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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lemmy (just like Reddit) loves a good dog-pile. It was pretty predictable to see coming tbh
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 :-)
Good.
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%.
I was one of those that unsubscribed. I feel like the show quality has been dropping for a while now and the excessive advertising always got under my skin a little bit. I almost unsubscribed about a year ago when Linus went on his Twitter rant about how "adblockers are technically piracy" because it's sickening how many ads we have to look at every day and we have to sit though a sponsor segment every video and his plug to his own merch store.
But now after seeing his half-assed apology (that is also monetized and sponsored) AND seeing how terrible of an environment it is to work for him and the treatment Madison had to endure working under him was enough to push me over the edge. My views won't be giving him another dime of revenue.His apology video has a sponsor?!That's very fucked up.Issa joke by them got it.. I don't watch apology videos usually.
No, just youtube ads (that were disabled an hour after upload), as well as like 5 tone deaf 'and now for our sponsor! Jk!' segments.
No it doesn't, they make jokes about how they got offered to be sponsored by dbrand but no it itself is not sponsored however it is still monetized
This year has just turned out some incredibly poorly thought out apology videos from various YouTubers.
I hope people meme the crap out of this like they did for that lady with the ukulele.
Ty for sharing, now that’s greedy as fuck
Ad-blockers are technically piracy. It doesn't matter how unfair the ads are, they are what fund the creators (or the creators through YouTube). I don't seem to recall him berating people for ad-blocking, he just said that people should accept that they are pirating the content. I guess people don't like self-reflecting when they are labelled.
So me, using an ad blocker to prevent incorrectly vetted ads (that contain malware), stealing my information or compromising my computer, tracking my moves, or outright spying on what I say/type/consume is piracy? Then call me fucking Jack Sparrow baby
Maybe you are young, or incredibly naive (I am not trying to be offensive), but the internet used to be RIDDLED with unsafe ads. There is absolutely no reason you should ever believe they are safe now. Companies do very little to ensure their ads are safe as long as the money rolls in. Skype straight up served malware in their ads for years and never gave 1 fuck. (source: https://www.onmsft.com/news/skypes-traditional-desktop-program-is-spreading-malware-through-ads/)
Going on the internet without an adblocker (I suggest multiple layers, DNS level [Pihole/adguard] as well as device level [Extensions/browsers]) is like having unprotected sex with random strangers. Yes, you may end up fine, but you also could get some very nasty viruses (with long term damage, such as your SSN being leaked) all because you dont see the value in protection
Source that ads continue to be unsafe:
-https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/google-ad-scam-warning/847823/
And these are sponsored search results so that they appear first. You might think google should give a fuck about vetting those.....but nope
edit: Spelling/grammar
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?
Google only cares about money and LTT pulls lots of views, so no
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.
Well then you are lost.
Goodbye LTT, social media has proven to be a corrupted version of social networks.
Though Lemmy isn’t the supremely popular setup that Reddit was, it seems to have, on average, better company.
I am positively surprised by everbody's takes around here. They all seem mostly reasonable and people are rightfully concerned about the well-being of their workers, something that hasn't even made it into todays apology video.
happy to contribute to the unsub count
Just being the messenger here. The problem is that it's 100k of 15.6 (previously) million. People don't care, which means nor will Linus. It's incredibly likely that the "resolution" will amount to nothing, and the channel will remain dead to me.
While youtube hasn't had much impact (I'm not sure that tracker updates subscriptions very fast either tbh); Floatplane probably will.
From ~42k subscribers down to ~36k. A 16% drop (~$30k/mo at $5 per sub)
The thing is, although LTT is important to Linus, his wife, and with direct ties, the viewers have many choices today with regards to the tech YouTubers of different nature. This makes it easy to just move one. LTT is a mass marketed channel, not particularly niche in any area of tech and there are many like it.
Maybe, but with their size LTT can do crazy shit like water-cooling an entire server room with a pool.
These things are always temporary. They'll lose subs for a moment, but then it'll bounce back like nothing
Yep... it surprises me that people still think that the internet has principles or cares. Haven't we seen how weak people are for reddit already?
I can't tell you how disappointed I am on how this ended. I really thought the "Landed Gentry" quip would have had the pouring gasoline to be out a fire effect.
I just unsubbed from the $10 Floatplane group too
I was never subbed anyway, but I also made sure to find a LTT vid and click on “don’t recommend channel” on YouTube.
Nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure.
click on “don’t recommend channel” on YouTube.
I'm not very into the tube and had no idea this is an option. I'll use this going forward. Thanks!
It's great for when a video that you don't want to watch just will not get off your homepage.
I unsubscribed from all LMG channels after the harmful practises came to light. That's just not on.
OOTL, what's going on here?
Being transparent about your business, comes with pros and cons. Right now a female employee shared her end of the story to the web on why she quit, and you're seeing the reaction to it.
Edit: This amplified the ongoing issue about LTT and their information integrity, which is very likely due to root causes that Linus repeatedly ignored, or worse, believed he was right and everyone was wrong.
I had to look it up myself. These two links seem to cover the controversy pretty well.
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-recent-criticism-of-linus-tech-tips-explained/
https://fandomwire.com/the-linus-tech-tips/
Edit:
Found this one too which is straight from the horse's mouth: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.htmlI did a little googling and found this
https://www.dexerto.com/tech/ex-linus-tech-tips-employee-alleges-mistreatment-and-poor-conditions-2251613/Drama
Sexual assault and stealing and selling one of a kind prototypes is a bit more serious than just drama.
Hobbydrama, which is always enjoyable.
Thanks for the reminder.
I unsubbed a couple of weeks ago because they released that always live video thing and it gave me the shits seeing the icon
I was one of them o7
Don’t forget about shortcircuit, techlinked, techquickie and Gamelinked
He's a narcissist so I don't think his subs have high expectations.
Well, it seems like they've finally admitted to a lot of this from GN (thanks Steve). But, can we at least give them a chance to correct?
Have a read through the pinned post in this community, then ask again.
/edit: https://lemmy.ml/post/3412121 (it's not pinned anymore)
Uh, wow. Was not aware of this, at all. I was aware of some previous workplace stuff from what, a few months ago. But dam.
Little behind, eh?
Who is this Linus Sex Tips and what he did?
Okay, now seriously, I know who he is but I'm too lazy to check what he did.
Well on monday it started off with another channel pointing out that their data is systemically crap, overworked crunching empolyees, and they robbed some indie startup company, and now it's all about how they have an incredibly toxic work enviroment and sexual assault alligations.
He gave bad sex tips
