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

[AltisticRight]

Linus got her mining coal.
View attachment 5277147

No, worse.
She had to make 2 Tik Toks a day.

I'd take shoveling elephant shit over that kind of brainrot humiliation.

 

[Kulee Baba]

In 2021, Coreteks called out LMG for the same shit and worse (working directly with nvidia/intel and then reviewing their products). Steve replied (or at least the GN Twitter account did) saying that Coreteks takes Windows OEM key reseller sponsorships, implying some kind of conflict of interest/hypocrisy/whatever. This is irrelevant because Coreteks does not talk about operating systems. He primarily discusses GPUs and other components, none of which are manufactured by Microsoft. Nobody listened to Coreteks, not even Saint Steve, so LMG kept getting worse as they themselves accepted sponsorships from intel/nvidia/satan.

I'd say that's a puritanical argument. I don't think a movie critic is necessarily untrustworthy for accepting advertisements for a movie. It's a careful balancing act of being honest to your viewership.

Now I don't know about the CD Key reseller Coreteks sponsors but CD Key resellers have a shady history.

 

[Kaiba Cuqk63]

What is worse is that it's always fucking sponsored, he's rich as fuck and still got to put 5K in gear in every room and a 20k server in his basement for no cost.
Also he's always talking shit about the employees apartaments, you can see they trying to be cool about in every video where he gives them a oled tv or PC that was probably in a closet full of sponsor shit.

It's probably a DSP situation where all the stuff that's actually purchased is called a business expense for tax purposes to make a video of 0.01% of the product's lifespan before gifting it to himself.

 

[TheRedChair]

Adding this Linus parody here. Enjoy. It had me smiling a bit.

 

[Mr.Bucket]

Disclaimer: Steve is also a Libertarian race mixer with a chinky wife. You can hear him speak Mandarin in videos sometimes.

Steve isn't married. He's learning Mandarin because he travels to china a lot for business reasons. And he's covered his sponsor selection many, many times. They only accept sponsorships from companies that aren't total shitheels and from products they like and/or straight up use themselves. He dropped Asus as a sponsor entirely after their shitty handling of their motherboards blowing up 7000-series CPUs.
Man, after getting highlighted by Null the other day the Fanfic Farms authors have come to this thread in full force.

 

[Wodanaz]

I'd say that's a puritanical argument argument. I don't think a movie critic necessarily flawed for accepting advertisements for a movie. It's a careful balancing act.

I completely disagree. If you accept money for a sponsorship, then you are tacitly admitting that your opinion on it is worthless because you have already decided on the exact dollar amount that it is worth personally to you. Everyone knows this, come now. It's in the definition of conflict of interest.

Now I don't know about the CD Key reseller Coreteks sponsors but CD Key resellers have a shady history.

Perhaps. Apparently the company Coreteks works with is legitimate, I wouldn't know. But he also points out in the video that if he was alerted to illegal activity, then he would just take some other random sponsorship from his inbox, such as wallets. There is no reason why GN cannot do this for gaming peripherals they don't review, such as chairs, keyboards, mice, etc. Perhaps your counter to this point is that you appreciate the honesty and genuine intent of GN's sponsorships to only promote the best products they can. My response to this would be GN's entire catalogue of video reviews that already accomplish this. You call it a careful balancing act, but the real balancing act is trying to convince yourself that you are capable of remaining as unbiased as possible after you have accepted money to highlight a product that you have a vested interest in not being completely honest about.

Steve isn't married. He's learning Mandarin because he travels to china a lot for business reasons. And he's covered his sponsor selection many, many times. They only accept sponsorships from companies that aren't total shitheels and from products they like and/or straight up use themselves. He dropped Asus as a sponsor entirely after their shitty handling of their motherboards blowing up 7000-series CPUs.
Man, after getting highlighted by Null the other day the Fanfic Farms authors have come to this thread in full force.

Response is the same as above paragraph. This is not fanfiction. This is, as fatrick hamlinson would put it, "the truth". The only reason why I go to these lengths is because I truly believe GN is the best tech reviewer channel in the world, and I don't want to see them fall. Because the bigger you are, the harder you fall. QED: Linus Media Group.

 

[Mr.Bucket]

There is no reason why GN cannot do this for gaming peripherals they don't review, such as chairs, keyboards, mice, etc.

Because they accept sponsors for stuff they know is good. If it's not good, they don't accept it as a sponsor. They rarely just parrot the sponsor copy, and often quote their reviews in the sponsor segment, so accepting sponsors for things they don't cover at all (IE peripherals) would actually make the sponsorships *less* legitimate because then you wouldn't know if it was actually a quality product or not. Vs seeing a ad for, say, a corsair case then going and searching for that case and finding GN's review video of said case.

 

[Wodanaz]

Because they accept sponsors for stuff they know is good. If it's not good, they don't accept it as a sponsor. They rarely just parrot the sponsor copy, and often quote their reviews in the sponsor segment, so accepting sponsors for things they don't cover at all (IE peripherals) would actually make the sponsorships *less* legitimate because then you wouldn't know if it was actually a quality product or not. Vs seeing a ad for, say, a corsair case then going and searching for that case and finding GN's review video of said case.

You are either obtuse or a fool. A man can walk straight to hell with good intentions, and GN is already doing so much good. There is no reason to invite potential misfortune by accepting sponsorships that conflict with their reviews. They get millions of views, their patreon is at an all time high of $11,000 per month, their merchandise regularly sells out. I don't know their financials but if they're trying to make as much money as possible to invest in things like $250 dollar acoustically isolated chambers, then literally how can you defend sponsorships with components that make noise after that? Even if GN claims in their videos using the chamber that these are the quietest parts, how would you know? Do you have a $250 thousand dollar acoustically isolated chamber? They already review components and tell you which ones they think are the best ones. Introducing sponsorships from the companies who manufacture these products can do nothing but cast doubt upon GN's conclusions.

Edit: By the way, I am literally gigantic GN cocksucker. I made this post epically dunking on some faggot who said he couldn't stand Steve trying to be all high and mighty. I would have edited a link to my post about the Coreteks video on to the bottom of it because I consider the journalistic integrity of GN very important, but I suppose you cannot edit highlighted posts. If you've come away from this interaction with the misapprehension that I just don't like GN because Steve has a chinky wife or something, please be advised of this.

 

[Big moth tiddies]

Archiving now - a four minute long video of a phone under a table recording a conversation between LTT staff, claimed to be in December 2021.

This clip is so nothing. You can hear most of this at nearly any workplace nowadays. I'm going out on a limb and saying maybe it was a warning shot? Like, "Ohhhh, who knows what the next clip will be?!" Otherwise, there's just nothing to it at all.

It's an apology by the suits, not Linus. Well, seeing him be sat down and forced to apologize like a petulant child was good tho.

Well we saw how linus handled it the night of the video, raging away at his keyboard like a LoL player. It was the right call, minus the stupid merch plugs.

I wonder why this hyper efficient video workflow was never activated in years past to get necessary corrections out there?

Those videos have to get out there, boy! At least one a day, maybe two!

One of the ethical issues Steve hit them on was Linus' investment in Framework. I think they've handled the conflict OK so far, but if they're going to get into objective reviews with hard analysis, they're going to need to address that.

Honestly, this is the weakest point Steve hit. Linus, to his credit, made frequent and loud mentions that he's invested in Framework in every single video related to them. (haven't watched LTT in a couple months, so if that changed, disregard.) As long as people are upfront about their conflicts, I have no concerns, really. It's when you find out later that there's some secret bullshit going on behind the scenes that pisses me off.

Also, Framework is something I can get behind. It's a relatively small company that easily proved that the big guys like Acer and the like are full of shit when they say they can't make a laptop that isn't a busted piece of shit that'll be in the landfill a year after you buy it.

 

[XANA]

interesting that youtube still tallies dislikes. I guess it's just used as a mechanism for feedback for the channels and just hidden from viewers.

Correct. If dislikes are enabled, the dislike tally is still recorded in the backend of YouTube servers, as channel owners are able to specifically see precise like-dislike ratios for the individual videos they publish. It's just that YouTube's frontend changed. You can restore dislike visibility with browser extensions, or with a tampermonkey script.

Linus will lose quite a bit of his viewers, but not a significant portion of them, since the people who watch him regularly aren't tech-literate. Hell, I'd bet a lot of them don't even know why there's a pissfight between him and GN. Sure, people are pissed off at Linus right now and a good part of the views on his videos about the subject are from hate-watching, but the regular LTT viewers also tend to have Hamster-tier memory problems.

 

[5STA]

The Madison allegations don't even register for me, but they do rile up Soyjacks all over the internet of course, which is bad for Linus. If you actually focus on the substance and ignore the dramatic emotional manipulation women are fond of, LTT is accused of making her work too hard by requesting 2 tiktoks per day and a few social media posts. (I strongly disagree this being a crazy workload) Furthermore, reading between the lines and seeing her posts in general, she is in fact a drama queen complaining about everything and everyone at all times, you see those people sometimes at a workplace. And no, everyone else isn't crazy, she is.

Throwing in a random "inappropriately grabbed" (with this crazy bitch and that level of vagueness, someone probably tapped her lightly on the shoulder once) doesn't change anything. Also, self mutilating instead of making much more common excuses to miss work, and in general "going insane" from this basic workload.. No, this is all on her, and she is just trying to coast on some sweet drama for attention, despite her insistence otherwise.

 

[Kulee Baba]

I completely disagree. If you accept money for a sponsorship, then you are tacitly admitting that your opinion on it is worthless because you have already decided on the exact dollar amount that it is worth personally to you. Everyone knows this, come now. It's in the definition of conflict of interest.

With something like a GPU a review should boil down to objectivity. Is this card a good value? How much performance does it give compared to a lower or higher end model?

Of course there is stuff in that that becomes a matter of opinion which is most prone to being altered from sponsors. I know some gamers have a loathing of Nvidia's DLSS. But as a concept I'm not going to see a review for a Samsung phone and assume the entire review is bullshit because Samsung sponsored them. It COULD happen, but the hope is a reviewer knows people are watching the video with the ideal that the reviewer isn't lying.

 

[Wodanaz]

With something like a GPU a review should boil down to objectivity. Is this card a good value? How much performance does it give compared to a lower or higher end model?

Of course there is stuff in that that becomes a matter of opinion which is most prone to being altered from sponsors. I know some gamers have a loathing of Nvidia's DLSS. But as a concept I'm not going to see a review for a Samsung phone and assume the entire review is bullshit because Samsung sponsored them. It COULD happen, but the hope is a reviewer knows people are watching the video with the ideal that the reviewer isn't lying.

In theory you may be correct, and if I was forced to choose a company's sponsored review to trust, then it would hands down be GN's, but still. The issue is a core part of why they took umbrage with LMG in the first place. I just want GN to continue being excellent, and more importantly, I was to continue trusting them. There are so few you can trust in this world.

 

[Slav Power]

You can restore dislike visibility with browser extensions, or with a tampermonkey script.

It's worth reminding that the Return YouTube Dislike extension shows the dislikes based on scraped data before the API shutdown and estimates from the extension's users.

It does not show the actual stat from Google's servers, but rather an estimate of it, or an estimate+whatever the dislikes were on old videos before the change.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

Must be interesting working in inventory and noticing discrepancies. "Hm, that monitor [employee] was seriously eyeing is missing. Oh well"

How do you notice an Asian eyeing something though

 

[AltisticRight]

Interesting video by Coreteks on the subject. Initially I was skeptical because of the thumbnail and the fact that I like Steve and GN, but it's undeniable.

God.
I want to support this guy.
He has a point.
I agree with his core argument but he sucks at presenting it and it's fueled with his personal spite.
This will be a long post.

Firstly, Steve's initial response to his concerns were shit but this guy just sounds like a scorned child trying desperately to pilpull a point that doesn't really exist. Notice how he never made it clear in the beginning which definition of terms such as "fraud" and "conflict of interest" he was using? He's trying to pick and choose definitions that suits his predetermined point, what's that called again? Confirmation bias/circular reasoning?

Maybe the English language isn't his mother tongue, so I'll give him a pass.

The definition of "conflict of interest" depends on what kind of role one's in and the industry. I love how he chose Wikipedia for this one, instead of any reputable source. He chose the dictionary definition of fraud and some whatever economists', yet he didn't use the investment/business definition of "CoE" but resorted to the garbage source that is Wikipedo filled with fake news and powerjannies.

Here it is, from investopedia:

A conflict of interest occurs when an entity or individual becomes unreliable because of a clash between personal (or self-serving) interests and professional duties or responsibilities. Such a conflict occurs when a company or person has a vested interest—such as money, status, knowledge, relationships, or reputation—which puts into question whether their actions, judgment, or decision-making can be unbiased.

Some examples of a conflict of interest could be:

• Representing a family member in court
• Starting a business that competes with your full-time employer
• Advising a client to invest in a company owned by your spouse
• Hiring an unqualified relative or friend

When such a situation arises, the party with the conflict of interest is usually asked to remove themselves, and it is often legally required of them.

Therefore, Steve's video 1 month ago was sponsored by Deepcool coolers, he reviewed one 3 weeks ago. Clear conflict of interest (CoI), right? Not really, here's why.

• AK620 and AK400 coolers (very important)
• "We reviewed it, according to our data, it's competitive".
• Link clearly indicates sponsorship and it was an amazon affiliate link.

The problem with his point was that the video was sponsored by the two specific coolers, NOT the Assassin IV that was reviewed 3 months ago. The review video WAS NOT sponsored by Deepcool's entire product line. You'll see why this matters.

Here are GN's review of the sponsored coolers, AK620 and AK400, from a year ago.

In the sponsorship segment, GN clearly states that according to their reviews, the cooler is competitive. They did not use any over the top language such as "blows the competition out of the water" or anything that will overtly sway a person's purchasing decision.

In fact, the specific sponsored "Assassin IV" cooler was reviewed 2 months ago, one month prior to the sponsorship. This is information he could have obtained through a simple search, but he didn't. This brings his entire premise into question, is this spite or does he want the best for the industry? Clearly it's the former in this specific case.

He's comparing oranges to apples.

Therefore, I see no conflict of interest here, it does not exist. Sufficient steps have been taken to mitigate the conflicts of interest as GN only takes sponsorships from products, not brands. Don't get me wrong, this guy has a good point, he's failing to make it because he's committing the textbook offence of confirmation bias. He probably thought no one would check.

Secondly, I present this.

GN goes over their so called superior heatpipe design and calls their marketing out for lying/sensationalism. This was three years ago. Three weeks ago, the newer iteration becomes a sponsor.

GN outlines their sponsorship rules in the video below and on their webpage.

https://gamers.nexus/ethics-statements/advertising

Here is another example.

Beset on all sides by tough competition from the Fractal North, Lian Li Lancool III, 216, and Hyte's own Y60, the Y40 struggled to make a mark when it came to thermals. Build quality is good, but watch the review for the caveats! Watch our Hyte Y60 review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNfsG-Ai2PA Our case testing and reviews are unique for their depth. Support our efforts & get something great in return on our store! https://store.gamersnexus.net/

They did not like the Y40, but the more expensive Y60 still gets sponsorships, a case which they like.

Finally, what's the point of this? Coreteks claims GN is worse, does he even believe himself? He thinks GN is worse simply because Steve laughed at his shoddy Windows CDKey sponsorships. Stop acting like a child, if this guy becomes Linus sized, he'd probably be the same. CDKey sponsorships, are you kidding me?

Still, he has a good point and all these events should be a huge warning against GN. GN is simply getting too big and popular. LTT started as an advocate for the consumer with clear boundaries, they are now massive and only cares about money. They called out brands in the past, which they do so very poorly now. What's to say that GN wouldn't become LMG after they dethrone them, following the footsteps of the greedy ricecooking grifter?

Coreteks being sponsered by shoddy CD Key dealers doesn't mean he isn't allowed to call out industry practices. That's a textbook ad hominem committed by Steve, and he should apologise for it. Steve's need to make a smug "glass house" comment contributed to the mess we have now, as little as it was. If he took the person's concerns seriously, he would have discovered all the flaws and perhaps prevented all of this in the form of a callout video.

Another issue with his argument is chronology, people change.
This was from last year:

The tweets he presented was from 2 years ago, when GN was still very friendly with LTT.

I present this extreme example as an analogy.
(The original profile comment was "Free Pomp " in March of 2023.)

Here is mine from last month.

If you asked me if I support Pomp (he brought us Corey Barnhill deets) in June, I would have said yes.
If you asked me last month, I would have wanted his execution livestreamed because he's a paedophile.

So what's the takeaway of this long post?
1. GN needs to redo their sponsorship video on their MAIN CHANNEL, not hidden on some secondary channel and their webpage that nobody cares about.
2. They need to make it clear that products sponsor videos, and it's not an endorsement of the entire brand.
3. Steve should be ashamed of his retarded personal attack and being a member of the dog pile rather than seeing the clear as day fraudulent activities of LTT.
4. He should apologise.

I can understand why Coreteks made all these egregious errors and they seem genuine to me. I can see why he's using confirmation bias to make his points because ultimately, he was wronged in the first place.

He is on the fence regarding Madison's spergy long tweets, which is fair. He wants to hear both sides of the argument, good for him. Guess which site still refuses to hear "both sides" of the argument when it comes to Byuu's fake suicide? You're using this garbage site, my dude.

Good video. Lacklustre presentation.

 

[AltisticRight]

In theory you may be correct, and if I was forced to choose a company's sponsored review to trust, then it would hands down be GN's, but still. The issue is a core part of why they took umbrage with LMG in the first place. I just want GN to continue being excellent, and more importantly, I was to continue trusting them. There are so few you can trust in this world.

There's a dilemma here:
1. Get sponsorships from irrelevant brands?
- Viewers probably won't care
- You'd look like a grifter, ie those hemp oil merchants such as Benny Shapiro, Established Titles, Raid Shadow Legends etc.
- Not a user, how can you know it's good? Oh, it's the money? Whore.
2. Get sponsorships from relevant brands?
- Conflict of interest.
- Can we trust your review?

GN balances this quite well. They take sponsorships from products, not brands. What they failed to do is disclosing it, only OG fags like me know they did a video a long time ago and it's on a stupid channel that I spent 6 minutes finding, not their main. That's a clear problem.

In an ideal world, they will never accept sponsorships from the brands they review. Everything is funded by their viewers and their own products/merchandise. If they are at the stage of doing so, then I would implore them to drop all those sponsors.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

Another reason I can't take Coreteks seriously is IIRC, some years ago, he actually made a video that said that this generation of consoles will finally outpace the PC because... they have an NVMe storage that not all PCs will have...

Um... ok? Not all PCs have high end GPUs either. It hasn't aged particularly well because relatively more affordable NVMe drives have shown up in the past few years.

 

[TerribleUser09]

I see many valid points raised by GN are actually connected to costs of running LTT. There are several segments in which he outlines that the video seems rushed and could be reshot. Especially, if they are short. Despite oblivious facts that over one video is working several people from testers, writers, presenters, and editors to other staff members it's costly. I don't know if they are hourly paid or contracted but it seems meaningless to reshoot a video and lose money on a video that will be forgotten in the next week.

The "drama" regarding that cooler by the 2-man company is hilarious because from my perspective it's actually their fault that they didn't secure their product as paid advertisement and shipped it disregarding that the reviewer isn't bound to satisfy the needs of the manufacturer and can be unbiased. This is just stupid that they whine in the comment section that LTT didn't follow their instructions and somehow the "pipeline" didn't reach Linus. Sure it didn't because they weren't bound to do any of the stuff you have asked them.

EDIT:
The mouse that LTT slammed wasn't a marketing product but a gift. There is a slight difference between "giving" someone a product and hoping for having a good review and "paying" for such a review. NG just briefly mentioned that it was a "gift" and somehow makes the connotation that LTT was incompetent for not removing pads and making outrageous reviews that the manufacturer "paid" for.

 

[Belascoarán]

I have no thoughts on the substance of this video, but the style makes me feel like they're about to ask me to donate to Ukraine

Hmph funny you should mention Ukraine. No wonder Team VladdyPoots hacked his shit.