The quality and partner/sponsor issues are mostly expected from getting investor money and expanding quickly. The harassment issues are probably a preexisting problem from existing management. So its interesting that these issues are coming out near the same time.

Expect Linus to be reigned in and no longer be responding directly to these issues. Despite that he didnt sell the company, the people/banks that gave him the money to expand will not be happy to lose their money.

The apology video to me rang hollow and self serving. They made jokes (including a sex joke which was very unfortunate timing), they teased a new product and plugged lttstore, they said the details on how Labs does thorough testing will be paywalled, they publicly disclosed Billets prototype price which GN's video clearly stated they did not want public (an error in the video apologizing for errors), and then there's Linus' response.

I've canceled my floatplane subscription and unsubscribed from all of their YouTube channels. I was willing to see them through on the original accusations from GN, but after that "apology" and the accusations from Madison, I no longer feel okay rewarding them with my time and money.

Remember, everyone! Don’t just unsubscribe, click “Don’t recommend channel”!

I respectfully disagree that the shrug should be read as indifference to the issues going on. I think the rest of his apology, regardless of whether it was sufficient or not, shows that he is taking it seriously.

That's not at all to question your decision to be done with LMG. Anyone who chooses that in this situation is completely justified, IMHO. Madison's accusations especially are very troubling, and I hope they deal with it thoroughly, and tell us what they did after it's taken effect. That sort of behavior is completely unacceptable and if it means that Linus needs to go, then Linus needs to go.

The video would have been better of without Linus in it. He really needed to step back and shut up

Keep in mind, some of the "talented" people contributed to these issues. Some of them are to blame as well.

Their apology didn't even mention reviewing products that Linus has invested in. They didn't promise to correct that.

You would think that after so many YouTubers sucked at apologizing and got called out they would figure out how to do it the right way. But no!

That big ass team and you couldn't get a PR person to help you?

None of this was irredeemable. Sure, it will take a significant amount of time to rebuild trust but you can choose to be transparent in response and right your wrongs.

The hubris

yeah It is funny when people raise their pitchfork just for LTT alone while basically almost 99% companies out there operate like this, welcome to corporatism

Basically, ltt auctioned off a small startups best prototype after telling them they'd get it back. This is after they fucked up the testing and gave them an unfair horrible review.

This comes after a long line of testing fuckups that required corrections that were never properly made, on a pretty frequent basis.

And to top it all off, a former employee was bullied and sexually harrassed until she quit.

They are running their business like teenage kids. An adult pointed out some flaws and they decided they're a minority and are being oppressed. In reality the adult has 15 times less viewer following than the self proclaimed victims. Also, they treat their crew like dog shit and with that came allegations of misogyny which their behaviour seem to support the idea they are, in fact mistreating women. But without concrete evidence these will have to be considered allegations for the time being.

Cross-post from /c/technology

One additional point I think some others left out, in a recent LTT lab tour video, an employee took potshots at GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed by saying LTT wasn't reusing benchmark test results and implying GN and HUB were. HUB responded on twitter pointing out they they'd rerun many benchmarks and pointed to some quality issues in LMG tests. Linus responded on the WAN show in a pretty dismissive way and mentioned journalistic integrity or something. This seems to have lead GN to make that 45 minute video which includes a bunch of evidence from LMG videos.

Toxic workplace accusations aside for a moment, some of this might have blown over were it not were Linus's shitty handling at every turn. He probably could've diffused some of this current situation, but just keeps being dismissive and adversarial. Steve of GN said they'd been thinking about these issues for the past few months, but I'm not sure this video would've dropped this week or in quite the same format had Linus not fucked up his response on the WAN show.

gamernexus went over everything, It is fairly damning.

Same... I thought I'd heard of them more than I cared for before this controversy but now I keep fuckin hearing about them.