My biggest complaint is how Linus is still saying he's not sorry about what he did, at least it doesn't seem genuine, instead he is still apologizing that he didn't realize what the community wanted.

He shouldn't care what the community wants. He should always strive for accurate data, ethical partnerships, and correcting mistakes when they still make it through because they always will.

Linus is doubling down on his opinions, hiding mistakes, doing the bare minimum to fix them, and needs public outcry and the heavy hand of the other executives in LTT to see any course change.

[–] DigitalWanderer@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (54 children)

im so out of the loop here, help anyone?

[–] h14h@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as "bad" after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).

Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.

A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn't really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say "I'm sorry" at one point which was pretty meme worthy.

The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.

Different people have different conclusions -- some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.

But that's just me -- I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.

Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don't know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.

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