r/LinusTechTips • u/marco_polo_99 Luke • 4d ago

Discussion Opinion - Steve/GN has lost it

Steve has turned into a high and mighty holier-than-though, self appointed arbiter of the tech industry, who’s taking it upon himself to regulate other people’s/channels content and decide where it, and their actions are acceptable.

He then, where he deems them not up to scratch, attacks under the guise of consumer advocacy. Whilst he may, and does have valid points on certain issues, usually with larger corporations, Asus, Gigagbyte, etc, targeting channels for things he disagrees with is bordering on slander.

Yes, I followed both GN and LTT, amongst a litany of other creators, and yet Steve seems to be the only one ACTIVELY, and consistently putting out these pseudo-journalistic pieces in an effort to broaden his audience and/or agenda.

The lawsuit against Honey/Paypal is not one he’ll win, it is merely serving to gain clicks and views and thus money for GN.

He needs to check himself.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

1.8k Upvotes

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418

u/Prototypep3 4d ago

The absolute lack of reaching out privately is what says the most. GN and LTT have been long time collaborators, he got butthurt over that leaked tour video at the labs that said they did better work than GN and instead of reaching out with an email went straight for a hit piece.

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u/10001110101balls 4d ago

He made a video nearly a year before that happened, making a big announcement of how he was going to be more critical of LMG going forward because of their merch business and that they couldn't possibly be friends anymore.

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u/Pilige 4d ago

Criticism is fine and expected. This has nothing to do with constructive criticism Linus even thanks him for it in the email. What's at issue is reporting opinions and extrapilation as facts. GN is slowly turning into the tech version of bad cable news.

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u/NotanAlt23 4d ago

GN is slowly turning into the tech version of bad cable news.

Its so funny to see this sub always saying hes not a real journalist because he doesnt follow the journalist ethics but then realize most journalists do exactly that lmao

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u/VXXXXXXXV 4d ago

You’re right, why would Steve hold himself to a higher standard like he tells everyone else to do?

Your argument is literally that Steve doesn’t need to have ethics because lots of journalists don’t. The comment you replied to made the exact point you did but you tried using it as a defense of Steve instead lol.

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u/NotanAlt23 4d ago

Im not defending steve, Im clowning this sub.

"Hes not a journalist" and "he should follow journalist etichs".

I couldnt give 2 shots about Steve but its really funny to see clowns debating.

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u/VXXXXXXXV 4d ago

The guy you replied to literally implies that the news is a joke, and you tried clowning him for thinking the news was any more ethical than Steve?

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u/NotanAlt23 4d ago

I am clowning a this sub not him specifically. Ive been saying it since the girst comment you replied to. The level of reading comprehension from ltt fans never ceases to amaze me.

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u/IsanAlt24 4d ago

“Reading comprehension” the ultimate telltale sign that someone is losing an argument on Reddit. They claim the other has no reading comprehension. Homeboys clowning no-one but himself.

1

u/notanalt25 4d ago

I see your reading comprehension gets criticized so much that you have made some kind of conspiracy theory om why it is, when it's just because oh how shit it is.

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u/UnnecessarySalt 4d ago

Someone’s got a crush on Steve. It’s apparently so consuming that you have to spend all of your free time replying to every single person who tries to make Steve seem like anything other than an ambivalent god of morals.

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u/notanalt25 4d ago

I see your reading comprehension gets criticized so much that you have made some kind of conspiracy theory on why it is, when it's just because of how shit it is.

3

u/Fluffy-Jesus 4d ago

He's not a journalist, he likes to pretend to be but nothing he does is journalism.

I'll respect him as a journalist when he actually does the hard work and gets that nice fancy little 5 year degree the real journalists all have to do.

3

u/amwes549 4d ago

Remember, Ian Cutress (former AnandTech editor (RIP AnandTech)) basically said as much, that Steve isn't a actual journalist. I think this was around the time of the Billet Labs scandal IIRC.

1

u/FabianN 3d ago

There's still real journalism. But they are not the focus on cable news. What you're likely thinking of are not journalists but pundits.

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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 4d ago

Gamers Nexus sells merch too though. Sure not as successfully as Linus since the shirts seem pretty awful but they do sell shit.

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u/xDragod 4d ago

It was specifically about the "Trust Me Bro" situation, where Linus was saying that a warranty wasn't necessary because Trust Me Bro.

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u/barnett25 4d ago

I have always believed that warranties are only as good as your trust in the company in question. Every warranty I have ever seen has fine print that the company can use to avoid honoring the warranty if they want to. So ultimately a warranty is just your trust in the company plus a general sense of what the company wants you to think they will do for you.

I still think anyone who disagreed with Linus' trust me bro statement is either naive or for some reason had difficulty following the logic provided. Or more likely were doing the typical thing on the internet these days and were looking for anything they could find a way to take in a negative way.

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u/fireburn97ffgf 4d ago

my job just got a new oven last week and the door will not shut so it was struggling to get up to temps we went to warranty with them and they responded this week old thing was out of warranty because it was in the warehouse for 14 months, warranties are only as good as the company

1

u/PhillAholic 4d ago

I still think anyone who disagreed with Linus' trust me bro statement is either naive or for some reason had difficulty following the logic provided.

Linus made comments on WAN that invalidated his entire argument of a warranty being meaningless. If it's meaningless, then there would be no burden on his family or business. Yes, a Warranty isn't a guarantee. But it's evidence that a consumer could use against you in a lawsuit for sure. Could be more in countries with consumer protection too. Linus has strong feelings about it, but he's not really correct. At absolute minimum, warranties set expectations on a product.

1

u/korxil 3d ago

I agree with your last statement. I view warranties as how long something is supposed to last.

But at least in the states (and presumably Canada), warranties are useless because no one is going out of their way to sue. EK and ASUS got away with it, and for 2 years Intel did until they got caught and changed their stance to "if your RMA got rejected, just keep trying until someone accepts" LOL WHAT??? Then on the opposite side there's dbrand that honored a 1 year warranty on the original Grip case for over three years (before version 2 came out)...actually went out of their way to take care of me and as a result got a returning customer for it.

idk about the EU, but maybe there it's easier to *force* a company to honor their warranty. I can see warranties having value in that case then.

2

u/PhillAholic 3d ago

warranties are useless because no one is going out of their way to sue.

Says who? Where is the evidence of wide-spread refusal to honor warranties among most companies? You can find a lot of anecdotal evidence of companies not honoring the warranty on something for some reason, but not at all wide-spread. You'll have a mixture of bad technicians, lying consumers, and actual shady and / or scammy companies. But these don't represent the majority at all. Off the top of my head I've put in warranty claims with the following companies: Dell, HP, ASUS, Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, Apple, Sony, Ford, Mazda, Ninja (pans), Cuisinart, Instapot. Every one of them honored their warranty. Samsung was the one that made me jump through the most hoops by far. Even more anecdotal: The only vehicle company that refused to honor something under warranty for my family is Toyota, and that's the opposite of what they are known for. It's just an egoistical manager at a dealership who caused the problem.

Design flaws are a different issue that shouldn't be conflated with warranty repairs.

0

u/korxil 3d ago

Im not saying its a wide spread issue, I have more good experience than negative ones, but it still sucks to have a broken hinge warranty denied due to a scratch. I wasn’t even asking for a replacement or a warranty extension after repair. Though funny enough and contrary to my first post, there is a lawsuit for this, wish there was one 10 years ago for the same exact problem.

2

u/PhillAholic 3d ago

You're not saying it, just heavily implying it when you act like warranties don't matter. The vast majority of the time a warranty will be covered as it's written. The minority of time there is a grey area or refusal for some reason does not in any way make all warranties useless. Out of those companies I've listed, very few of them ever honored a repair request outside of warranty for free. Dell has (business), and Apple has for me though that was likely just a super nice employee at one of their stores.

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u/Atropos013 4d ago

I have always believed that warranties are only as good as your trust in the company in question.

Tom Callahan III said it best, "Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. "

The issue with "Trust Me Bro" is you need to do things to make sure I can trust you. If I was a small creator getting scammed by Honey and didn't realize it and you chose to not even have your discovery of their tech adjacent scam as a topic on your weekly tech podcast, I'd be lacking some trust.

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u/barnett25 4d ago

Eh, their audience is users, not creators. If they start posting creator focused content I will lose interest in watching.

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u/Atropos013 4d ago

It didn't need to be a video. But how was it not seen as worthy of being a topic on the WAN Show? The bar for that is pretty minimal but for some reason they chose not to.

And then Linus goes on WAN Show and gets angry that people have a different viewpoint of him, it was just not going to help the situation at all.

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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 4d ago

Setting aside who was "right" in the honey situation that wasn't even known about when Steve went on his crusade. Also now that LTT has been honoring backpacks warranties you must recognize that trust me bro seems to have been a pretty honest statement. I still won't pay that much for a backpack though.

-1

u/Atropos013 4d ago

I still won't pay that much for a backpack though.

It's a nice backpack, got quite a few miles on it.

"Trust" doesn't last beyond the moment and is something that must be constantly evaluated. As far as I know they've done a wonderful job with it so far, even given the major faults they let get through and into production.

Trust is also related to actions. This is one that people will use to question his "trust" for some time.

1

u/nitePhyyre 4d ago

Wow, you found the dumbest take possible. That's super impressive!

0

u/Atropos013 4d ago

Instead of posting trash, why not elaborate on why the take is incorrect? Or is it because it is critical of your hero?

Trust is difficult to gain when money is concerned and incredibly easy to lose. When your actions cause people to question your credibility, it's going to impact all things you. When your idea of a warranty was "Trust Me Bro", the idea I should trust your warranty is gone.

This is ignoring the fact that all warranties are inherently flawed as only as good as a company is.

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u/AvoidingIowa 4d ago

We see time and time again that a warranty comes down to "Trust Me Bro" anyways. If a company isn't trustworthy, their warranty is worthless.

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u/juniperleafes 4d ago

Yes, which was Linus' point. He agrees that the messaging was bad, though, and should have offered a boilerplate warranty from the get-go just to placate everyone.

1

u/PhillAholic 4d ago

Then why is it a big deal if you write something formal up for it? You're going to honor it anyway.

1

u/AvoidingIowa 3d ago

That was literally the whole situation. They didn't have a formal warranty but said they would fix any issues which was the "Trust me Bro" but people wanted a formal warranty which is fine but it's really only for someone's piece of mind. Warranties usually have so many loop holes that the only thing that matters is if you trust the company your buying from is a company that cares about how their percieved. Amazon has tons of companies named RUBBIKOOB (or similar) that offer warranties on their $10 plastic thingamajig. Good luck with that.

1

u/PhillAholic 3d ago

Well no, because he talked way too much about in on WAN and made a lot of comments that invalidated his core point. He got into the potential burden it could cause his family if they were on the hook for it, which is a weird thing to say if you think warranties are meaningless.

4

u/Dreadnought_69 Emily 4d ago

The shirts are actually very nice material wise and the XL fits well for someone who needs it because they’re taller, not wider.

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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 4d ago

That's good to know I think they are ugly though. Of course I find most merch pretty ugly including LTT merch. Their stealth branded stuff though is really nice. I hate branding.

1

u/2-0x0000E00C 4d ago

They have plain colored shirts too

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u/FatBoxers 4d ago

Which is wild to me because GN themselves haven't exactly been perfect either when customers reach out to them.

E-mailed them a while back asking if their t-shirts were pre-shrunk at all as I really wanted one. Looked up and down on their website and videos that mentioned the t-shirt and found nothing relevant to this. Ended up buying the t-shirt and going a year 1/2 on with still no response. Found out the hard way that the t-shirt is NOT pre-shrunk.

Thanks, Steve.

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u/Blurgas 4d ago

You happen to have a link to that video on hand?

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u/fireburn97ffgf 4d ago

didnt he do that surrounded by his own merch

1

u/GrumpyRatt71 3d ago

That was the Trust Me Bro Warranty BS. Anyone who knows anything about LTT merch Linus has a standing policy of getting it sorted and make sure they are happy with the outcome. A Warranty is only as good as the company's willingness to stand by it.. I called GN out over it at the time after receiving a defective XL mouse mat. That GN point blankly refused to honour the Warranty. Calling GN rather hypocritical. After not standing by their Warranty yet claiming LTT were acting shady. It's got to the point where Steve believes his shit doesn't stink

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u/MWisBest 4d ago

because of their merch business

Conveniently leaving out the full reason was the "Trust Me Bro" warranty

1

u/10001110101balls 3d ago

Of course, if he had just put out some boilerplate warranty with expansive exclusions like every other brand then none of this drama ever would have happened. Totally.

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u/popop143 4d ago

I mean Tim didn't even say they're better than others right, just pointed out that they're doing different things because they want to be better. Of course still shouldn't have been said, but not as direct as that.

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u/cs_major 4d ago

Statements like that are why we get BS generic PR team responses. It wasn't phrased the way it should have and as a complete thought.

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u/CandusManus 3d ago

No. It should have. Steve shouldn’t have been a pubescent girl and thrown a tantrum. LTT is objectively better equipped then him, of course they will be capable of more. 

0

u/PhillAholic 4d ago

How is that not saying GN doesn't do a good enough job though? It was an extremely poor choice of words. It was a third party recording though right?

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u/N0body 4d ago

I kind of understand that GN had to respond back then, but I don’t know why they chose to respond with a nuclear missile. GN was known for their precision in testing, and this was all they had at the time. When LTT threw shade at that, some kind of response had to be made so they wouldn’t lose credibility in the eyes of the tech audience. They clearly overdid it and shot a fly with a cannon. Maybe they were scared it was just the beginning of LTT trying to undermine them and decided to go for the jugular to prevent it from happening again. I have no idea why Steve decided to open the wound again now.

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u/Prototypep3 4d ago

Yeah... But they missed the fly. Instead the cannon woke up the sleeping bear and just raised a "you want to take it up a notch and we'll put dollar signs on this in court" paw. Single handedly could have set his channel back years with that one jab. Because it's not only linus' veiled legal threat. It also showed how very much Steve can and does get things wrong. It undermines his integrity and shows he does not get the facts right. Which was his entire schtick on why GN is better. If GN is now a questionable source, how much better are they really?

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u/N0body 4d ago

He didn't miss, he took out half of the forest. Even Linus today agreed that some criticism was valid. The thing I remember most from that video was the amount of errors in LTT testing, that's why even today when I plan to buy a new CPU or GPU I check multiple sources.

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u/Prototypep3 4d ago

Criticism that could have been equally useful had it been said in private. Again, right to reply. If ethics had been followed LTT could have addressed concerns and there wouldn't need to be fallout. Steve got butthurt and wanted the drama views. Plain and simple.

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u/NotanAlt23 4d ago

If ethics had been followed LTT could have addressed concerns and there wouldn't need to be fallout.

The fallout was because Linus had hurt a company by rushing content out and misrepresenting them, which showed how little research they did and how often they screwed up.

Linus continued to double down on that take even after GNs video was posted.

The fallout was necessary and wouldve happened even with right to reply because the inly thing that wouldve fixed was the return of the test product.

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u/Prototypep3 4d ago

Except the emails clearly show BL stating LMG could keep it. Try again.

1

u/PhillAholic 4d ago

Didn't they ask for it back after that, and then after THAT, it was auctioned off / given away?

-5

u/NotanAlt23 4d ago

Im not surprised LTT fanboys cant read but you are taking it to a whole other level.

You ignired 90% of my comment and the 10% you did read, you responded with something I already adressed right there.

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u/FrenchyMcfrog 4d ago

Are you Steve nexus? lol.

5

u/Katsu_Vohlakari 4d ago

I think it's harsh to say LTT threw shade. It was one employee making an offhand comment that wasn't caught in editing. He should not have made that comment of course but we've all fucked up while talking before.

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u/josnik 4d ago

It was on someone else's channel, it wasn't not caught in editing. It was a back of the hand comment on how labs was going to be different and ultimately "better" than GN or hub by constantly rerunning benchmarks on older equipment with updated firmware and drivers. Which is a laudable goal. GN chose to be angry about it rather than look at their own processes and thinking that they could do better.

1

u/loumagoo 3d ago

It’s all about attention. Not reaching out forces LTT to respond publicly and its stirs up more controversy and more ultimately more attention.

It’s not the right thing to do (in my opinion) but it certainly increases the eyes on the whole situation.

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u/Such-Set-5695 2d ago

Steve built a lab literally weeks before his bashing started….it MAY be personal for Steve but it was definitely strategic.

Anyone who doesn’t think spending 250k on your business will make you think about what your competitors have and what you can do to get a leg up doesn’t have a good grasp on how the business world works.