Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls
www.theverge.com
The controversy continues to grow.

Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t…::The YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has halted production after controversies over ethics and accuracy in reporting, spurred further this morning by accusations of sexual harassment experienced at the company.

  • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7010·
    1 year ago

    This has been coming for a long time. I have had issues with Linus and his channel for a long time including making a complaint about breach of advertising standards in Canada (which resulted in a change forced by the ASA). They have become the model of how to make money on Youtube but they do so in such an unethical way where they make or invest in competing products that they also review. They have never had any appearance of journalistic standards or integrity, they don’t publish errata or corrections and they make a lot of mistakes and the abusive reviews have been going on for a long time.

    I am not surprised to find sexual harassment as well as undue pressure being applied in the workplace. It all centres and comes from the Narcissist at the centre of it who has built a media group off the back of civil law breaches repeatedly and continues to push the limits.

    Labs was a terrible idea mostly because Linus and his media group will corrupt the results for his personal profit and he and Yvonne are the only ones making big bucks in all this. This has been building for a very long time, the lack of basic morality has been on display since the beginning.

    • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      214·
      1 year ago

      They have been misleading millions of people for years and getting away with it. I hope this company is done. There have to be consequences for this kind of behavior.

      What Gamers Nexus did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to get rid of corrupt channels like Linus Tech Tips and I suspect they were just one of many.

    • LakesLem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      152·
      1 year ago

      Ah, colour me surprised that the spammiest channel on YouTube, which is practically unwatchable without Sponsorblock and has always been my go-to example use case for the addon (which Linus deems “Piracy”), turns out to have incredibly shady advertising practices. And incredibly shady practices in general.

      • oryx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        25·
        1 year ago

        You don’t have the attention span to watch what, five to fifteen seconds of a sponsor spot? The bulk of their sponsor reads are at the very end of the video. Like come on, they’re literally the best channel I’ve seen as far as not having giant sponsor spots at the beginning of the video.

        • Zatore@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          You seem to be delusional. Do you know what fatigue is?

    • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      111·
      1 year ago

      I believe some of his early videos were basically undisclosed advertisements. They were so over the top positive, it just didn’t feel right. I’ve had his channels blocked on YouTube for a while now. I simply don’t trust anything coming from him.

      • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        92·
        1 year ago

        That was their early model. They took money for a product and produced a positive video on it. That was the channel its how it got started and grew. They always used weasel words (still do) like a company “hooked them up” which meant they received a free product and payment to produce this video. They were actually caught properly on this on a series of AMD sponsored videos which were so incredibly positive and glossing over the issues and AMD explained the videos had been paid for. It turned out that was how the channel worked, they got paid for positive reviews.

        Nowadays sponsorship is better declared (because the ASA required that of them) but conflicts of interests aren’t. There is also the appearance of a lot of fraud too where free products are being placed into their homes. The Intel extreme series is a prime example of something that looks super dodgy and maybe a tax dodge. Right now its hard to prove something criminal is happening, based on their history however its not unreasonable to suspect it is.