I unsubscribed immediately. What a horribly toxic work environment and unpleasant company. Where I work, and I work for a place far bigger than LTT, no matter your seniority, you’re out the door the same day if you treat a member of staff the way Madison was treated. I’ve seen it happen. The fact she suffered such abuse for years from so many members of staff is indicative of a company so heavily poisonous, they shouldn’t exist. Hopefully other fans can see through their parasocial relationship and cut the cord.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, it wasn’t for years. But yes, the Madison situation needs to be addressed. Can only hope that the culture is rectified, and whoever assaulted her is found, investigated, and fired if need be.
Having worked at quite a few startups that grew to LTT’s size, there are basically two kinds of CEO/COO; those who want to drive the culture, and those who don’t believe in corporate culture.
I feel Linus is of the second brand, and I’ve seen it enough to know that culture emerging in those conditions get out of control and becomes almost impossible to rectify.
Good luck to LMG, but the top is where culture starts.
100% agreed, and can anecdotally confirm.
Honestly, I am not sure the culture issue can be corrected unless Linus is forced to at the very least take a BIIIIIIIG step back from day to day operations… because his (lack of) ethics and leadership are, in my eyes, the proximate cause of pretty much all the weird bad shit that’s coming out about LMG - both the provable and public-sphere ethics and data issues, as well as their internal (and admittedly less easily provable, though still extremely concerning) HR/cultural problems.
Agreed. Their response made it worse. Watching the PR response today is why I’ve unsubscribed. No thanks.
The apology video has such an off vibe to it. They continue making jokes about sponsors, the store and more when it clearly is not the time to do so. It feels unprofessional. After reading Madison’s thread it feels even more… wrong. I see what they were going for but it clearly is not working. They should have just stayed serious, addressed the issues and kept the video short. There’s more stuff coming to light now and it seems like they need more than this one video now.
I had never subscribed but yesterday I blocked their channels via Blocktube, a Firefox extension.
Blocktube once I started using it quickly became an essential extension. Biggest impact is improved search results if you don’t have interest in videos of certain big youtubers for some topics that always get push them to the top.
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Madison replied today on X (twitter), haven’t figured out yet how I can copy the link, but a quick search for former LTT employee does the job at the moment.
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/347639/Madison-on-why-she-quit gives you a long list of screenshots of them.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741?refresh=1692174340
Here’s Madison’s take on it. There will likely never be concrete proof. And Linus’ team is actively deleting comments on their channels about it.
Wow that was a tough read. Thanks for the link.
From the tweets:
I purposefully cut my leg open so badly I would have to go to the ER to get it stapled back together.
It was genuinely the only way in my mind to take a day off without being harassed for a reason why.
Yeah I’ve brought this up in the comments on the recent LTT videos. Asking for them to address how they’re treating workers. Both comments were deleted by [presumably] LMG staff on the youtube comments. And if you scroll long enough you’ll see dozens of people saying their comments on this matter have been deleted too.
Any company that drives a person to self-harm to take a day off… That’s just sick.
It’s basically caused by crunch culture. Everyone is stressed out and there is no time to breath and reflect. The constant grind turns the environment toxic. And I doubt they have a proper HR team, probably run by a family member.
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This. I’ve done crunch. I’ve worked in high stress environments. Ain’t a ticket for assaulting colleagues.
Maybe it’s because I’m old and have worked at a number of different sized companies. But, Linus always struck me as very fake and inauthentic.
He gives off the vibe that he’s one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee - while completely ignoring the fact that he (and his wife) own the company and are YouTube millionaires and run a relatively large and influential company.
I can easily see Linus being an abusive, toxic person to work for.
I’ve worked for people like him before and their public and private personas are often complete opposites. In my opinion, this is Linus’ mask slipping and we’re getting to see the real him.
The home improvement videos always rubbed me the wrong way, it didn’t feel right to watch him use his employees to do all these renovations to his home for them
The one that really bothered me was one where he went to one of his employees houses to work on a project and was super disrespectful the whole time. At the beginning of the video the guy was talking about how he’s just bought the home and was so proud, then there were multiple parts in the video of Linus making fun of different parts of his house. And I recall a part where the guy specifically asked him not to put something on a table he was afraid would break and Linus was like “no, it’s fine” and does it anyways. The whole video made me super uncomfortable, I think it was actually one of the last videos I watched from the channel
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Do you know which one?
I don’t, it was maybe 2 years ago so I’m having a hard time searching for it
I remember a few years back when Dennis almost fell through his roof while he had him running cables and there was no concern for his wellbeing, just shitting on him for being useless. Made me super uncomfortable to watch
Remember how they all treated him in the beginning? Felt like bullying, but in front of a global audience.
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TIL paying your employees for work is “using them”…
Yeah I’m firmly on the anti-linus train at this point… But this one I don’t get. If I hire you… and the whole point is we make videos… If the best video idea we have at the moment is to upgrade the wifi in my house… You bet that’s going on the list as it has direct appeal to the community because every one of us will be thinking about upgrading at wifi at some point. The fact that it’s in my house has no real bearing on any of it except as an excuse to do it at an actual location that actually needs it… Unless the dude is writing it all off 100% as business expenses… Then that’s a bit shady. But considering they do the $5k rig reboots for their people it doesn’t seem like he’s wholesale limiting videos to just his own property/assets. I’m sure if/when his employees have ideas on their personal stuff it comes up to. One video in particular I remember is the guy that did wedding camera work.
It’s written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
Replace “CEO” with “employee”. Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company? Can an employee independently take that decision without anyone being able to question it?
That’s the ethical quandary here.
It’s written off as a business expense. Part of the house is used for business (so write off mortgage, home improvement costs), part of the employee time is used for home improvement (so labor is free for your own home).
You cannot say this with ANY degree of certainty. You don’t know what he’s attempting to write off. And it’s Canada… what is he even allowed to write off. But he certainly cannot write off 100% of the equipment he’s buying, as it’s going to live long lives outside of the video as non-company assets in his home for personal use. I cannot write off 100% of my cell service unless I show that it was ONLY used for business purposes.
I’m not sure I agree with your premise anyway. It’s up to the ownership what to do with the money that the company makes. It’s not the employee’s decision at all… period. In this case those decisions were made by the CEO who happens to be the owner. CFO’s garner their power for handling the money through delegation from the owner(s).
But in this case… it’s actually true.
Can an employee get his colleagues to improve their own home at the expense of the company?
Yes… They can choose to participate in the $5k upgrades that LMG does. At this point I doubt Linus has any real direct interaction with the planning of these videos and just shows up at the personality on screen for shoot time.
He gives off the vibe that he’s one of the little guys, an independent journalist, just another employee
This is a behaviour Linus has simply failed to grow out of.
At one point, he was just one of the little guys; sharing that common ground with his audience. That dynamic has vastly changed, but Linus has not adapted to it.
I genuinely didn’t see that. He seemed like a cool dude and wanting to do the best and figuring things out.
So for me, this news is disappointing. Although, it’d be more disappointing if I was still watching. The thumbnails really got to me over time. I know why people do them, but you know, still…
That was the trend for me too. Avoided his videos because of thumbnails. Saw some youtubers I watched on scrapyard wars and liked the series then came to like LTT after giving it a chance. But then over time his thumbnails and shill vibe of do everything possible to monetize got to me and I stopped. That strategy for their videos is so ingrained in their culture that even their apology video is monetized and has affiliate links and sponsor segment jokes. Just a fatiguing channel.
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This is Linus Sebastian, not Linus Torvalds. Has nothing to do with Linux. In fact, he tried running Linux a few months ago and made a huge mess of it.
Hahaha - okay, that makes a lot more sense. I had so completely lost track of the community and have just been getting back into it lately because of the fediverse community, and so when I heard “Linus Tech Tips,” I completely assumed it was Linus Torvalds. I had even talked to him on usenet (iirc) a couple of times, and couldn’t square the reports.
Thanks for the clarification.
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I had fallen off a bit anyway; the amount of click baiting had gone through the roof, quality of videos plateaued. Now caught dead to rights on poor journalistic integrity and allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace?
All so that I can drool over graphics cards I can’t afford? Easy choice to unsubscribe.
Be better, LTT
Their stats were generally upward. No reason to think the clickbait suddenly became too much for people in just the past week. In general, channels do clickbait because YouTube rewards you for it, and that overwhelms a bunch of people complaining about it in the comments.
No, the drop is attributable to recent events.
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I unsubscribed after reading Madison’s thread. Anyone who’s gotten stuck in a toxic work environment knows just how crushing it is mentally. Constant low-level anxiety, feelings of dread, and the inability to even decompress off the clock due to intruding thoughts, replayed arguments, feelings of being gaslit, and the knowledge that it’s all going to happen again tomorrow. Combine that with the sexual assault allegations and it’s not surprising at all that she’d self harm.
If even 10% of her story is true we’re looking at systemic failures in the entire management chain both to recognize and triage toxic behavior, and to demonstrate professionalism and lead by example.
As someone who’s “dream job” has devolved into something I’m now actively looking to leave (albeit for somewhat less severe reasons than Madison described), I deeply empathize with what she’s feeling. Hope she can find some success in the future despite how much of a shitshow her tenure at LMG turned out to be.
I requested refunds from all their sponsors products. Hit em in the wallet where they seem to actually pay attention.
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Is there more to this than just a reddit screenshot posted on what’s clearly a clickbait shithole of a website?
I remember seeing the video of the play button, and kind of expected the guy to get a lot of hate. It resulting in harassment and suicide wouldn’t surprise me considering how Youtube people are. However, I’m not going to accept such a wild story without some credible evidence, especially since this is also the type of hoax internet losers would make up for clout.
The kid bought a silver YT button from the NCIX channel at auction. Linus tried to buy it back from him, but after some discussion, realized he should just let him keep it .
Some people supposedly harassed that guy online and eventually he killed himself.
People blame Linus for this because… 🤷 Ragebait, I guess.
Dude, WHAT? I knew about the first part, but the rest is horrific!
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you want more evidence?
More than 0? Yes. All you’ve provided is a link to an article with more ads than words.
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Linus responded to it. I doubt he’d respond if it was fake.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/t1e1if/you_destroyed_my_life/
While I don’t doubt for a moment that LTT fan base is likely filled to the brim with fanatics… I don’t want to completely go all in on that story as much as the Madison story. That kid’s youtube channel has a dubious history on it’s own. It appears that the channel was purchased with all the subs that it had, not actually grown. I don’t necessarily believe that they “deserved” the play button if they bought subs. Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can’t expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
I could be wrong… I dunno. But I’d encourage a little more research before accepting this story.
There’s absolutely no excuse for hounding a child to suicide.
Correct, but I can’t blame LTT for that. That’s the raving zealot LTT fanbase.
No, but you did suggest you should expect this level of abuse for the “shady” act of buying subs and buying a YouTube button someone else feels they’re entitled to.
Ultimately if a group of people whose unifying property is you and they’re hounding a child in your name you are absolutely responsible for doing everything in your power to stop them abusing that child.
Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can’t expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
Is what I said. As in I don’t believe that they should have been harassed, but the internet being the internet… we know that’s what happens when people do shady shit like that.
Linus can’t control idiots that just watch his videos. He was on record as “don’t bother this person” in several places. And I’ve not seen any case where Linus “sent” people to harass this kid. So yes… even if the group is ultimately unified by Linus… I can’t necessarily blame him.
None of which contradicts anything I said.
I completely agree.
Yes, it’s sad tans messed up that LTT fans drove the kid to suicide. But if it is true that the YouTube channel wasn’t one that legitimately got subscribers then too bad. The self entitlement to feel you should have gotten a silver plaque for not being talented is insane. If you do something shady you deserve to face consequences…getting harrassed? No. Getting called out? Absolutely
Holy shit. It just keeps getting worse.
Not surprised. Toxic people have toxic followers.
Can someone explain to me followers and the seemingly weird cult that forms. LTT, Sony, Microsoft, Apple etc. Why are people weirdly defensive of these companies and ignore evidence, death threats etc?
Same as with politics.
People make something stupid (and usually toxic) the center of their identity, and develop a parasocial obsession with it due to having nothing going on in their own lives and want to latch onto someone elses success… especially if that someone else displays the same unhealthy/bad traits that they personally have and identify with, to the point that any threat to, or criticism against, their idol, is seen as the most egregious of personal attacks on them as a person. So they strike out as if they’ve been personally done the worst wrong imaginable.
We like to think we’re evolved, but ultimately we’re still tribal creatures. It’s just that the tribes are a bit wider these days.
I forget the name of the bias/fallacy, but it’s something like “I love and support X. If X is bad, then I support something bad, then I’m bad. Since I’m a good person, and I support X, then X must be good or I wouldn’t support them”
It’s probably a quirk of how we make decisions - we don’t consciously make decisions. Instead, we might weigh out the options and that affects our choice, but in the moment we choose subconsciously. It might feel like we made a decision consciously, but sometimes at the last second we deviate from the course we chose (or upon choosing, realize that despite our thoughts we actually have already made up our mind otherwise)… Then we have to rationalize that choice, or start down a long and challenging road of constant introspection
Theres nothing to indicate those people were “his fanbase”, and he actively condemned anyone who did that. What is it exactly that you expected him to do about that?
Be more careful when putting things like that in videos. He’s said many times not to go attacking people he talks about, but he should know the minority of his fan base won’t listen, and he should just not mention it instead.
Things like what? It was a completely innocuous (and boring) exchange that people blew out of proportion.
Makes sense. All these toxic people unsubbing before hearing both sides. Very toxic community indeed.
You are the worst fanboy
I never noticed you until today and every single one of your comments is just fanboy defends his idol against anything and everything.
You are an excellent example of the problem.
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I don’t watch or follow their content and was impressed that they get at least a million views for every video, and they post almost everyday I guess. Holy shit
I wonder who are all these million people per video. Stopped watching LTT years ago.
I’m one. I support LTT even after this
Name checks out, well played.
I think you forgot a “/s”
The username is Spez, they are a parody account.
Edit, I am dumb. I didn’t read your username
😂
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Subscriber count is kind of a bad metric.
How about floatplane subs?
https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-36h&to=now&refresh=5mCause it looks like that over the past 36 hours they’ve lost >3000 subs there… which IIRC is a paid service.
Edit: Another way to look at how much they’ve lost is ~10%
where did this data come from?
You can view the current sub count if you have a floatplane account (even if you’re not subbed to them). This appears to match the number I see on their profile. So I would presume it scrapes their site for it.
Makes sense, thanks!
Not to mention they have so many channels that act as “fluff” that (lack of a better word) normies view casually and move on.
Unsubbed too. I knew Linus had some management practices I didn’t agree with, and he comes across as a bit stubborn a lot of the time, and their click baity thumbnails and titles kinda bugged me, and it seemed like every time I refreshed YouTube there was a new LTT video posted…
Buut, most videos were entertaining and informative so my my rose tinted glasses kept me thinking that SURELY the employees were pretty happy there and were so productive because they enjoyed it that much.
NGL was kinda disappointed to hear all this.
I completely understand why others are unsubbing, but I enjoy the content and want to see how the new CEO ends up handling all of this. Threads like this seem to be inviting everyone to post about how they never liked LTT in the first place, but I wanted to write this down because I’m sure I’m not the only one who actually enjoyed the content and the cool technology and unique solutions they found when building PCs and cooling them.
I unsubscribed to show them how seriously I take the issues. If they improve and the investigation succeeds, I will resubscribe. And I did enjoy LTT, which is why I was subscribed.
I mean I don’t watch GPU reviews because they are mostly boring anyways. I only watch for the janky videos and pushing the boundaries and building wanly stuff.
The Madison claims need to be taken serious, but it’s not like this couldn’t be individuals that need to be singled out and kicked out.
So I really don’t get the rage
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I really do like his content, I put it on generally when I get home from work and Im cooking dinner.
I’m willing to buy that this was a series of unintentional fuckups and accidentally bad business practices. But I’m also not going to support them if they cant conduct their business ethically, so thats why I unsubbed and shitcanned my Floatplane subscription.
If I feel that they addressed this shit to standards that I’m willing to support their business I’ll probably click the buttons again.
Yeah I think LTT has done a lot of great stuff and could do some really amazing stuff yet. I enjoy the content and have supported them, but nobody’s perfect. I don’t think anything they’ve done is worth an unfollow at this point, personally, but I understand why some may not agree.
I think Linus has gotten lost in the sauce. It’s been apparent that everyone there has been exhausted for a while, and I think Linus hasn’t cared for the people working for him as much as his desire for a media empire, which has led to overworking and an unsustainable work environment.
Linus’ take on unions was shitty. IDK if a union could ever start there, but it seems like it could really help the company become more sustainable and keep it on course, because it seems like if the employees had their voices heard things might not have got so bad.
Lemmy (just like Reddit) loves a good dog-pile. It was pretty predictable to see coming tbh
I agree, though I stopped taking their hardware reviews seriously. I could tell they were rushing and being sloppy. One of the things I was starting to get excited about was their pushing of manufacturers to improve repairability. I love what framework is doing, for example. Steve is big on this as well, but the more voices the better. The amount of stuff going into landfills is really starting to bother me.
the cool technology and unique solutions they found
Cool technology they barely know how to use. The storage server and Linux challenge videos demonstrated that very nicely. These guys are not tech experts.
I remember hearing about this guy enough that I was interested so I subscribed, and checked out a video of his once, I forget the topic but the title sounded pretty interesting. This was a few years ago.
Within 3 minutes I had unsubscribed. Why?
Well, he spent the first few minutes of the video being an annoyingly arrogant rich guy whilst also wasting time on things that had nothing at all to do with the topic of the video.
It was when he had his camera man follow him through his house or office or whatever it was, tacky “check out my millionaire crib” style, like a show for kids, and he went into a room, pointed at a big wall of NAS racks and said something like “I’ve got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hard drives and I don’t even use them! Hahaha”, and I was like… Yeah. Screw this guy.
Some people might like a guy who baits grown up tech viewers with an interesting topic only to then waste their time with childish, arrogant behaviour, but I clocked him as a tosser within 3 minutes and never bothered with him again.
That’s just my personal experience, I can’t imagine what having to be around someone like that every day would do to a person, my gosh :-(
It’s really unfortunate because their early content was actually pretty entertaining. They’d document the fun projects they were doing, or showcase some wacky PC build they were doing, or they’d have PC build competitions where they’d have to build a themed PC within a certain budget, and they’d be judged at the end. I don’t think those competitions had prizes, they just did it for fun. Most of their content was just for fun. They’d do sponsored stuff or reviews here and there, but for the most part it was just for fun.
Then Linus became a multi millionaire, and the whole thing went to shit.
I never got the appeal of any influencer flaunting their shit. Look, I’m happy your successful, good on you, but I watch videos to learn and grow, I really don’t give a shit how many cars you have unless you’re going to be teaching me about each one’s internals and unique features.
Exactly! If he’d started with “look at how many hard drives I have set up in here” and then went on to show a really interesting novel use for them, I’d have maybe stuck around.
Though his personality was a little over the top regardless, but that can be forgiven in small doses if the content is particularly unique and engaging.
I don’t understand how the channel even got that popular in the first place with Sinus’ personality being what it is
Sinus Lebastian? Never heard of that guy.
He’s literally the male version of the Kardashians. Tech bros are super obsessed with him
I clocked him as a tosser
UK?
Haha yeah :-)
Sounds like the stupid TV show Top Gear. I never liked those annoying smug idiots, I watched Fifth Gear instead.
Funny you should mention Top Gear! As someone from the UK, I’m embarrassed that Jeremy Clarkson is famous globally, he’s such a bigoted, xenophobic, sexist man, and an embarrassment to our country :-(
I know, right? But then again you have the likes of Tiff Needell who is a great racecar driver with a really nice personality and is a perfect TV presenter.
It’s interesting that you talk about top gear because top gear was an entertainment show first and a car show 87th. If you think top gear was a car show you missed the point.
I know it wasn’t really a car show, but it mimicked one.
I mean, they are purveyors of clickbait. LTT doesn’t need to exist based on that alone.
Lots of creators have weighed in on this. The consensus is that it’s just what you have to do to be successful on YT. Google does not care about the actual quality of your video or channel (subscribers), only about cramming new shit down your throat.
More pointedly: the only thing Google cares about is making money. If what you’re doing doesn’t detract from that goal in any way (mind you, that’s a VERY broad brush), they don’t give two shits.
I suspect quality content will make more money than clickbait garbage videos, but what do I know?
It doesn’t, though. All that matters (and this covers most journalism these days, not just video) is ad views, clickthroughs, and engagement. So if you make something “fun” or otherwise emotionally engaging (coughFOX NEWScough), your ad monetization is going to be more successful.
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Let’s see what happens in a month or 3.
Even Reddit lost viewers, but they are almost back to original.
People will forget and carry on with LTT subscription.
That is a very bleak prospect. Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that.
You are absolutely right that this won’t lead to their collapse. But i would still say that in both reddits and LTT’s case, even if the numbers revert back, it will have an affect longterm.
For reddit the content quality has likely gone down and suddenly there is a viable alternative in Lemmy, which might have never gotten the chance to get of the ground otherwise. Within a month Lemmy suddenly has a decent amount of content, some communities have migrated here, and we have a number of high quality apps to choose from.
With LTT i think this does also have the potential to hurt them, even if the subscriber numbers come back up. They’ve been in a process of rapid expansion for a while now, so merely getting back to those numbers or slightly growing won’t cut it. Additionally i think with floatplane and the lab they’ve been heavily investing into their image as a reputable and trusted company for consumers. Particularly the lab where they’ve heavily invested. Even if ultimately the average less informed consumer is their target market, for that they will also need enthusiasts to recommend them to those.
Emotions are high right now. It’s not a trend. I bet most of their subscribers don’t know about what’s going on and wouldn’t care either way. If lmg promise to do better and nothing big comes out, this will be forgotten in two weeks.
I’m curious if findings do come out. Would YouTube cancel or demonitize them?
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Google only cares about money and LTT pulls lots of views, so no
Oof. Losing 5% of your paid subscribers in a day is nothing to scoff at. I understand they weren’t exactly trending upwards prior to this either.
Now 7%.
Good.
When (tech)bros post cringe they lose subscriber
Morshu, now thats old school
