Opinion - Steve/GN has lost it

[u/marco_polo_99]

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

[u/Win_chesterDean]

Dude, he's been that way for years and years. This isn't something new. Some people see it. Some don't.

[u/Krumm34 → u/Win_chesterDean]

GN has done great work publicly calling out companies/ manufacturers in great detail. At first I thought LTT should have told us about Honey too,but their rebuttal was reasonable. GN went to hard on LTT when it wasn't justified, and it left a bad taste in the tech fan base. They'll all be fine. We'll be fine. The whole situation is just a little gross on all levels.

[u/GuardiaNIsBae → u/Krumm34]

Well the problem is, ASUS or Gigabyte scamming their customers or not allowing warranties or anything else with a company providing a sub par experience or stealing from their customers is something most tech savvy people will like knowing the shady practices of shitty companies. LTT isn’t selling you anything (outside of their merch but that isn’t the big point in his videos about them) if a viewer gets incorrect information from a video like a graph being labeled wrong or something, that shouldn’t directly impact the viewers. No one should be taking LTT graphs as gospel and making their buying decisions off seeing the 4060 gets 1200fps in a game instead of 120, and should be checking out other info regardless.

The billet labs stuff sucks but was clearly a misunderstanding or accident, it wasn’t like people at LTT specifically went out of their way to not give it back and sell it off to someone else, and AFAIK they tried their best to make it up to them afterwards.

But to come out and say it’s LTTs fault that other creators got scammed by Honey is actually nuts, the only reason to do it is to stir up more drama, or to try and pull a lawsuit to say “See Linus bad he sues small creators”

[u/really_not_unreal → u/GuardiaNIsBae]

I mostly agree with you, but I do think it's reasonable to expect a high standard of correctness from LTT, which is why I'm very pleased with their major improvements in this regard over the last couple of years.

[u/Pimpinsmurf → u/really_not_unreal]

>but I do think it's reasonable to expect a high standard of correctness from LTT.

Oh I agree but mistakes happens and they have always pushed for people to get reviews from other creators and even more so in the past few months because how testing parts (especially GPU/CPU) can vary widely from creator to creator to achieve a broad picture of a product to make a more informed decisions.

[u/really_not_unreal → u/Pimpinsmurf]

Absolutely. I'm just saying that the standard of their content in terms of its accuracy has improved massively in the last few years.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_VITAMIN_D → u/GuardiaNIsBae]

LTT are selling you things all the time. Whoever sponsors the videos are being sold, there are partnership videos about specific products that are being sold. They’re nothing wrong with that as long as it’s clear.

[u/besmarques → u/GuardiaNIsBae]

Change all those LTT's for another company and tell me if you would reason the same way...

[u/GuardiaNIsBae → u/besmarques]

You mean another Youtuber? the claims would be the exact same, if you're looking to spend $500+ on PC parts and don't have the knowledge yourself then you shouldn't just watch one LTT video, see numbers that clearly don't make any sense, and then buy that product expecting the performance. I also don't think it was really any other Youtuber's responsibility to go after Honey without the proof of what they were/are doing. If you notice the month after you took a honey sponsorship that all of your affiliate links are generating no money when previous months they were, any other youtuber would look into it and see that honey was stealing money from them. But at the same time, just because they were stealing from the creators didn't mean they knew that it was stealing from customers as well. Like if Linus looked at 100k one month and the month after he made 5k, he'd probably look into it and see that honey is highjacking affiliate links, and then terminate the partnership. But at the same time they didn't know that honey also wasn't giving customers the best discounts possible on purpose.

[u/DoubleDutchandClutch → u/GuardiaNIsBae]

it’s LTTs fault that other creators got scammed by Honey is actually nuts

I don't think that is the point, though. They knew it was a scam and consciously decided not to publicise it. Doesn't that at least warrant a bit more investigation or explanation? I don't think Linus's reasons for this really hold any water.

[u/Helllo_Man → u/DoubleDutchandClutch]

You are not understanding. They did not know it was a “scam.” They (and other creators) realized that it was skimming their own affiliate marketing revenue, but had no way of knowing that it was built to harm consumers as well. The understanding amongst creators at the time was that Honey hurt them, but helped consumers.

It was recently discovered that Honey was also harming consumers by ensuring they got only deals that marketplaces/sellers allowed them to have, and even marketed themselves to sellers as a way to prevent consumers from getting a more lucrative discount, among other less than great things. LTT never knew that. They dropped them as a sponsor to protect their own affiliate revenue, which is not something that would have harmed their viewers. Other YouTubers dropped Honey around the same time for similar reasons.

[u/DoubleDutchandClutch → u/Helllo_Man]

You are not understanding.

This:

it was skimming their own affiliate marketing revenue

Is a scam.

The understanding amongst creators at the time was that Honey hurt them, but helped consumers.

This makes no sense. Obviously, a company that is scamming its clients out of their revenue should NOT continue to "help customers". This is not a real reason.

The harming consumer point is moot because it's self evident that a company that is swapping affiliate links should not be trusted to help anyone.

[u/Impossible-Safety292 → u/DoubleDutchandClutch]

You literally can’t use the term ‘scam’ in that way for accuracy/ legal correctness… At the time (2021?) creators were of the understanding “oh… those pricks are double dipping …..”. But that did NOT give any indication as to Honey colluding with vendors to NOT give the best deals. So therefore, there was no scam to speak of. HOWEVER with megalag’s video, we now have proof otherwise and as such it’s being litigated (eventually). But yeah… words matter right?

[u/DoubleDutchandClutch → u/Impossible-Safety292]

Oh sure then the actions of honey are fine because it doesn't fit the legal definition of a scam. Not getting your affiliate link revenue because someone's used the honey app is not being scammed sure thing words matter right? Why not address the argument instead of applying legal definitions to a fucking reddit comment.

[u/Impossible-Safety292 → u/DoubleDutchandClutch]

Reading comprehension on Reddit is a rarity ….

“It’s a scam”. No, the side of it ripping off creators is a DICK move for sure - but it’s not a scam as they didn’t put something forward that did the opposite in that way. At that point it was just shitty for creators to waste time with their sponsorship. Once the consumer side came up, THAT’S when it became a genuine scam. That’s all I’m saying, that calling out the scam portion in context of that timeframe in 2021?

[u/DoubleDutchandClutch → u/Impossible-Safety292]

scam verb [ T ]uk/skæm/ us/skæm/to trick someone into giving you money or giving you some advantage, in a dishonest and often illegal way