this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five

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I'm completely out of the loop.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
  • A YouTube channel named "Gamers Nexus" made a video criticisms about LTT hardware Review process.
  • Due to having the pressure to make videos as quickly as possible, the quality control of hardware reviews has suffered, even with the Lab they assembled for testing hardware and presenting detailed benchmarks.
  • A startup sent Linux a watercooling prototype to review, but they tried it on a video card it was not designed for, giving bad results.
  • Then the "sold" the prototype apparently without the full approval of the creators.
  • Linus was dismissive at first, but now the company has responded and said will take quality control more seriously.
  • Now an ex employee named Madison came out telling basically that there is a Guy Bros type culture on LTT, where they made inappropriate comments to her, affecting her mental health, overloading her with work because she had the "funny job" of social media managment, and even verbally abused her. Some instances can be considered sexual harassment.
  • The new CEO of LTT said he was "shocked" by these revelations and will hire an external investigator.
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

They actually sent the matching card together with the prototype but apparently LTT lost the card and just decided to use another, incompatible one.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

"""shocked!"""

Also, she claims she had to slash open her leg in order to take a day off without being harassed for it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can believe the new CEO is surprised since he just stepped in (including the previous months of negotiations) but obviously there are things that Linus hasn't told him. And since most of the important people at the company are Linus year long friends, they had covered each other up.

And yeah, self harming to take a sick leave is fucked up, pretty sure denying sick leave to an employee in Canada is ilegal since there they actually give a shit about labour laws.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago

As I understand it, she wasn't "denied" it, technically, she was harassed and belittled and made to feel like a bad person for taking it.

Maybe the law in Canada can still be used? I hope so.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Canadian labour laws are trash. Better than America's sure, but still trash compared to many other countries.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It depends on the province. Usually labor laws should be a provincial power, although there is some federal laws too. Like here in Quebec our labor laws are generally quite good. No idea what it's like in BC tho, it's generally a more economic-right leaning province so I wouldn't be surprised if it's bad.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also, lets remember that when activison Blizzard got shit about the gigantic amounts of sexual harassment allegations, they pulled a "we investigates ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" and is still avoiding being investigates by independents.

Immediatly jumping to hire an external investigator is a good move from the CEO, given how low the bar is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it really is the best thing he could do in this scenario.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I do remember. I would be playing Diablo IV right now if not for their bro culture crap. Oh well.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Want to quickly point out that this whole thing was probably prompted by LTT's Lab folks (who's responsible for testing I guess), publicly name-dropping Gamers Nexus when comparing how their own testing methodology was seemingly better.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, most of the answers here seem to miss that part. The LMG lab tech also called out Hardware Unboxed, who responded via Twitter, got flamed by Linus's fans, and that was the end of it. But it sounds like Gamers Nexus was already sick of LMG's shit and that clip was the last straw.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

This article explains it pretty well.

There's just a ton of stuff and it all came out of the woodwork once the chips started falling. I first became aware they existed over the Billet Labs nonsense.

From the article:

The controversy started earlier this week, when Gamers Nexus posted a video outlining a number of factual errors and ethics concerns in recent Linus Tech Tips videos. “We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” said Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke.

Burke’s biggest concern was around a GPU cooling block made by Billet Labs. According to Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips reviewed a copper cooling block from Billet Labs on the wrong GPU, then auctioned it off at a recent fan event without the company’s permission.