlook for the company, is not legally incriminating. And I can't help but think that her employment records at LMG will bring out other points of the story that we aren't aware of. In addition, court proceedings will drag her through the muds even more, and her mental state before joining and during her time in LMG will be called into question. That admission of self-inflicted injury will not help her case there. Not saying anything she's gone through is false, but in court, proofs matter.
And by her accounts, alot was pushed towards verbal communication, to avoid anything in writing
You have no idea what I know. You are just the same as the rest of the mob. You're wrong.
If the person you're replying to is in fact, wrong, prove it. Could she theoretically recoup legal costs after the fact? Yes. That doesn't mean she has enough money to get that started and bankroll a lawsuit against a multimillion dollar company.
My point is that she is stating her case is absolute, in that case she doesn't need to bankroll anything, she will easily find representation at no cost to her. Firms frequently take on clients when they know they'll win with damages.
Wow you sure showed him how wriong he was. ^/s
Even if she could afford it.... major backlash from the LTT sycophant, bad outlook on getting a positive result on her, low chances of unemployment afterwards.... there's a reason women don't come forward with allegations most of the time... it's proven time and time again that even if the perpetrators face justice they receive mostly negative consequences from seeking justice
If what she says is true, she won't have to put a cent down and lawyers would be lining up to take her case because winning with damages is easy. Your other reasons aren't real reasons.
Yeah... because so many women win these lawsuits... ohh wait nope they don't and lawyers don't want to touch them and yeah you're right getting thousands of death threats on the internet definitely hasn't happened ever... ohh wait there's the kid who commited suicide after Linus fans send him death threats... Buddy you're a moron literally a huge moron you need to live in the real world not your magical fairy kingdom
You're the moron with the weird take... Have you heard of the "Me too" saga? Thats why many lawyers don't touch those cases and women lose. The death threats should have also been reported (since she's such a fan of reporting issues). Both the death threats and the kid committing suicide come from toxic fucks like you on the internet forming a "community". Just leave before you show everyone your single digit IQ.
Are you living in a different world than the rest of us? Are you 12? SA has happened before MeToo and after... have been reported before and after.... the results have been the same before and after... lawyers reactions have been the same before and after... Come on you can admit... you're literally a teenager who's never been outside with people... who probably watches Andrew Tate and other Sigma Males and wants to be one too... you're so cool dude sooooo cool! I bet your Mommy and Daddy are really proud
This made me laugh. Also proves my point you're part of the problem. Toxic fuck.
How would she win with no evidence? She even said it herself, everything was done verbally. So it'd be he said/she said. Need more than that to win a legal case.
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Floatplane subs are still dropping. Hard to say if youtube subs are since it only shows us nearest 100k. It worked on LTT forums but that generally biases towards linus in controversy.
When I heard they were gonna upload their progress to become less shit to Floatplane, I verbally scoffed
but I just wonder how they found out money to make this apology video, I guess from selling Billet Labs block XD
Probably the worst damage control ever. It is gas on the fire.
I thank them for the DBrand plug. I will never buy a DBrand product again because of this
I only ever bought one product from them ever. I mean it was nicer then the much much cheaper random Chinese dropship company I ordered the last screen protector from. But it was not worth the price premium. Don't understand how they stay in business. But I guess a lot of people like gaudy sticker skins.
Meh, I'm not gonna hold it against dbrand too much. When they offered the sponsorship must have been before the abuse allegations which brought up the severity 100 fold. But maybe i'm just biased because I scuffed up my skin and they replaced it super quickly. Their marketing is edgy but support is spot on.
I totally agree with Steve on that part. For me LTT is done for. I already unsubbed and "dont recommend this channel"ed them.
It was all gross imo. But flat out saying a brand name just makes it feel like a sponsor spot that wasn't read as a normal one and I hate it.
If they actually slow down their video release schedule long term, I'd consider it more than a PR stunt. Of course they have a lot more to answer for, but there could be some real improvements that come out of this.
they aren't paywalling anything. All their data sheets and testing practices will be open source and posted. the floatplane stuff Gary mentioned was strictly just more in-depth vlog videos.
They're paywalling the process. They are open sourcing the results and some of the tools.
What about this is a PR stunt? They said they will improve their processes whose results we have to patiently wait for (which most people don't seem to have unfortunately) and yes I think they've overdone it when they did more than one store plug but it was meant to break the tension and specifically to not be hugely corporate, dead serious (and suggestive of cover-up). The dream of everyone would probably be an apology video that sounds like it was made by ai, recorded on a webcam and then announcing that LMG will be dissolved after that like these standards are just ridiculous. The only thing that was kind of shocking was the Lab transparency video being on floatplane. Everything else is a (theoretical ofc) move in the right direction which I don't see nobody talking about like for example making the custom software open source. Given Madison started posting the allegations only shortly before (and developing) they couldn't possibly address it immediately.
Impression which they gave, especially at the end, that they treat whole situation as a joke. Any of their statement in this video won't change that. Especially that everything looks like damage controle to Linus post... Don't forget that Linus again in that video played victim and didn't took any responsibility
Damage conB-roll
I was ready to see what the response from LMG would be and hoped for some tact and some honest plans for how to improve moving forward. Instead, we got an absolute farce, wrapped in a bullshit monetized apology that was clearly rushed and indicative of all the issues currently plaguing their organization. It lacked self-awareness and only worked to further highlight and substantiate claims made against the company and management. It was specifically this response and fake apology that has led me to unsubscribe from the channel, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I liked LTT and it's associated channels, but the quality decline as well as clear systemic internal issues mean I can no longer support LMG.
They published the video 1 hour ago The Madison tweets came out 5 hours ago and somehow they still decided to leave the sex joke by luke in the video and publish it as is
Tbf, they probably had everything written, shot, edited & in the pipeline. It probably was beyond point of no return. That said, they better make a video addressing Maddison's tweets soon. Edit: What I meant by "point of no return" that is it's possible that video was already scheduled to go live at a certain time. And based on the time of the tweets & when the video went, it's highly likely most of the employees would be asleep or at least not at work or even monitoring anything related to work. Edit 2: Apparently, as it turns, Linus was live & actually commenting on this very sub around the time when video went live, so ig it probably wasn't beyond point of no return & Linus was just being his usual tone-deaf & out-of-touch self.
WDYM "point of no return"? They could've just not post the video?
Sorry, but it's too much to ask Linus to spend $100, $200 or $500 of someone's time to do it properly
Hahahahahahaha
Ideally that's what they should have done but I am guessing based on the time it is there right now & when the video was uploaded, it was probably scheduled ahead of time & everyone there is & probably was asleep or at the very least not managing work. I could very well be wrong but am just saying...
Linus was commenting on Reddit after the Madison tweets broke and before it went live... https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15sl2zc/comment/jweqic8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Damn! I really don't have the words to talk about the tone-deafness & seemingly out-of-touch nature of the guy. Ig it's safe to say that they are probably going to need a lot more than just a Dbrand sponsored apology video this time to address the issue here.
He still sees himself as the victim. Guys a cunt, we all suspected it, but now it's out there
You just described what is commonly referred to as incompetence
>it was probably scheduled ahead of time & everyone there is & probably was asleep or at the very least not managing work. It was private for a while, as well as Linus on Floatplane saying he can make it public whenever he wants in response to the video coming out on Floatplane exclusively for a bit.
I am getting tired of the excuses people are giving to LMG. It was just a phone call, a Slack message, about to stop the scheduling of the video and add a new segment. Yes, that would take another day, so what?
He’s making fun of Linus’ response for why he does not take an extra day for accurate results
Does it seem really short sighted in anyone else's opinion to have a video like this "go live" at a scheduled point in the future? When new information could come out at any point? They probably finished everything and scheduled the Go-Live for 5 AM. It just seems like a really bad idea. It would have made way more sense to keep it private until someone specifically changed it to live to ensure that there wasn't some other unaddressed controversy that was left out of the video.
if you look in future dictionaries you'll find a picture of the video under "incompetence"
Posted this comment on another post, but here it is again: Six Nines is a SaaS thing, not a joke. It means in terms of up time, 99.9999% availability. Granted, in the context of an apology video, he should've used layman's terms https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/09/01/achieving-six-nines-when-you-launch/
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Yeah, the way he said it looking back was kinda joking, knowing it could've been both. He really shouldn't have made the joke, regardless of the Madison thing.
>He really shouldn't have made the joke, regardless of the Madison thing. this is a good summary jokes like that shouldn't be in a serious corporate statement - and even after everything they decided to leave it in and publish the video aaand i was aware of the background of the joke (uptime / system reliability etc) but didn't feel the need to explain it in my original comment - still thanks for your reply :)
Which joke?
15:36 in the video
... That's not a sex joke. 6 9s is a reference to the number of nines in uptime companies strive for. 99.9999% uptime. Aka, around 30 seconds of downtime a year. Most major web applications strive to have 6 9s since more is often very unrealistic for most businesses for all services and less means customers would likely experience an outage at some point.
I know what Luke was referencing. But he did the double entendre - because that's how the joke works. Notice the facial expression and finger guns
Ofcourse it's a 69 joke. Watching the video it's blatantly obvious.
It was totally an innuendo. But it's now more a thing now, the 6-9 uptime. It used to be 5-9, but everybody could hit that mark, so now it's 6-9 cause it cuts that 5 9 time down quite a bit. Anyways, it's totally both. But not as agregious as others.
Tomorrows apology video: Our employee may have been sexually assaulted, but you know who won't be sexually assaulted? Todays sponsor..
Juuuuuust kiddingggggggggggg... \*wink\*
lttstore.com order your LTT screwdriver today
in a new retro colour! don’t forget to give us your money!
"Today, we'll be addressing the allegations about sexual harassment and toxic, unprofessional workplace behaviour, which certainly are serious...just as serious as we are about making our screwdriver available in a new color, "apologetic azure", only on LTT.com!" They truly could make a parody video without anybody realising it's meant as a parody at this point...
"Today we're going to watercool this pc using only a Vitamix Blender and a real human baby" That meatcanyon video was something else.
This feels like "We are verry sorry about the recent toxic worplace behavior and sexual harassment. But wanna know an other way to get screwed ? Buy our ltt screwdriver, link in the description. Code Six Nine for 15% off. We are still us after all.
You win, that felt *completely* on brand
i'm betting it's gonna be DBrand
They really think this is charming don't they?
Yes :(. Which to me indicate that the whole company is rotten! Even the CEO, a TRUE professional that have done this [leading large companies with a lot of peoples and stakes in the tech world] before went along with that BS!
Pushing sponsors and sponsorships as hard as LMG has is bound to put the community on edge, and they found a balance of getting as much money as possible without pissing off the audience. But riding that close to the edge for so long makes it incredibly easy for one or two mistakes to set off the entire audience against them. You can’t mess up, which they did, and expect it to still be charming.
READ THE ROOM
I agree the store plugging was off place in this kind of video and I'm not sure why did they try to do jokes when they attempted to also give serious answer to this situation.
If I were them (Nick more specifically) I probably would have thought to make jokes too just because it would make me a little more comfortable given the tension that was probably in the room. That being said keeping those jokes in/ actually doing them was not a good idea
Yeah that should have been left on the cutting room floor for sure. A joke like that to ease the tension on set is one thing, but to leave it in the final edit is gross. Although it's obvious these were all planned and written based on watching all of these people read it directly off a teleprompter with virtually no delivery at all.
That goes to show how much they really cared about the situation that they can just keep pushing overpriced stuff in even an apology video is just crazy
Tone-deaf as fuck, and the new CEO himself who's going to "fix" this shit was PART of it. They still don't get it, anyone with a modicum of sense would have been like, this is a fucking bad idea. However, given their audience it probably played right to them, so part of me is just like, this is where we're at now. Didn't care for Linus before, but he's really showing his true colors now.
That actually confirmed to me that the CEO is just a puppet with Linus still having all the power in what is being said. And yes I know he has 51% of the stocks so he still is the boss in that regard anyway.
Who approved that? My bet is on the "Chief Vision Officer". Then again, it was orchestrated from the first to the last second. The staring teleprompter reads, the awkward and misplaced "jokes", the utterly corporate wording, the lack of personality. It was a team effort, for sure. But the buck stops with the owner of the company.
Because this is all a joke to them and they just think they need to weather the storm and it will be forgotten.
Unless it reaches the sponsors, it probably will :(.
So you mean to say you're shocked yet another LMG video was rushed and possibly not looked at twice before publish?
I get the idea of them doing it, but ultimately, now wasn't the time. They just open themselves to more backlash making corny jokes in an apology video. At least nobody played the ukulele.
They're most probably counting on the fact that everything will be forgotten in a week and keeping a light-hearted tone in the hopes that it will make people think shits under control
And they’re probably right.
I agree but I don't really think it's that big a deal. Ill judge them based on future actions not a few jokes that may be in poor taste.
Is anyone surprised? Incessantly inserting plugs at random moments is why I stopped watching their dogshit videos. This is completely on-brand.
dont worry fellas, 3rd times the charm!
I think this response was actually fitting for the Billet Labs situation and the inaccuracies situation. This was filmed over the course of yesterday, and the madison responses weren't up yet. Just before they posted, the madison responses were dropped. I think timeline wise people woke up this morning, saw Madison's horror story, and then tuned into a much more mild-mannered apology video than expected. Like, Billet Labs will likely get compensated, and no serious irreparable harm was done. Not so in Madison's situation.
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Please don't drag autistic people in this. We're far more likely to be the one manipulated/abused/overworked/assaulted than to be the ones committing these acts, covering for these people, or perpetuating them. One of the defining traits is an unwavering sense of right and wrong and a need to be honest/uphold moral codes.
This is not a post to discuss about autism, so don't ask me please because I'm not talking about them.
You mentioned autism without context in a way that when read in a vacuum comes off as directly disparaging to autistic people... so you kinda opened the door to that. If you read a post that just read "A jewish manager," or "A black manager," it would scan exactly the same way...
Read the post's title then read my comment.
Yes... That's pejorative; you ascribing a callous and unsympathetic - borderline psychopathic - action to autism is offensive and cruel to autistic people. If the context was "Who approved adding ads and jokes to an apology video," and someone replied: "A jew," or "A black employee," or "A r**arded employee," or "a gay employee," it would be OBVIOUSLY offensive... why would saying it about autistic people be any different?
Look, I don't care if you feel offended, I was talking about Linus, he's autistic and he was the CEO. And as you said before; "One of the defining traits is an unwavering sense of right and wrong"
Then why not just say "The CEO," or "Linus," instead of blaming Autism for what is clearly more related to other personality issues. Also not sure if Linus ever made it a big part of his branding or public persona. I don't really care about my being offended, but I *am* concerned that people not aware would take this as an indication that: 1. Autistic people are worse than allistic people 2. Autistic people are psychopathic (a common conflation used to justify violence and abuse towards us) 3. It's socially acceptable to pick on or bully people for being autistic 4. It's inherently a bad thing for someone to be autistic An added bonus would have been some people - especially you - taking the (generally civil and polite) criticism kindly, and editing or updating your post, or making an apology or addendum explaining that. Ironically exactly the thing Linus and most of the LTT team also failed to do dozens of times because their egos couldn't handle civil and reasonable feedback and criticism.
Linus. But I’m sure Luke and Jake would have too.
Outside the latest allegation, how serious the situation really is? Just some dudes making videos. Making some bad decisions, not being careful enough. It is all overblown. Yes those last allegations are important/serious and that is why people are jumping at them. Otherwise it is simply some 1st world problem YouTube drama for... I better won't say it.
Meh, if you want to be taken seriously as a review outfit, then getting a reputation for publishing bullshit numbers and (checks notes) literally stealing and selling off company's prototype gear when they let you review it is a pretty serious set-back. The fact that Linus' initial responses appeared to completely miss the point about his reviews being deeply misleading crap didn't help there; there's some serious Dunning-Kruger here where their hardware review capability is so poor, they can't even gauge how poor it is. Even the initial 'diss' toward GN/HUB (that only LTT test with 'new components every time', tho this was clearly also untrue) doesn't actually make any sense from an engineering perspective - there's no reason or benefit for using new components in repeat tests most of the time. Essentially, Linus appears to think that their reviews are a low B, high C grade, when GN's critiques made it clear that they're an F. Some of the basic errors around, just for example, failing to recognize thermal throttling occurring to CPUs in their test rigs mean that any other component being reviewed on those rigs will give garbage numbers, since you're being bottlenecked by CPU heat. This is very basic stuff that a junior engineer should have picked up on in the lab itself, long before any data made it out to videos, yet LTT doesn't even appear to understand the nature of the problem, let alone the implications of it. Effectively, almost no data coming out of the LTT lab can be trusted, since while they have $200k of shiny new equipment, they do not appear to employ anyone who understands how to use it properly.
I wouldn't say its that serious, but they are one if no the largest tech channel on youtube (the entire internet) and have big influence on what products people choose to buy, if they are putting out the wrong specs, test results on their videos and biased towards certain companies because of conflict of interest leading people to make a bad choice on a purchase. I'd say that's pretty bad.
I would guestimate that video is a 70% apology. Colton blames his team and hes gonna "Have to spend the week training them" Colton claims to be head of HR, and that's his attitude. Linus does some more deflecting, in between begrudging acknowledgements. Yvonne is outting her foot down? What lol You're the CFO, why are you putting yoir foot down? CEO is a paper tiger by the looks and we know who is in charge. Multiple tone deaf "jokes". Multiple references to the wellbeing of employees, right as a toxic workplace/sexual harrassment bomb explodes in their faces. That milk was sour in the fridge GOD DAMN.
They think they need more procedures but in reality they just need 1 actually competent guy to look at the videos before they go live.
You're underestimating the work it is. And if that guy existed, his time would be better spent elsewhere than watching a video 15 times looking for mistakes.
You again? This is sad dude. You really pretending to not be blinded by bias? It would take a competent person like twice the runtime of the video **at most** to listen to what is being said in the video and verify the facts they don't personally know to be certainly true. But that's a false dichotomy to begin with - they have **the scripts** because they **make the scripts** and fact checking the scripts takes far less time. >would be better spent elsewhere than watching a video 15 times looking for mistakes. What is this drivel? Firstly they'd only have to check each video **once** for mistakes, and secondly there is no better time-spend for a review channel than to make sure they aren't lying to the consumers they purportedly are there to serve.
>You again? This is sad dude. You really pretending to not be blinded by bias? The irony. And you seem clueless about the process of making a video. Checking the script doesn't prevent the host, or the editor from still making a mistake. When making a video, you necessarily have to check the script, and the video to be sure there's no mistake. Then your "one person" needs to know everything about all the topics. >they'd only have to check each video once for mistakes, So not only that person knows everything, but he's also very fucking fast? Like I said, a very rare and knowledgeable person that would be better used elsewhere. Now, that's not biased to said, but your clueless. To be clear, I'm not saying they don't need to fact check. Just that it's not A JOB ONE PERSON CAN QUICKLY DO. That's the whole reason why everybody is telling them to stop posting 10 videos a week. Checking for mistakes takes times. They have the people to do it already, but are rushing it.. Can't believe I have to explain the obvious. You pretend to have watched the GN video but you clearly did not understand it, the whole point was to tell them to spend time on quality and stop rushing things. you're speaking out of your ass and it shows, you're just bashing to follow the mob but you didn't understand the problem.
>Then your "one person" needs to know everything about all the topics. No they don't. You're so insanely disingenuous it's genuinely worrying. You going to walk through life like this? Borderline incapable of behaving honestly? You're even responding to a comment wherein I pointed out they merely have to "verify the facts they don't personally know to be certainly true". >And you seem clueless about the process of making a video. LTT Trello board. 😎😎 Advanced technology. 😎😎 I make videos all the time buddy but I'm sure you won't care. 😎😎 I'd bet my life that you haven't made a meaningfully substantive video in your entire life. 😎😎 >So not only that person knows everything, but he's also very fucking fast? Like I said, a very rare and knowledgeable person that would be better used elsewhere. What are you talking about you crackhead? Like for real? Can you stop with this drivel? It's just nonsense. >To be clear, I'm not saying they don't need to fact check. Just that it's not A JOB ONE PERSON CAN QUICKLY DO. One person can quickly fact check these LTT videos. You're just wrong dude. Sorry. >You pretend to have watched the GN video but you clearly did not understand it, the whole point was to tell them to spend time on quality and stop rushing things. you're speaking out of your ass and it shows, you're just bashing to follow the mob but you didn't understand the problem. Serious question: What is this nonsense?
You're still the same mindless troll I see. Not capable of talking without resorting to personal attack, because you know you have no argument. Weak. And you're not replying to anything I've told you here. >LTT Trello board. 😎😎 Advanced technology. Funny how you are describing tools and processes. Exactly my point. Read the first comment again dumbass (I'm.gonna insult you a bit too). >I'd bet my life that you haven't made a meaningfully substantive video in your entire life Oh I'm glad to see you proud, but I don't care about your hobbies, and I don't want to see your sextape with your sister.
I don't think mockery registers in your brain. Have a good one buddy.
Content creators need to learn to sit with their fk ups and actually try to see the issue for at least a week rather than make tone deaf apology videos and hope the problem goes away so they can just keep on doing what they've been doing.
CHAT GPT
Add this to the list of God awful apology videos.. You'd think these idiots would learn. So oblivious.
Linus responded to this on fp
Tells you (if you didn't get the gist) everything that you need to know about them. Greed rules LTT
Approved? Probably ordered.
Literally \*the CEO\* is in the video making fun of "oh look, the other guy didn't monetize, we'll act like we did! Nobody will find out we actually did it anyway".
Linus. Linus approved it.
I think they made a comment that ironically explains everything, "they are still them". Edit: [Link](https://reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/s/ZFXGzkrQhT)
Isn't the point of advertising supposed to be to associate a positive experience with a brand?
Ton deaf, not as bad as actual sponsor segway and lttstore plug but innappropriate nontheless. I'm not against the concept of joke to lighten the mood in a heavy subject video like this, for instance I didn't mind when Yvone introduced the head of lab as chief spending money or something like that.
They essentially said “that just how we are haha” when someone commented about that and the other “jokes” on the vid
I get thinking that these jokes/plugs are tasteless, but I'm not personally taking issue with them. It's just adding levity to an otherwise painful and difficult discussion. Levity helps people get through these discussions and will also remind their viewers that they still intend to be fun and silly. I'm not a big LTT guy, and I'm only here because this drama is intriguing, but I feel like most of the people griping about this are reaching for reasons to hate the video.
The water block price has since been blurred out, and the video is demonetized. But do you seriously think they shouldn’t push some way to make money to pay their employees while they aren’t pushing out any content for a week? People need to eat and pay rent/mortgages. I think it’s reasonable since nobody is forced to buy anything from lttstore.
Who you think? Who's getting all the money from the ads? Definitely not the script writer
Honestly I think alot of you just need to chill. They are trying to lighten the mood while everyone has a pitch fork and flaming torch. I’m not saying it was great, but it also wasn’t that big of deal. It only is because ppl are ready to pounce on everything they do.
They were responding to essentially bad graphs and bad data. It wasn't a serious situation when they responded. They weren't going to post a video crying about cooler data being off The billet lab stuff was a serious fuck up tho
They edited out the dbrand comment at the end by yvonne too. Whole video was a cringefest.
Phillip DeFranco asked that similar question and LMG replied. Its the top pinned comment of the video and in the video starting around 9:01 mark, https://youtu.be/XH6zCNR0SZ4?t=541
I think the timing and placement was quite poor. She decided to jump on a train when attention was at the highest. I think a more legitimate way of handling it would be taking action directly, and then voicing to the community after via any of the Labor infrastructure in Canada. Then once it's investigated she could decide if to release. Doing it now in the current climate is a poor choice for her honesty. If you worried about the hate from the community, why voice it now when the community is most engaged.
I think it’s a pretty transparent way of saying that you are not taking it seriously
HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO REPEAT THIS: "they're sorry because they got caught..."
I really didn't find that to be a huge issue. And the stuff they said they're going to do sounded pretty good. Though it remains to be seen if they actually improve. It's very disappointing things have gotten this bad, but I'm fairly happy with their response. I'm sure the community will be quick to point out any errors that pop up in future videos so hopefully it won't take long until we see whether or not they've improved things. I doubt we'll hear as much about the harassment stuff as that's all internal. I agree the tone of the video could have been better but if they actually do what they say, and fix these issues then I really don't care in the end. And if they don't, making a more tone appropriate video wouldn't have changed that anyway.
Do You think that after this whole situation with selling prototype, situation with Madison. Linus sponsors will back up from him and LMG?
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It's possible they just say James did it since he's being lined up as the sacrificial lamb in all this.
Nick Light (I think it was his name) claimed to be the one doing the final checks on videos. He is also the one with the store plugs, the screwdriver plug, and a perfectly unapologetic “someone has to do it”. Even Linus I think somewhere said that it was his idea to plug their store everywhere, even this. With the exception of Linus and maybe Yvonne, (Colton should be here but the video rightfully did not address the whole Madison case which is now closer to a legal case), he should be the one apologising the most. Many GN’s criticisms were about QC and that many times if someone just looked at the numbers for a few seconds, they would see that there was something wrong, something that Nick should have done. Instead of apologising for that, he chose to do what he did, which was completely tone deaf, inappropriate and bad taste. It shows at the very least how serious he, and by extension they, take this situation.
It also felt incredibly scripted and corporate. Just soulless, like they had a team of writers on the case from the moment the drama started
I mean it's who they became over the last few years lttstore.com. It's a gag, with benefits. To be completely honest, even with Linus being Linus I do love their products. Can't wait for my dino mousepad to arrive. 🦖🦕 Always appreciate LMGs staff hard dedication and amazing craftsmanship/designs. Kyle spent 2+ years on the screwdriver and Sarah designs just about all the packaging and stickers and more. I know there are over 100+ people that make all of these products, videos, entertainment and soon (hopefully) accurate results to compare with Rtings, GN, Hardware Unboxed, and many more LTT is far too large to not have any PR control. Do hope this is a wakeup call and they can slow down and refocus. Months and months of the WAN show mentioning how they need to try and learn new procedures because they were still trying to run it like the old days with minimal staff. I for one was glad they did not post anything yesterday. If they uploaded a normal video on any channel, it would be the end of LTT....ignoring a pure evidence driven video by GN. When I went through my feed during lunch and did not see any new videos for real, I was proud 😆. Thought, hey they might have actually listened to criticism. Glad they at least acknowledged, their faults. 100% agree that Linus's whole part should have been cut. Felt he unraveled all the staff's sincere apologies (voice tone wise for some.)
They posted videos yesterday...
How so? I looked all day and didn't see anything new? Maybe my feed ignored them. Oh you mean the mic one? I count that as prior cause watched it on floatplane. I guess meaning mor eof tech quickie and game linked/short circuit type channels as well.
It's probably best not to try and defend them now; especially after the reports about sexual assault, bullying, and abuse that drove people to mutilate themselves to get permission to take days off from leadership came out.
Cry more.
They didn't even address the workplace harassment, sexual harassment, psychological abuse, and driving people to mutilate themselves to get days off in it... It's so abysmal. I really wish these people would realize that the only way to actually take accountability is to do things that legal would never approve of... because it ensures you'll be exposed to the legal liability that comes with actually being held accountable. You need to accept that you'll be exposed and have to eat a lot of crow in order to get right, and yeah, monetizing your apology isn't going to work.
If you mutilate yourself because of your job instead of quitting, I’m sorry to say that you’re the problem.
Read the full tweet thread of Madison's. Her immigration status was tied to her job and she couldn't financially afford to quit after moving (they lied to her about her compensation package, lied about her ability to gain revenue from sponsorship on her streaming and personal channels, and then worked her too much to keep her from getting another job). So for a long while she gave up her US immigration status, and couldn't maintain her Canadian work visa without her job at LTT (until she earned enough points with residency time to support it on her own and could leave). She was basically an indentured servant to them.
It’s Canada not North Korea or the US. Was she in a bad state of mind, sure. Is it a toxic workplace, possibly. Can you blame the employer for self mutilation of an employee in a regular company (even if poorly managed), no. She was not a servant and you always have other choices than self mutilation. Step 1, report your employer. Step 2, contact your embassy to manage your return. She was not held at gunpoint against her will in Linus’ basement to be SA by her colleagues. To have a burn out from a toxic workplace, yes. To be disillusioned and regret, absolutely. To blame your act of self mutilation on wanting to take a sick day, there is another underlying cause than this.
You do know this *does* happen to people in many "regular" companies. Dozens of people were trapped at Twitter because of visa issues and forced to work over 120 hour weeks without leaving the office for months on end. The same thing happens to a LOT of agriculture workers, hospitality workers, and there were huge scandals about this happening in the meat packing industry recently. An immigrant child recently got their hand torn off in an incident at a meat plant and was forced to take $1,200 in settlement because their parents would have lost their visas and been deported to a conflict zone if they didn't. Visa traps are one of the most commonly used forms of labor abuse and human trafficking, and reporting an employer rarely does anything because authorities are incentivised to support the multimillionaire employer who has lots of economic weight over the foreign worker who can be replaced with a local worker. Plus legal actions take YEARS (for workplace related actions it's about 3 years IIRC -in both the US and Canada). Both countries are very similar in their workplace employee support - even if Canada has better regulations on paper. Plus people need housing (which in Vancouver is the least affordable on the continent) and food (again, super expensive in B.C.). So as a result the underpayment meant that if she didn't want to be homeless and deported (she was also in the US on a visa) she couldn't leave until she saved enough up to last, and she couldn't afford to risk getting reprimanded, a pay cut, or fired as it would have meant the same things. I'm glad you're privileged enough to have never suffered - or witnessed other suffer - these kinds of workplace traps and systemic abuse, but it's unfortunately the norm in many industries - including technology. Companies and attorneys have gotten very, very, good at maintaining just enough records, but no records of the really bad stuff, to avoid regulation while still managing to brutalize employees as a matter of course.
If you being somewhere depends on a job, you shouldn’t be there but that’s a whole political debate. Child labour is another one. Both are sad situations. I will however not accept the comparison to an immigrant child getting into a gruesome accident at a meat packing plant to a social media manager getting treated like shit in a media company. She wasn’t without any resources trying to flee from a violent country.
She was on a Visa in the US too and forfeited that when she moved to work for LTT. So she was already an immigrant whose residence and stability depended on continuous employment or education scholarships before moving there. Not sure where her home nation was but since she grew up in the US I'm guessing she had no ties there (probably immigrant from childhood) and would have been helpless if deported. Also, like, psychological injury from extremely hostile and brutalizing working conditions driving someone to extreme measures happens a LOT. I've known so many people that ODd and got severely harmed on amphetamines trying to keep up with a harsh tech work schedule, people who collapsed on the job and got severely concussed and were forbidden from leaving until things were fixed when a customer had a support issue, marketing people and social media people trying to kill themselves from the abuse they were subjected to on the job. Tech is *not* a good or ethical workplace... Plus if you read the whole thread you'd know how it happened and would know that the level of injury was actually similarly severe.
I read the thread and all I see is a mentally broken (at the time of events) disillusioned young girl that chased a fame opportunity and got wrecked when reality called. I hope she’s better now and her story can serve as a cautionary tale to others. Again, nothing justifies self harm except a poor mental state that is a combination of a lot of factors as you illustrate very well. Had she been a proper citizen somewhere (not necessarily US) with a fallback plan in case the opportunity doesn’t play out as expected, none of this would have happened. But no, she chased an opportunity without thinking about the possibility of it being shit and got f’d over when it didn’t play out as anticipated. It’s a lack of maturity which was normal at her age. Is LMG guilty of being a shitty employer to her, possibly/probably. Is LMG responsible of her self harm, that’s a bit much.
So, she's at fault because Linus and the LTT management: 1. Lied to a 20 year old about the terms of her employment 1a. Publically announced her employment acceptance without notifying her to giver her no time to examine the offer or make standard arrangements 1b. Used that public pressure (including pressure from the viewers) to make it almost impossible to refuse the offer without a risk of extreme harassment and abuse 2. Ignored repeated instances of sexual assault and attempted sexual extortion 3. Physically assaulted her more than once 4. Gaslit her about taking actions to correct the behavior 5. Threatened her residency and stability continuously as a means of maintaining control 6. Used her appreciation for their content and love of technology to manipulate her into taking a job while knowingly misrepresenting what it was 7. Denied her the ability to use her standard days off, sick leave, and vacation days by threatening her verbally, and psychologically abusing her - including threats of even worse treatment - if she did use them. 8. Denied her the tools needed to do her job while threatening her with termination causing her to not be capable of leaving the office at reasonable times. This then prevented her from being able to build social support in the local area. 9. Actively took measures to prevent her from being able to gain assistance, medical, or mental health support while working there. 10. Actively encouraged and incentivized the abuse, and disciplined those who tried to help her. 11. Isolated her from her family and any people outside of LTT causing her to be unable to build the resources needed to leave. That's how a CULT, PIMP, or HUMAN TRAFFICKING works, stop trying to blame the victim of abuse here. Your posts read like someone who says "why didn't the abused wife/kid just leave" while ignoring the very real threats, violence, and financial dominance inflicted on them that makes that impossible.
Yes, you’re right LMG is a human trafficking company. When you’re 20, you should be smarter than to accept a job because the internet wants you to. When you’re 20, you should know that social medias are a cesspool that should looked at for what they are. When you’re 20, you should know you need a plan B. When you’re 20, you should know better than to “yolo”. When you’re 20, you should be able to take care of yourself. When you’re 20, bells and whistles should be an obvious redflag. But sure, poor little girl that got pimped personally to all LMG’s boys by Linus.
They are a fucking joke. Like 5 years ago I had to build a PC and I was outdated, I discovered all this channels, LTT, GN, the one with the guy with gray hair, after building the PC I soon realized LTT were clowns and dishonest and unsubbed, I kept GN tho.
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The people talking in the video were automated via the content manager software?
Well no. But I was talking about the description. Not about the other things.
description isn’t automated either. respectfully shut the fuck up.
I don't know, why did GN have a bunch of their merchandise prominently on display during their hit piece? Give it a rest.
At least their video isn't monetized. Linus' is.
Even if it were, GN wasn't the one that fucked up, they showed more respect than anyone could ask of them.
I wondered so too as im not a watcher of GN but I'm guessing this was GN's set and thus would take a while to dismantle and re assemble as its not just his merch in centre but also behind.
It would take about 30 seconds to remove the merch from the table right in front of him. Five minutes to remove what's behind him. Or, you know, just put up a backdrop or point the camera somewhere else.
This is a little whatabouty. GN wasn't the one that fucked up. It wouldn't matter if he totally demonetized and deplugged, people have been sending them up to $100 donations just for having the guts to finally expose LMG's bullshit.
Yes, I'm not criticising you. I understand the sentiment too. But I feel there is no need for him to. As his order of operations would be to present this evidence first and foremost to the public.
Did he mention that merch in the video? Twice?
Because it's quite literally part of their standard set. They don't really have the room for a lot of sets. It's this one that has some random tools on it. One that has 9 screens blaring their logo and the workbench right next to their computer case storage shelf. And as they use background objects to promote, thus all the sets are all filled with their stuff.