Linus Tech Tips will stop making videos for a week after criticism
The popular tech channel Linus Tech Tips will stop making videos for a week. The team wants to use this time to examine and improve internal processes. The decision follows criticism from, among others, Gamers Nexus.
“We don’t have to struggle for survival anymore, and we don’t have to work at this speed,” said Linus Media Group’s chief financial officer Yvonne Ho in a video called ‘What do we do now?’ “In fact, it is our desire to do more and be better that has created our current situation. We will therefore immediately stop producing all YouTube videos.” Linus Tech Tips came under fire earlier this week due to an extensive video from another popular tech channel, Gamers Nexus. That provided detailed, critical descriptions of Linus Media Group’s measurement methods and ethical practices, to which LTT is now responding.
The pause that LTT is now taking is temporary; the team wants to use the coming week to ‘examine all processes and workflows’ in order to improve the content. “This means that for the first time in twelve years, LTT will not only not upload videos for one day, but for several days in a row.” The pause does not mean that no more videos will appear from today. For example, Head of Writing James Strieb indicates that several videos have already been scheduled and will still be online.
Ho also says that it will take longer than a week before the content and processes are at the level “we want and need.” The channel will also upload fewer videos after the coming week, in order to focus on quality. “At least for now, while we are still getting our affairs in order,” Ho said of LTT’s reduced output.
Make testing standards and processes public
In the video, several LTT managers indicate what they want to change in the near future. One of the most concrete plans comes from Gary Key, Head of Labs, LTT’s test lab. He plans to release documentation in the coming week that will clarify Labs’ testing standards and processes, in order to get feedback from the community and colleagues. The team will also publish code it uses to test products in the hope of getting feedback.
Furthermore, the Labs team will also check all previously published videos that contain Labs data to check whether they still contain errors. If this is the case, the team wants to adjust these videos or take them offline. “I don’t agree with all the criticism leveled at my team, but I have to acknowledge what we did wrong and what we’re going to do next,” Key said. Later there should also be a video showing the entire Labs testing process. For new videos, it must also be clear in the credits which benchmark data the video makers have used.
With the changes, LTT says it wants to be more transparent towards readers and viewers. With the changes, LTT says it wants to be more transparent towards readers and viewers and to make fewer mistakes in the future. CEO Terren Tong, who took over that position from Linus six weeks ago, says in the video that they will continue to make mistakes in the future, ‘because we are human’. Tong wants his company to be ‘more humble’ in the face of new mistakes, ‘even if it makes us look less perfect’.
Protective foil for mouse hands-on
Over the past week, Linus Media Group was repeatedly accused of not responding correctly to errors. This is how LTT’s sister channel published ShortCircuit a hands-on of gaming mouse Pwnage Stormbreaker, where it was said that the mouse did not glide smoothly on surfaces. After publication of the video, it turned out that there was still protective foil over the feet, which ShortCircuit had not removed. Initially, Linus said in an LMG podcast that the protective foil was not on the feet. Only when the company looked at the images again did it recognize that the foil was still on the mouse. The company said it would adjust the video, but made no apologies and said Pwnage should make the protective layer clearer, with pull tabs, for example.
In a new response under the ShortCircuit video, LMG acknowledges that it made a mistake and that its first responses were incorrect. Now the company says it ‘deeply regrets’ the mistakes and wants to do better in the future. Tong mentions this incident as a clear example of what can go wrong at LMG and what needs to be improved in the future. “I agree with the community. We still have a lot of work to do,” says the CEO.
Gamers Nexus and the Billet Labs cooling pad
Criticism of Linus Media Group increased on Tuesday. That happened after Gamers Nexus posted a video about LTT. Here, Steve Burke outlines what he believes are the biggest problems at LTT when it comes to accuracy, ethics and accountability. For example, according to Burke, the platform too often publishes videos with content errors ‘that can mislead consumers’ and noted errors are not addressed properly. This is said to be due to a busy work schedule that leaves little time for self-reflection and making quality videos, something that LMG employees have also publicly stated. LMG therefore recognizes that improvement is needed and therefore temporarily stops producing videos.
Cooling block
In the recent LTT video, Linus Sebastian, among others, also discusses the incident involving a cooling block from Billet Labs. LMG had borrowed this cooling block for a video, but mounted it on the wrong GPU, which meant that the results and the review were not fair, as Linus now acknowledges. After the review, Billet Labs wanted the cooling block back, but due to communication errors, LMG sold the prototype at auction. This caused financial problems for start-up Billet Labs, although the two parties have now agreed on compensation. LMG promises improvement when it comes to internal communication processes and inventory management to prevent such mistakes in the future.
The decision to temporarily stop videos is separate from a message that a former LMG social media editor posted Wednesday morning. She admitted that she quit the company early because of the company’s work culture. She says that the workload was too high, talks about sexism in the workplace and unwanted touching. The workload and culture were said to be so severe that she allegedly self-harmed ‘because I honestly thought that was the only way I could have a day off without being harassed’. LMG has not yet responded to the claims of this former employee.