The recent criticism of Linus Tech Tips, explained
The recent criticism of Linus Tech Tips, explained
Hardware channel Linus Tech Tips defended itself following a competitor's claims about its "accuracy, ethics, and responsibility."
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Linus really doesn’t respond well to criticism. He’s trying to act like a sale and an auction are 2 different things? If some hardware vendor tried to feed him that excuse he’d devote a whole video to it! Hell, if someone had sold one of his screwdriver prototypes he’d probably have thrown a fit and sued (as is his right)!
He’s picking quantity of videos over quality, so stuff like this is only going to accelerate.
You find that alot with people who built something huge out of next to nothing. LTT isnt Linus, Linus isnt LTT. But I guarantee he mentally cant fully disengage that connection. I honestly believe that he deep down is a nice person and generally has good intentions which is why he gets so bent out of shape, he KNOWS he wasnt acting maliciously.
He calls the shots and ultimately the buck stops with him. Either their processes are shit, their staff are overworked, their staff are incompetent, their production schedule is too rushed or quality is secondary to accuracy.
But they dont ask how, they ask how many, GN dropped a steaming pile of examples right for everyone to see. Iy isnt on the audience to care WHY he is fucking up with a 100 million dollar company and 120 staff. Just fix it.
He calls the shots and ultimately the buck stops with him.
I wish actually large corporations still worked like this. I never buy these "Oh but that happened below me"-excuses from CEOs. Yeah, you didn't personally order anybody to do this. But you hired the people who did. Or you created the business atmosphere in which your managers instructed their HR people to hire the people who did. Ultimately, you're the CEO, you should own the mistakes.
Because on the level of LTT, yeah, we're all intuitively aware of this. He's Linus, he is ultimately responsible no matter whether he did it personally or not.
There's a difference with large corps, though - decisions get mired in committees and delegation, and it gets hard to see what's actually happening a couple of org levels away. I don't have any problem accepting that Tim Cook has no idea how badly run any specific Apple Store might be. LMG may technically be a corporation, but 120 people isn't large. LMG functions like a sole proprietorship - the big boss is in the building with all his minions, probably lays eyes on most of them weekly if not daily, and sets culture by example.
Ignoring everything else, because other accusations seem to have more credibility, although a charity auction is certainly a type of sale, sale has completely different connotations than charity auction when devoid of context. It's a fair issue for them to have and raise.
Both share the actually relevant bit: The item went from LTT having it to them not having it, having not given it back to the owners either.
No it's not. It's not how the item got out of LTT's hands that the issue here. It's that LTT didn't return a fucking prototype! Sold, lost, melted down, really doesn't matter. If I'm making products and want to send one to LMG for a review, I'm insisting on him paying a hefty deposit first, because he clearly can't be trusted.
I see this as a "you're technically right, there is a legal difference; BUT the issue here is not how it was passed to someone else and not returned to the owners, but that it happened at all" type deal.
Does billet have their prototype back?
No.
The wording doesn’t matter. Call it an auction, sale, donation, grand theft, whatever you want. But that the end of the day, a small company now no longer has access to their expensive prototype. That’s very damaging to them as a business, let alone the damage that LTT caused to Billet’s image by their haphazard review process. Billet has every right to sue for damages over this, and I personally think they should.