Linus Tech Tips faces some serious allegations, as recently many concerns about the ethics and responsibilities of Linus Media Group have come up.
The last few days have been a lot for the Linus Group. Many different allegations have flooded in from different fronts, and it's hard to keep an overview. From an $800 stolen cooler to an overpriced screwdriver and employee mistreatment, which goes as far as sexual harassment, here is an overview of the situation.
Linus Tech Tips And Gamers Nexus – What Is Going On?
It all seemingly all started with a clip of an LTT labs tour, where an employee made a rather unfortunate statement.
The difference between us and somebody like Gamers Nexus or Hardware Unboxed is we test new components, new tests everytime.
This statement naturally didn't get the best reaction out of Hardware Unboxed or Gamers Nexus.
While the latter reportedly tried to stay out of the matter, the first reacted with a tweet implying that LTT doesn't spend much money on testing equipment and their staff. They also implicate that LTT labs make many mistakes in their lab testing and should spend more time on refining their data.
Linus then went out and talked about this situation on a podcast, where he, without saying any names, hinted at Gamers Nexus not being professional among other things, which triggered them to publish their 44-minute-long video exposing LTT.
Working Conditions At Linus Media Group
The biggest takeaway from Gamers Nexus' video is that LTT is allegedly very sloppy with their work because of self-imposed deadlines, rushing and stressing their employees in the process.
This apparently caused several information errors in many of their videos. Gamers Nexus acknowledges that people make mistakes, but also mentions how videos from LTT have at least one mistake per video.
One example for this was a benchmark test for their RTX 4090 review. It took numerous days and some disapproving looks from the community to give an update, and a CPU cooler review, where a Noctua cooler that continuously performed better than a Peerless Assassin was suddenly worse for a Ryzen 7 without a good reason.
There are many more examples of LTT misinterpreting data that could cause a huge difference in their audience's buying decisions that are very concerning, especially considering that Noctua and LTT are in a partnership.
This means showing Noctua coolers in a favorable light than others suddenly gets a terrible aftertaste for a review channel. This partnership actually lead to its own special edition cooler and a very overpriced screwdriver.
Gamers Nexus also notes the use of adding text in videos to correct wrong information, instead of cutting wrong conclusions overall.
Unethical Decisions & Responsibility Problems: The Copper Cooler Situation
Linus Tech displayed questionable decisions with several products, adding to the possibility that they could be adjusting their presentation of products according to deals.
Gamers Nexus notes that the LTT sometimes show signs of awareness regarding their lack of knowledge, but still continue to create misinformed content that harms consumers and manufacturers alike.
Back in June, LTT published a review of the MonoBlock by Billet Labs, a small company, which is an all-copper cooling block for both the CPU and GPU.
They filmed this review full on, knowing that the graphics card that they were using wasn't compatible with the cooler. Not only that but they allegedly even installed it wrong, making the review even more shady!
Unsurprisingly, the results of the testing weren't great, and Linus Sebastian then went on the WAN podcast recommending for no one to buy this product.
The cooler was apparently a prototype that LTT were supposed to sent back after the review – instead, they put the cooler up for auction without the permission of Billet Labs.
They didn't find out about this until after the cooler was sold and gone for good.
After Gamers Nexus's video got published and started gaining traction, Linus immediately publishes a reaction statement, stating how they “didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but we rather auctioned it for charity due to miscommunication”.
He also explained how he didn't feel that changing his errors afterward would impact the conclusion of his video (that nobody should buy the cooler).... Other than that, no response to the other hardware related misinformation was given.
In his statement, Linus expressed that they already came to an agreement with Billet Labs and will reimburse them for their cooler.
The small company reassured Gamers Nexus that the E-Mail with the offer was sent off a few hours after the publication of the video, at about the same time Linus posted his statement.
A comment under his Forum post asked about the specific amount that they will pay Billet Labs, to which he replied that he not supposed to address the exact sum.
This is just blatant misinformation. Billet Labs apparently had not answered at that time, they just talked about the value of the cooler before the Gamers Nexus video and got ghosted after asking for reimbursement.
Ex-LTT-Employee Speaks Out About Her Workplace Harassment
Besides the unprofessional behavior of LTT, the former social media manager Madison recently spoke out about why she quit her job at Linus Media Group, stating the job was ruining her mental health.
She revealed the immense workload and stress put onto her in a company that now consists of more than 100 people, theorizing that the work she used to do alone has now been taken over by an entire team.
I was expected to post 3 tweets, 2 Instagram posts, and 2 TikToks minimum per day.I was also expected to plan, film, edit, and post 2 Floatplane exclusives per week.This included wrangling people to be in them when they were also all struggling to get their work done.
— Madison | Suop (@suuuoppp) August 16, 2023
Madison reveals that her work was constantly belittled by upper management with slurs, and that she was never taken seriously when she tried to reach out for help.
At last, they threatened that she might lose her job if she continued her “drama” in a verbal agreement. This happened after she mentioned how she had been inappropriately grabbed multiple times at the office. And what was LTT's answer to this? Not allowing her to be in any more videos.
She reported not getting credited for her work in the way she deserves, since they told her that "everything you accomplish, no matter how much it is created by your own effort, is ACTUALLY due to Linus giving you a platform".
A new handbook was given to her after already signing her employment contract, that completely undid the rules previously agreed on, threatening once more that she'd lose her job if she disobeyed.
Bear in mind, she got this book after moving to a new country and giving up her visa status. Naturally, she was very upset about this situation, and just mere apologies weren't enough for her, so she tried to talk to Linus about this. He told her she should change her priorities.
He was in this instance referring to the fact my brother had suddenly passed away not even a week before I moved for this job, and that perhaps I should just ignore that I had been mislead because that was more important.I cannot tell you how upset I felt in this moment.
— Madison | Suop (@suuuoppp) August 16, 2023
She talks about many more instances where she was bullied as if she was in a terrible teenage drama movie, and the constant pressure of putting out new content was too much for her.
At one point, she purposefully cut her leg open so bad, she had to visit the ER, simply so she could take a day off. And still, all her concerns were being stamped off as “bad time management skills”.
Madison continues her statement by noting that there still are amazing people at LTT that, after quitting her job, told her that it wasn't her, but still she was fearful about talking openly about this. LTT is a huge company with connections, and she didn't want to put the people that were good to her at risk.
I was asked about my sexual history, my boyfriends sexual history, "how I liked to fuck".I was told that certain issues were "sexual tension" and I should just "take the co-worker out on a coffee date to ease it out"
— Madison | Suop (@suuuoppp) August 16, 2023
Fun fact: LTT also tried to have a cut out of her Twitch cake. She was only allowed to stream under certain conditions, like not being allowed to be represented by any company, and they themselves weren't doing it either, so making a living with her Twitch and YouTube channel was practically impossible.
This woman had to endure sexist harassment from one of the companies she admired and respected for a long time, and nothing was ever done to help her.
Even in day-to-day instances, she was belittled, put on hold and made to look bad through lies. This is simply not okay and should be accounted for.
It is sad that it took a huge gaming journalism site like Gamers Nexus to come out first before women like Madison could feel safe enough about telling their stories without getting bashed on the internet for telling the truth.
I'm baffled to hear about the "shock" of these allegations.You're not shocked that they happened.You're shocked that someone said something.You're probably shocked because you know evidence for most of these issues is scarce so why would anyone risk their image to speak out.
— Madison | Suop (@suuuoppp) August 16, 2023
LTT'S Official Response
The Linus Tech Tips YouTube Channel published an official statement video on August 16. They mostly agree that there needs to be a change and announce a one-week-break to work on a solution to all the given problems, such as the overwhelming workload and improving information accuracy.
Near the end of the video, Linus appears and apologizes for his hastily-made, emotion based forum post statement from earlier. He does state that he feels that the cooler reimbursement situation was a bit unfair since not that many days passed between him paying them back and their earlier mails.
The video got backlash almost immediately after being posted, since it included an advertisement for their merch. This version of the video got taken down again.
No, just NO. Don't shoutout your MERCH on a callout video.#linustechtips pic.twitter.com/CiZBPYNu58
— RosalindRosi (@animaeshen) August 17, 2023
When it comes to the whole Madison situation, the madness continues, as they didn't mention her at all in the YouTube video, and comments that include her name are immediately getting taken down.
Deleted #Madison comments on the #YouTube "apology" video. #ltt #linus #linustech #linustechtips pic.twitter.com/Ae7jSnuHRR
— Trendingful (@Trendingful) August 16, 2023
Obviously, not making a statement is a statement of its own and doesn't really shed a better light on LTT. Especially if you consider that trying to sweep things under the rug or ignoring problems until they are unavoidable seems to be their main strategy. Considering this is after their big apology video, it is very questionable if things at LTT will truly improve.
