Linus Tech Tips returns with commitment to error checks, transparency, and employee well-being

[midian182]

In context: Massively popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips released its first video in ten days over the weekend following allegations of unethical behavior, inaccuracies, and sexual harassment. Founder Linus Sebastian laid out the steps that are being taken to address the raised issues, including slowing down the number of videos that the Linus Media Group (LMG) uploads every day. He also slammed those who have threatened, harassed, and bullied LMG employees since the furor began.

You can read this detailed walkthrough of how LMG ended up pausing production after being called out by rival YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. GN's Steve Burke highlighted problems with LMG focusing on quantity over quality and rushing out videos, hardware review errors, asterisked errors, and ethical concerns such as Sebastian's investment in laptop company Framework. But the biggest criticism was reserved for a review of a prototype watercooling block called the Monoblock from Billet Labs, which was sold by LMG in a charity auction without the manufacturer's permission.

Separately, former employee Madison Reeve made several allegations against LMG, including fostering a toxic work environment, sexual harassment from employees, and ruining her mental health. Reeve also said the company barred her from videos after she reported being grabbed multiple times in the office.

Sebastian and the top LMG team members responded to the accusations in a video (above). It was confirmed that a week-long break was required to address the issues; there was also some criticism over the video initially being monetized and containing a plug for Lttstore.com.

The seven-day break ended up being ten days, with Sebastian finally returning on Saturday. He talked about identifying challenges within the company and slowing down video output to verify content and accuracy.

Sebastian also revealed an extensive new Video Error Handling Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

The actions taken against errors range from pinned comments for low-severity mistakes to entire videos being remade or removed if a statement is very incorrect. In addition to a dedicated Labs team checking benchmarks, there will be an error-checking community group, which currently consists of "fewer than 10 extremely knowledgeable" Linus Tech Tips community members to verify the accuracy of the company's videos.

Sebastian wants to move LMG beyond being "just entertainment," a complaint many have leveled at the company over the last few years, to become an authoritative voice on tech.

Other promises made in the video include extra benefits for LMG employees, improving business transparency and item tracking, and doubling mental health counseling for workers in response to the recent harassment that many have experienced. "In recent weeks, a shocking number of our team members have been harassed, bullied, and even threatened on social media," Linus said. "You know who you are, and shame on you".

As for the Reeve allegations, Sebastian said, "Our HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations, and when we are ready, we will release a more complete statement." An internal communications letter from CEO Terren Tong that appears in the video references the allegations: "Starting with the process with the external investigator, we have found a firm now and are working on next steps," it reads.

According to Social Blade, Linus Tech Tips has lost 200,000 subscribers since the incident began, though the channel still has 15.4 million subs. Associated channel TechQuickie is down 30,000 while ShortCircuit fell by 40,000. Floatplane, LMG's streaming service that offers extra content, is estimated to have lost over 5,000 subs who pay either $5 or $10 per month.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99932-linus-sebastian-returns-commitment-error-checks-transparency-employee.html

 

[Puiu]

They lost a lot of money off of this drama.

Don't harass others online for stupid reasons, be smart, not 12 yo trolls.

 

[Nanochip]

Linus could’ve handled the initial criticism far better. But this is nonetheless a good outcome. I wish them success. I wish all tech media success.

 

[OortCloud]

This whole thing has been so overblown.
The internet is riddled with people who love to get indignant, overly emotional and self-righteous about things that really don't concern them at all.

 

[Nobina]

People in the company are mentally 13 and people are surprised content is **** and people are getting harrased or lying about it.

 

[Dimitriid]

1) The treatment of Billet Labs was outright malicious but he's still trying to claim incompetence by an employee...An employee who is so evidently incompetent it was already a meme that he was gonna get fired years before all of this even happened with Billet Labs.

Sorry but that's still trying to sweep it under the rug by trying to blame it on one of the companies' buffoons: It completely disregards Linus outright lying to the public until Gamers Nexus got a request for comment from Billet Labs that shown this to be the case and revealed the timeline of events as well so, this means there's basically no change. He should at the very least actually fire Colton since nobody is incompetent enough to just 'Forget to send the email to the company!' And then forget for months about them not verifying if there was any replies and not making any further attempts at contacting them which is clearly BS.

2) The second deal is the situation with Madison Reeve: Some managers and probably Linus himself need to lose their jobs if he was truly serious about fixing that situation. This plan is probably laughable to any active LTT employees: They don't need psychological counceling they need for their managers to be removed from the company immediately at least until the supposedly third party investigation is concluded yet nothing like that was announced. Claiming that the harrassment also comes 'from social media' while not innacurate is a disgustingly transparent attempt at distracting people from the allegations of harassment from the company's own managers internally.

Instead all Linus has done is mixing both the worst parts of corporate talk and the worst parts about his ego driven personality in just youtube apology fodder: About the only positive this entire thing has is that at least he didn't use a ukelele to sing the apology but I'd even argue that the initial forum reply blaming Gamers Nexus and lying about Billet Labs is at least as bad as the singing apology lady anyways.

Only issue is that he didn't bleed enough subscribers and floatplane supports to actually matter long time but people should keep this incident in this mind before they poison themselves by considering ever doing any business with Linus Media Group or worst, accepting a job offering from them.

 

[methodicallyRaf]

If LTT wanted to go beyond "Stupid Tech Tricks" and move into credible testing and tech information they had all the options in the world being valued at $100 million. They could have easily purchased Gamers Nexus (or a similar site) and integrated them rather than blindly making mistakes while prioritizing getting the next video out over fixing their mistakes.

"Mistakes" include most notably a start-up that sent LTT their only prototype to which was then tested against uncertified equipment, trash talked for not working as Linus envisioned it to work, then sold at an LTT event when it was required to be sent back to that start-up. That is not a mistake and NONE of LTT's changes will keep the core problem of Linus Sebastian from being arrogant enough to do what he wants despite expert recommendation. Maybe it is because following instructions does not make an entertaining enough video for him to sell LTT store's merchandise.

No amount of policy change can overcome owner arrogance or his past success making him think that he is right. His employees will not put their job in jeopardy to correct him so thank goodness Gamers Nexus was sparked by their trash talk during a video into calling them all out on all their mismanagement, poor testing, and unwillingness to take feedback or accountability.

 

[godrilla]

If LTT wanted to go beyond "Stupid Tech Tricks" and move into credible testing and tech information they had all the options in the world being valued at $100 million. They could have easily purchased Gamers Nexus (or a similar site) and integrated them rather than blindly making mistakes while prioritizing getting the next video out over fixing their mistakes.

"Mistakes" include most notably a start-up that sent LTT their only prototype to which was then tested against uncertified equipment, trash talked for not working as Linus envisioned it to work, then sold at an LTT event when it was required to be sent back to that start-up. That is not a mistake and NONE of LTT's changes will keep the core problem of Linus Sebastian from being arrogant enough to do what he wants despite expert recommendation. Maybe it is because following instructions does not make an entertaining enough video for him to sell LTT store's merchandise.

No amount of policy change can overcome owner arrogance or his past success making him think that he is right. His employees will not put their job in jeopardy to correct him so thank goodness Gamers Nexus was sparked by their trash talk during a video into calling them all out on all their mismanagement, poor testing, and unwillingness to take feedback or accountability.

It's a good thing he isn't buying out his competition. The last thing we need is a centralized control of all the great independent tech journalists out there.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Stop watching LTT years ago - he become more smug , arrogant and a shrill - -never thought about why I stopped watching - but it lost it's soul - that's not right.
I probably wanted a Top gear type show - a bunch of people trying some having some fun testing some ideas - Their reviews are lightweight
Least with Gamers Nexus ,Pauls Hardware - Hardware Unboxed etc you feel you can have a beer and a yarn with them - be straight up.

But oh you are lucky - Linus can spare some time for you - Do you know how lucky you are - too cult like for me

 

[m4a4]

1) The treatment of Billet Labs was outright malicious but he's still trying to claim incompetence by an employee...An employee who is so evidently incompetent it was already a meme that he was gonna get fired years before all of this even happened with Billet Labs.

Sorry but that's still trying to sweep it under the rug by trying to blame it on one of the companies' buffoons: It completely disregards Linus outright lying to the public until Gamers Nexus got a request for comment from Billet Labs that shown this to be the case and revealed the timeline of events as well so, this means there's basically no change. He should at the very least actually fire Colton since nobody is incompetent enough to just 'Forget to send the email to the company!' And then forget for months about them not verifying if there was any replies and not making any further attempts at contacting them which is clearly BS.

Lol no. LTX (when and where it was auctioned) was just over 2 weeks prior to GN's video. It wasn't months of no replies after the auction as you so ignorantly suggested. Billet Labs never even tried to follow up before GN published their half-baked story about it.
If you're going to pretend you knew what happened, at least get your facts right lol


The confident misinformation/disingenuity here is laughable and typical of techbro side of the internet. Worse than asking ChatGPT what happened

 

[takaozo]

"you can't teach an old dog new tricks" they say...Linus will be back to his old habits quite soon.
Only thing stopping him is the content pulishers not allowing/censoring his content, but since he is the boss there..

 

[unwindingthree8]

If LTT wanted to go beyond "Stupid Tech Tricks" and move into credible testing and tech information they had all the options in the world being valued at $100 million. They could have easily purchased Gamers Nexus (or a similar site) and integrated them rather than blindly making mistakes while prioritizing getting the next video out over fixing their mistakes.

"Mistakes" include most notably a start-up that sent LTT their only prototype to which was then tested against uncertified equipment, trash talked for not working as Linus envisioned it to work, then sold at an LTT event when it was required to be sent back to that start-up. That is not a mistake and NONE of LTT's changes will keep the core problem of Linus Sebastian from being arrogant enough to do what he wants despite expert recommendation. Maybe it is because following instructions does not make an entertaining enough video for him to sell LTT store's merchandise.

No amount of policy change can overcome owner arrogance or his past success making him think that he is right. His employees will not put their job in jeopardy to correct him so thank goodness Gamers Nexus was sparked by their trash talk during a video into calling them all out on all their mismanagement, poor testing, and unwillingness to take feedback or accountability.

That value doesn't mean they have the liquidity to purchase a channel like GN. There's also no way Steve would ever sell it or agree to a merger.

 

[unwindingthree8]

Lol no. LTX (when and where it was auctioned) was just over 2 weeks prior to GN's video. It wasn't months of no replies after the auction as you so ignorantly suggested. Billet Labs never even tried to follow up before GN published their half-baked story about it.
If you're going to pretend you knew what happened, at least get your facts right lol


The confident misinformation/disingenuity here is laughable and typical of techbro side of the internet. Worse than asking ChatGPT what happened

I think you misunderstood. How I understand the comment is that Colton was supposed mail Billet about the auction months before LTX.

 

[m4a4]

I think you misunderstood. How I understand the comment is that Colton was supposed mail Billet about the auction months before LTX.

The Colton email comment was about how he forgot to email them (didn't include them in the email) AFTER they auctioned it off. The apology video (Colton's section) explains this.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Let's get something clear. If the prototype was never sold or donated to Linus Tech Tips, then Billet Labs still has ownership of it regardless of whoever is in possession of it now.

If Billet Labs accepted LTT's monetary offer, it probably comes with a contract to establish that LTT retroactively purchased the prototype, and therefore all are covered from any legal situations. If they don't, Billet Labs can legally reacquire it from whoever has it now (LTT would be liable to be sued in order to repossess it). Depending on how LTT handled the auction, it would make a difference on whether the charity can be sued as well or whether LTT is out of the money they donated to it. If LTT auctioned off the item themselves and donated the proceeds, those are two separate transactions and only LTT would be involved (the charity would keep the money). If LTT donated the item to the charity and then it was sold, they would both be involved in a big mess. And finally, the biggest mess of all would be if the charity auctioned off the item on behalf of LTT (a sort of 3 way transaction). LTT is clearly at fault here for deceiving the charity and/or the current possessor of the prototype.

 

[unwindingthree8]

This whole thing has been so overblown.
The internet is riddled with people who love to get indignant, overly emotional and self-righteous about things that really don't concern them at all.

Linus doubling down did not help. If he did as he said about other companies: apologize, own the mistake and say what you're gonna do to remedy it this wouldn't have escalated. I do think/hope this is the kick in the nuts they need. All the errors be it corrected in video with stickies or with pinned comments has been very noticeable for a couple of years now. To a point it's annoying. It's been quantity over quality the last x years. And those are just the ones I noticed. If that was the only problem there would've become a point where I would turn off if it stayed like that. The whole Billet fiasco is inexcusable both the video and everything that followed. For me that was a catalyst and the final straw. At that point I wasn't even aware of the Madison debacle. The supposed conflicts of interests to me were not a problem, they were transparent enough. Then again, framework is always in the back of my mind so I wouldn't notice it if they stopped mentioning their stake. Subconsciously I prop remind myself. I also never consider short circuit videos as reviews ever. Even though some may look like them. Reviews are main channel only. That's the rule and was clearly stated after the community complaining about the click bait titles years ago. A review will have review in title and be on main channel. I do agree they made the line blurry and someone could easily take those videos as full on reviews. Whether this is done maliciously or not I don't know. So when it comes to that I can see both sides. Then again, the majority of viewers prob forgot that Short-circuit is never a review so that gives extra validity to Steve's criticisms. And yeah the lowering of quality, same story as main channel. At some point there would've come a breaking point where I'd be done with the lower quality. The mouse feet thing was another clear example of speed over quality and precision.

 

[unwindingthree8]

The Colton email comment was about how he forgot to email them (didn't include them in the email) AFTER they auctioned it off. The apology video (Colton's section) explains this.

That makes it worse no? So that means they auctioned it off without even asking (or thinking they had asked but forgot to mail them)

 

[Bobbydpue]

Linus has, above all else, shown himself to be a sociopath over this entire endeavor. Pinching pennies at the cost of his product, his employees, and his business partners, with 0 remorse; that is until he is called out and his ego gets bruised. Once thousands started pulling their paid subscriptions, THEN suddenly linus wants to make things better. Now, he's trying to shift blame onto the internet for "harassment" which, ok sure, we ALL believe you after the repeated lies you've been caught in. Knowing you, "Harassment" is 99% people pointing out your terrible behavior and 1% some randos that you can mute and move on with your day.

Trust, from employees, customers, viewers, the community at large, is earned, and once broken, cannot be easily re earned. It's going to be a constant uphill battle to regain that, and I dont see linus having it in him to keep that kind of work ethic, given its him thats been pushing unrealistic production on employees to begin with.

Selling prototype hardware, publishing false data, and reports of employee abuse are "overblown". Gotcha.

The bootlicking station is over there -->

(and remember, Linus is the one that started this by calling out other tech sites for not doing "new testing" like they clearly did.)

How can you possibly know everything about this situation and how can you be so sure you know what's actually happened or happening? Without being there or without having video evidence of what's it's like there how can you even form an opinion or pick a side? I'm still not sure what to believe, I still haven't formed an opinion and I'm wondering how you or anyone else could have with so little objective data.

Just so you know where my mind is. I didn't like the Billet Labs video and thought it was hypocritical to show videos of Linus' plans to use his pool to liquid cool the computers in his house while in their review of the Billets Lab block, he said that no one should buy this block, because it's too expensive. When did liquid cooling become something only people did when it made financial sense? Linus has grown out of touch with PC enthusiasts with that video and the handling of their prototype block. Many people sent their concerns the channel was getting too big, things would change and they clearly have.

 

[m4a4]

Let's get something clear. If the prototype was never sold or donated to Linus Tech Tips, then Billet Labs still has ownership of it regardless of whoever is in possession of it now.

Easy to clear up (and easy to find if you tried): it was originally given to LTT to also use in future videos. BL asked for it back after the negative video. Then LTT internal miscommunication happened leading to it being auction off.

That makes it worse no? So that means they auctioned it off without even asking (or thinking they had asked but forgot to mail them)

I don't see any context where they should've emailed them (as helpful as it would've been) about an item they thought they owned? It sounds like the people who grabbed it from the pile to auction that weekend, and the people who knew the block wasn't theirs anymore, didn't get the message across during the chaos of LTX.
Yes, 100% LTT's fault, but the communication timeline between LTT and BL to rectify the situation afterwards was not months apart (as Dimitriid implied). More like days, before GN's video dropped.

 

[unwindingthree8]

Easy to clear up (and easy to find if you tried): it was originally given to LTT to also use in future videos. BL asked for it back after the negative video. Then LTT internal miscommunication happened leading to it being auction off.

I don't see any context where they should've emailed them (as helpful as it would've been). It sounds like the people who grabbed it from the pile to auction that weekend, and the people who knew the block wasn't theirs anymore, didn't get the message across during the chaos of LTX.
Yes, 100% LTT's fault, but the communication timeline between LTT and BL to rectify the situation afterwards was not months apart (as Dimitriid implied). More like days, before GN's video dropped.

I can think of at least one. If it was never stated that the block was to keep then asking permission before the auction. And a follow up mail if there's no response or if the first email was never sent because they forgot. Only after confirmation would I set it up for auction. Even if there was no response in time I would not put it up for auction. No response ≠ permission. I would get something else to auction off. You can't tell me there's nothing in storage that would fit an auction. Post auction I also would not claim there's an agreement for reimbursement when there clearly wasn't.

 

[m4a4]

I can think of at least one. If it was never stated that the block was to keep then asking permission before the auction. And a follow up mail if there's no response or if the first email was never sent because they forgot. Only after confirmation would I set it up for auction. Even if there was no response in time I would not put it up for auction. No response ≠ permission. I would get something else to auction off. You can't tell me there's nothing in storage that would fit an auction. Post auction I also would not claim there's an agreement for reimbursement when there clearly wasn't.

I already stated it was originally given to LTT by BL in what you just replied to (which is based on post-GN info). If you want to look into it yourself, feel free (even though it seems few people here are willing to do so before they make their assumptions, eh?)

But your original context claim about Colton is what I replied to, and I gave you that context. And I've already said what I was going to say about the auction.

 

[hahahanoobs]

You can't change someone like Linus this late in his life. He has anger issues and it will be his end imo.

 

[RudyBob]

Oh Boy!!

 

[Raytrace3D]

1) The treatment of Billet Labs was outright malicious but he's still trying to claim incompetence by an employee...An employee who is so evidently incompetent it was already a meme that he was gonna get fired years before all of this even happened with Billet Labs.

Sorry but that's still trying to sweep it under the rug by trying to blame it on one of the companies' buffoons: It completely disregards Linus outright lying to the public until Gamers Nexus got a request for comment from Billet Labs that shown this to be the case and revealed the timeline of events as well so, this means there's basically no change. He should at the very least actually fire Colton since nobody is incompetent enough to just 'Forget to send the email to the company!' And then forget for months about them not verifying if there was any replies and not making any further attempts at contacting them which is clearly BS.

2) The second deal is the situation with Madison Reeve: Some managers and probably Linus himself need to lose their jobs if he was truly serious about fixing that situation. This plan is probably laughable to any active LTT employees: They don't need psychological counceling they need for their managers to be removed from the company immediately at least until the supposedly third party investigation is concluded yet nothing like that was announced. Claiming that the harrassment also comes 'from social media' while not innacurate is a disgustingly transparent attempt at distracting people from the allegations of harassment from the company's own managers internally.

Instead all Linus has done is mixing both the worst parts of corporate talk and the worst parts about his ego driven personality in just youtube apology fodder: About the only positive this entire thing has is that at least he didn't use a ukelele to sing the apology but I'd even argue that the initial forum reply blaming Gamers Nexus and lying about Billet Labs is at least as bad as the singing apology lady anyways.

Only issue is that he didn't bleed enough subscribers and floatplane supports to actually matter long time but people should keep this incident in this mind before they poison themselves by considering ever doing any business with Linus Media Group or worst, accepting a job offering from them.

Not that anyone cares, especially LMG, but I unsubscribed from all LMG YouTube content and will avoid their content until things cool down a bit and they figure things out. I don't agree with how Linus handled these situations. No one's perfect, but we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard for our employee's and partner's sake. There are things that Linus and LMG have done that impact people's lives and there should be repercussions for it. I am hopeful though that they will figure things out and more importantly those that were screwed over (partners / current and former employees / general tech community) find a fair resolution. No one likes being in a toxic work environment or for a company that is willing to do anything for the mighty dollar.

 

[Kam7r]

Unsubscribed long ago, since they went from a tech channel to an entertainment one...