Linus Gabriel Sebastian & Linus Media Group / Linus Tech Tips - Narcissistic corporate shill YouTuber driving his media empire into the ground. KILL COUNT: 2

TheOtherSideofMakeBelieve said:
Is there any chance that account age has some effect on how youtube works? My account is from close to launch (and I've had Red/premium pretty much since that launched as well) and I don't have a lot of the problems that people seem to have with it. Don't recommend this channel and stuff like that has always worked for me without having to clean up my history, I haven't seen an LTT video suggested since I unsubscribed even after watching the Gamers Nexus video when it released. I was even getting MatI archives in my suggestions before the main archive channels got banned.

The only real issue, and it's not even a problem just something that can be slightly annoying every once in a while, is if I check out a video or two on a completely new topic (like watch repair, just as a current example) I get swamped with that topic as my suggestions for several days/weeks before my suggestions are back to normal. The videos are interesting so I don't want to avoid them entirely, I'd just like a bit more variety rather than having my feed completely dominated by 1-2 subjects. I guess a "show less" button in addition to the "don't show" button would work.
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Google (and most tech companies) A/B Tests everything, aggressively, all the time. I've long since chalked up the bizarre, disparate experiences that people have with various aspects of youtube in the algorithm, automatic unsubs, ignoring your ignoring, pushing some content over others, to all point to them not having one 'Algorithm'. They seemingly have tens of them, being constantly tweaked and tested against various groups to see what kinds of impacts they have, and trying to drive the 'right' kind of engagement. Some of us probably get tagged for all kinds of dumb experimentation to see how they can influence habits and consumption patterns.

Its working as intended, just that the intent is often very different from what you might want.
 
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Kuritan Deplorable said:
Google (and most tech companies) A/B Tests everything, aggressively, all the time. I've long since chalked up the bizarre, disparate experiences that people have with various aspects of youtube in the algorithm, automatic unsubs, ignoring your ignoring, pushing some content over others, to all point to them not having one 'Algorithm'. They seemingly have tens of them, being constantly tweaked and tested against various groups to see what kinds of impacts they have, and trying to drive the 'right' kind of engagement. Some of us probably get tagged for all kinds of dumb experimentation to see how they can influence habits and consumption patterns.

Its working as intended, just that the intent is often very different from what you might want.
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I definitely agree on the multiple algorithms thing, I don't know about youtube specifically but with Chrome they're pretty open about disparate experiences while testing new features. I'm just curious if, say, having a pre-GoogleTube account locks you into a non-shit/premium feature set because aside from occasional buffering issues (which hasn't been a problem in years) YouTube has always been a really good experience for me
 
TheOtherSideofMakeBelieve said:
I definitely agree on the multiple algorithms thing, I don't know about youtube specifically but with Chrome they're pretty open about disparate experiences while testing new features. I'm just curious if, say, having a pre-GoogleTube account locks you into a non-shit/premium feature set because aside from occasional buffering issues (which hasn't been a problem in years) YouTube has always been a really good experience for me
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I suspect it depends on the nature of your current engagement, and their current fixation. Like how they're pushing shorts really hard right now, and its getting annoying, because they want that infinite doomscrolling junk food content market. They also go back and forth between wanting and loathing long form content, or various 'advertiser friendly' measures. If your current consumption is considered 'good' by their old metrics, but not the new ones, you might just be consistently flagged as a control user, to measure other changes against.
 
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Belegar said:
So what does this mean? I have a hard time thinking Linus would downsize the labs after dropping millions in to the project. I'm actually kind of shocked after all of that bragging how he is hiring REAL engineers it's actually students rather then people who has experience. It now makes a lot more sense why the labs is taking so long. For engineers there is a long adjustment period between work and school where they are effectively useless.
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Homoshrexual2 said:
The best part about this whole saga is watching the lord of scrappy dude techbros learning why corporate bureaucracy and HR is important. You can't retain the anything-goes startup culture when you have 100+ employees across 3 separate companies. That Linus hired a CEO right before this shitstorm is icing on the cake.
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Between the obvious impeding(? might have already happened tbh) failure of LTT Labs, and the upward trajectory of Gamers Nexus (see: their latest video. They bought a buttload of CPUs for ~10k USD to prove a point anyone with knowledge in this area knew already, then gave them away with merch at a loss. pure flex), I can't wait to see what's next for Linus and co. They (pretty miraculously) avoided much of the PR disaster that could have happened in the last weeks, but I think it's more of a pyrrhic victory than it appears.
 
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ZipDisk said:
Has A/B testing ever been positive? As far as I can tell it's always been a plate of "We're doing this, deal with it".
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It absolutely can be, its just a means of mass testing possible options for a change. If the change itself is good, some of the various A/B tests will be good as well. If the change is bad, not so much. And sometimes the change does get scrapped - Look back just a while ago when Youtube started trying to passively threaten adblock users, and had to hard walk it back pretending they totally never wanted to do so, because every variant they tried was receiving massive backlash. A/B testing in that case helps you confirm that its the idea that was bad, and not just a specific implementation of it.
 
Blue Whirlwind said:
They bought a buttload of CPUs for ~10k USD to prove a point anyone with knowledge in this area knew already, then gave them away with merch at a loss. pure flex)
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That was a good bit
Linus: I'm not gonna spend a few hundred bucks more to do the test properly for the benefit of both manufacturers and consumers
GN: We spent 10k to shut up one guy in the comments about our test accuracy, and the best part, Linus? We did it months ago.
 
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Belegar said:
Tim of the labs the guy who started the whole controversy with GN got sacked.
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Lol, I was wondering about this guy's fate. He's like the guy that sent Jack Murphy that superchat - one little domino leading to an absolute implosion. He was probably no dumber than anyone else at LTT but I imagine Linus just couldn't look at him anymore without seething.
 
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Belegar said:
Tim of the labs the guy who started the whole controversy with GN got sacked.

View attachment 5305639

Alex Potvin is another employee that recently left sarcastically tweeted out: No one is getting laid off". Tim liked the tweet. He's now also followed by Maddison.
View attachment 5305640

Redditors offers two explanations:
View attachment 5305645
Then somebody dug up this now deleted tweet:
View attachment 5305646
Doesn't really seem like a guy that's going back to school now is it?
So what does this mean? I have a hard time thinking Linus would downsize the labs after dropping millions in to the project. I'm actually kind of shocked after all of that bragging how he is hiring REAL engineers it's actually students rather then people who has experience. It now makes a lot more sense why the labs is taking so long. For engineers there is a long adjustment period between work and school where they are effectively useless.
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Just the other day I thought the milk has dried up (until Linus does something stupid again). This is fun
.
 
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That's such a gay move from Linus, sack the guy who was, really, sticking up for your stupid labs endeavor. Oh I know it triggered all this and it means Linus can't buy another McMansion for a year or two, but Tim is more of a likable guy than that faggot Riley.

If they start firing other engineer bros, it will be because of what I suspected a week or two before the GN video, that the engineers are too normal and confident and asserting too much power vs. the LTT introvert writers and creating a power struggle.
 
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the despicable internet said:
I'm pretty sure that's true. I've had a lot of problems getting rid of channels I used to watch many many years ago at this point. They randomly come back into my feed/sidebar at some interval and I have no idea why YouTube would do this as they must know that tastes change over time. Maybe it has some proven click-through-rate that we're immune to but other users aren't.
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I have Watch History turned off and get zero bullshit. No more soyface and other crap greeting me when I open youtube. Just a nice clean blank page with nothing but my subscriptions on the left.

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If Tim was actually sacked instead of voluntarily resigning to go back to school, that's even more of a black eye on LMG, IMO. Sure his comment was the pebble that started the avalanche, but that comment would never have made it into a video if the film crew asked for a re-take on that, the video editor cut around it, the producer didn't approve and publish the video (please tell me it isn't the editors themselves making these decisions...), and hopefully another two or three checks that would happen before a video goes out.

But as the real actual meat of GN's video pointed out, there is no quality control in LMG videos. Yes, that means that a lot of specs and tests are going to be inaccurate, but it also means you don't have anyone making sure some lab tech who never expected to be in front of a camera doesn't say something that will land the whole company in a PR nightmare. Tim himself doesn't deserve any more of a reprimand than anyone else with a bad take in the workplace does. It was a failure of the entire system that Linus put in place that let his bad take become an official LMG-sponsored bad take.
 
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Mind Goblins said:
If Tim was actually sacked instead of voluntarily resigning to go back to school, that's even more of a black eye on LMG, IMO. Sure his comment was the pebble that started the avalanche, but that comment would never have made it into a video if the film crew asked for a re-take on that, the video editor cut around it, the producer didn't approve and publish the video (please tell me it isn't the editors themselves making these decisions...), and hopefully another two or three checks that would happen before a video goes out.

But as the real actual meat of GN's video pointed out, there is no quality control in LMG videos. Yes, that means that a lot of specs and tests are going to be inaccurate, but it also means you don't have anyone making sure some lab tech who never expected to be in front of a camera doesn't say something that will land the whole company in a PR nightmare. Tim himself doesn't deserve any more of a reprimand than anyone else with a bad take in the workplace does. It was a failure of the entire system that Linus put in place that let his bad take become an official LMG-sponsored bad take.
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It wasn't an LMG video but on of his "whales" at LTX. Even then Steve didn't say shit till linus ran his fuckin mouth on the WAN show. Still the BPD retard is the real reason this whole shitstorm imploded.
 
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Oh really? Well fuck me then, I must have missed that context. I thought the comment came from one of LMG's own channels. I still can't hate him too much, I doubt the dude expected to be on camera then, if ever at all, and Linus's only real response should have been along the lines of "The opinions of LMG staff do not reflect that of LMG as a whole" and washed his hands of it. I wonder if Linus is going to be a bit more restrictive on what the whales can film and who they can talk to though, lol.
 
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