The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
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I must say, the Billet Labs part nailed me to the floor.
For someone who has to do with prototypes and early development products, such a blunder would have cost me my current job and would have barred me from any other in my field
The Billet Labs cooler block stuff actually made me go "what the fuck" and got me to unsubscribe. That's not just some error you can cut out or some funny joke, everything about that was something that Billet Labs could likely prove monetary damages for in the worst case scenario.
Fwiw, Linus made a post today and said they've already arranged to compensate billet for the prototype.
Fwiw, Linus made a post today and said they've already arranged to compensate billet for the prototype.
That has very strong "I'm sorry that I got caught" energy.
And how will they compensate for the lost work, as GN pointed out? Didn't Billit Labs say they were unable to continue working on the product, since the prototype wasn't available?
Except that's also a lie, because as the new GN video talking about that response points out, Linus only contacted Billet about it after the GN video was posted, and they absolutely had not "arranged to compensate Billet for the prototype" yet
Yeah, everything else was bad, but I think ultimately forgivable if they can tighten up their testing and QA process going forward. The Billet Labs thing is on a whole other level though. Like, how do you even fuck up that bad as a professional organization?
Do you think LTT can invest in one laptop company and still review theirs and others' laptops? I don't know the right answer - I'm interested in your perspective.
Hard to say. Linus has always made it sound like his investment in Framework is a personal one, not one made by LMG. If that's the case, then I think any potential issues could be largely sidestepped by just having someone else do all the laptop reviews.
If that's not the case and LMG is directly involved with Framework, then it gets a bit tricky. To their credit, they've done a good job of disclosing the Framework investment whenever the company is brought up, but I don't watch most of LTT's review content, so I'm not sure if it's being mentioned in the context of other laptop reviews. If not, it needs to be.
The whole point of having that kind of disclosure though is so people know that the information being presented is potentially biased. At a certain point, it's on the audience to take that bias into account and cross reference other sources before making any purchasing decisions. I'm not sure there's anything LMG can really do to alleviate the perceived conflict of interest, unless they just stop reviewing laptops altogether. Whether or not it's ethical to continue reviewing laptops in that context, even with a full disclosure, is a question I don't have a good answer to.If Linus and his wife own 100% (or nearly 100%) of LMG, does it matter who invested in Framework? Especially when he has so much creative control?
As far as I remember, they do not disclose the Framework investment when reviewing other laptops.
Thank you, I appreciate your candor. You've given me some things to think about.
As far as I remember, they do not disclose the Framework investment when reviewing other laptops.
When Linus is hosting a laptop review he always has a disclaimer about being a Framework investor. I'm not sure about videos hosted by others because it's been a while since I've watched one but I don't think they do since it was a personal investment.
Every video about a laptop I've seen since he invested has had the framework disclaimer, including multiple shortcircuits by Alex.
If Linus and his wife own 100% (or nearly 100%) of LMG, does it matter who invested in Framework? Especially when he has so much creative control?
At that point, just refer to the second half of my original replay. Though, if the investment is just a small part of something like an index fund, I'd say that concerns of bias probably aren't warranted.
That part really bothered me, especially Linus' words in the WAN show showing a complete disregard for the company and then auctioning off something they didn't even own. I know if they were in America they'd likely be sued for defamation or something, I swear. If I were a company in that position I wouldn't trust Linus with anything at all.