- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ml
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Since Zuck v. Musk is never gonna happen I can now look forward to Tech Jesus v. Linus
Wait, if Ian is Gun Jesus, and Karl is Gun Satan, and Steve is Tech Jesus, then…
Holy shit. LTT is really not doing themselves any favors by starting this.
The faulty stuff they put out without even feeling bad about it is insane.
Once again, problems from the top down. Fish rots at the head and all that. Now they have leadership with significant conflicts of interest on top of prioritizing quantity of content over accuracy and with no sense of responsibility to the industry or the audience.
Makes me ill to see how they doubled down on their bullshit error with callous disregard for the startup they’re screwing, then basically stealing the company’s prototype.
If it were one or two errors maybe not the biggest deal. But the problems seem to be quite common (well they are putting out a shit ton of videos) and aren’t properly corrected. The problems are clearly deeply systemic.
There are a LOT of aspects to that video that are going to overshadow everything, but the segment on the “random” CPU review they watched (I think it was Jake talking about a recent Ryzen?) is one that more channels could learn from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc&t=1193s
Over-summarizing, but GN point out that building your benchmarking around trying to match a company’s public benchmarks and then checking with them if it is okay (and then a weird comment about how not matching those would have made LMG one of the only outlets to not have favorable results?). Yeah, there were a LOT of false specs and blah blah blah.
I see other channels make the same mistake. They are more interested in vetting their review process against the press releases. That is not reviewing. That is regurgitating a press release.
The actual way to review is to try to reproduce. If you can’t, you reach out to your contact or the press team for that company. If you can’t reconcile, you publish and explain in detail what is going on. If you can’t build a proper hypothesis on why your data is different? Then you aren’t qualified to review shit. You don’t have to be right (corrections are a thing) but you do have to be willing to take down your video if you are wrong (one of the bigger issues).
Because… marketing can and will lie.
I’m glad to see GN put a piece like this out. I like LTT, enjoy a fair amount of their content, and I even like Linus as a person for the most part (from what can be seen publicly, no one is perfect and maybe he eve sucks IRL, I don’t know), but I have had a number of issues with some of Linus’ “takes” and the quality of the content that has been put out.
I think Linus is better than a lot of people I have met in recognizing certain biases, but he still has them and he will sometimes dig in on certain things rather than even acknowledge the what or why of the other side of the argument (a good example being the “trust me bro” stuff).
A personal critique I have of a lot of their graphs and charts is that the colors often don’t make any sense, nor are they very color blind friendly. I’m not myself, but I do generate a lot of graphs and such in my professional life and I think it could be done in a lot better way.
Then again who cares about what I think, I’m just some rando on the internet.
I am curious to see if Linus watches the whole video before he responds. He does have a tendency it seems to just ask for a summary or to just kinda scrub through and not pay attention.
This weeks WAN show will be spicy. If the staff begs for for a short acknowledgement and to adress it better next week it will still be spicy.
Linus is like me in digging a bigger hole then he was in to begin with amd doubling down on it even in the kid fell in the well.
Also personally I think the graphs change or disappear way too quickly for me to actually look over the data without pausing which is just bad design
I agree, though I also kinda understand “why”. They have never stated this explicitly, but the impression I get is that they intend for you to pause the video if you want to interrogate the graphs more closely. Not the choice I would make, but in a vacuum I can understand it. The cynic in me says going through graphs quickly is a way to hide sloppy work.
I used to enjoy LTT as an entertainment channel but I never watched it to gain any insight on the parts they covered. This is a great breakdown of why they cannot be trusted, and it’s really sad to see Linus continue to die on the hill.
LTT, and the LMG empire, are very much in a similar category to MKBHD in terms of what they are “capable” of. Mostly qualitative reviews with light benchmarking but done in a way that highlights the common use cases for products. And with the occasional fun zany bit.
The difference is that Marques doesn’t pretend he is running a giant warehouse full of testing equipment. He’ll run a few benchmarks, get a few numbers out of an app, etc. His interest is not the “objective” quality of the samsung phone but instead its performance in cases that his viewers would care about.
And that was LTT until a year or two back. Most of their videos were either fun builds (which also highlight the parts that “just fit” everything) or quick reviews with some benchmarks from a few games. And there is nothing wrong with that. They go a bit overboard (because it is funny), but GN’s prebuilt PC review series is almost exactly that (by design).
But ever since LMG tried to push themselves with “Lab”, there have been pretty much constant errors because all these test processes they are developing in house are… bad. Like, I was curious when they did the ear model test so during gaming night I asked a buddy to ask his wife (she actually works for one of the bigger headphone companies as a designer) about that. Not sure how much PII I have leaked so I won’t do a verbatim, but her general response was “Nobody cares about that when they are listening to spotify” and “The people who think they do are the same ones who give a shit about psychoacoustics”.
And same here. A lot of this shit is incredibly basic. But it is the kind of problem that comes from going from 0 to 30 without ever trying to coast through a parking lot.
And, just to make it clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with MKBHD content (well, they do tend to come across kind of shilly in a lot of videos but that is more the nature of the beast). I… probably don’t need a full GN video for a case. But knowing there is one and I can skim through helps me decide which one I will buy. I did not need a full teardown and analysis of the thermals and performance of my tablet. Whereas Marques’s “here is how I tend to use it” style video pushed me over during the Best Buy sale. Different review styles are good for different content.
LTT had a video where they rolled dice to build a computer that they were giving away (or “selling” for a dollar to avoid the legal issues around a giveaway, though IMO loopholes like that should be closed), and it was a bit of a shitshow where they were making/adjusting the rules as they went because some of the parts weren’t even compatible.
But the main point I’m making is when they were rolling for the GPUs, they even mentioned that a few of the GPUs they had as potential give away ones were ones that they didn’t own and that the company wanted back. No “oops” discovered after the fact, they said right in the video that it wasn’t theirs to sell but they were doing it anyways. They were EVGA cards that they wanted for their museum IIRC.
Not to mention the whole having a big sale where they make money from review samples sent to them for free seems shady. Like if they want to sell the hardware they bought themselves, fine, or if they are getting permission from the manufacturer or vendor to sell them, ok. But the fact that they sold that company’s best prototype despite clear indication that they wanted it back, not even at some vague future point but “right now” implies to me that LTT either doesn’t care or is so poorly organised that they are unable to manage borrowing inventory. I hope there were or are legal repercussions for that sale.
My best guess was: Communication is bad. The company is very new and growed way too fast, way too big.
Even the company I work at has these issue and is only 20 colleague strong and 25 years old.
Now imagine that, a boss with adhd, bad communication and too much power for someone untrained to be an executive for a >100 employee strong company.Yep. This stuff happens even in big corps with trained professionals trying to look out for the stuff.
If record-keeping & communication falter, things slip through the cracks that are made. These guys have so much hardware coming in and out that I can imagine the cracks are much wider due to their situation like you said.
The fact that half his employees steal gear from the office for their own use and it’s treated like a joke very much backs up your point.
It seems like Linus is slowly having bigger and bigger community reactions like this and this one is significantly bigger than the backpack.
OOTL, what happened with the backpack?
Warranty disputes between Linus opinion why it does not require a warranty and the actions of support speak for themselve (which I can partly vouch for.)
Context: Ordered a mousepad, a hoddie and a shirt.
Received a mousepad, deskpad and a shirt.
Contacted support. They send the missimg hoodie for free. It arrived but with a hole in the sleeve. I asked if they want it sent back. They refused and imstead send me a second hoodie (each hoodie is worth about 60€ + shipping + import tax to europe.Anyway: Community basically demanded a written warranty and Linus caved with the TrustMeBro warranty which is kindly named after his earlier claim of “Trust me, community. If I bleep and backstab you up the outcry would be louder than I can protect against. Literally trust me”. (not a literal quote but the gist of it).
Also he released a tongue in cheek joke shirt with a printed “Trust Me bro” and all following expensive items have this warranty name written.
Take from that what you want. His intentions are good, the actions are even for a tone-deaf like me poorly executed.
When he complained about the backpack there was a point where he was complaining about being liable for it, while arguing that he would do the right thing, he just didn’t want to be legally required to do the right thing.
In practice, they’ve been good so far, handling what looks like frequent and inconvenient mistakes, but he explicitly wanted the right to not be good and folded when it justifiably angered/upset his trusting fans.
It was like a veil was lifted for a second.
I don’t quite get what you ment with your last sentence. Could you elaborate further?
Not OP, but basically:
He wanted to not be held accountable by a written warranty. It’s all nice and cool when he acts nice and cool and gives you the replacements, but ultimately, what he wants is to sell you stuff that lacks an actual warranty, which can only have one reason: you want to be able to say “fuck you” to the customer when the time arrives.
If you trust the product so much and you want the community (and your customers) to trust you and pay you like 300€ or whatever the cost of that bag is (which is very expensive for a lot of people), you do the right thing, which is writing down a warranty and honoring it. If your intentions are good, there is no reason to not do so.
Understandble and agree with every point.
If I remember correctly, the community and customers asked if the LTT backpack, with its premium price tag, could have a lifetime warranty similar to other backpack products. The response from LTT was “No,” and the reasoning behind that answer didn’t really convince people.
I remember Linus saying something to the effect that he didn’t want to put any potential future burden on the LTT business, or his family (I believe Linus’ wife is also a stakeholder in the business) in the event he was not around.
My hot take, I got the sense that Linus believed in the backpack as a good product, but didn’t want to lock himself into supporting it for a long time.
pretty sure that’s inaccurate, the main reason for his knee jerk reaction (that he acknowledged was stupid) was that he knows that those warranties are basically useless, it only matters whether the company behind it actually wants to uphold it or not, he said he wants to uphold the warranty so what’s written in the warranty doesn’t really matter, hence the trust me bro warranty.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve watched LTT and even back then I found their reviews often suspect even back then especially with their TV reviews. It’s really sad to see how badly they’re doing now with them trying to become tech reviewers.
The new CEO should try to help with remediating things with Billet Labs. It’s one of the worst things, I feel. Auctioning off one of their only prototype water blocks instead of returning it when asked? Yikes.
I guess anything sent out for review should be sent with some kind of contract and terms.
Can someone provide a TL;DR?
Due to a lack of interest, time or both, LTT channel and its parent company LMG have made several unethical decisions. They rush to flood the brand with videos. As a result write and say things that are straight up false, either intentionally or unintentionally. Upsetting other tech journalists, potentially misrepresenting various companies, and misleading viewers to make bad purchase decisions with misinformation. Several examples are described in the video. Essentially LTT drama is created by their own lack of ethical and technical oversight. LTT calling out other, more technically capable, YT channels is a common blunder as it draws attention to their mistakes. Any serious tech company should avoid LTT like the plague.
That sucks, so basically they’re acting like a bunch of amateurs. Shame because LTT was what got me into the tech YouTube. Thanks for the recap
They stole and sold a prototype, by accident allegedly. Their negligence is borderline criminal.
