Ex-Linus Media Group employee Madison Reeve has posted a thread on social media on the alleged working culture of Linus Media Group, which is currently under fire for accuracy and ethical concerns.
Ex-Linus Tech Tips employee alleges mistreatment and poor conditions: “no one gets a break” - Dexerto::undefined
I replied this in another thread. Which was downvoted…
It really feels like the pitchforks are out. People want blood and don’t care if the allegations are true or not.
Probably mistakes were made, hopefully just innocent mistakes or bad communication. But it really feels like people don’t care. They see LTT doing well and want to tear them down, even if bringing LTT down will be bad for everyone.
I’ve had a disgruntled employee before. Their version of events was very different to how the rest of the team saw it. If something innocent could have been taken badly it was. I’m not saying that happened here. But let’s investigate and presume innocence.
You are joking right? I understand that you might not have wanted to report the sexual harassment you received but that’s a personal choice and doesn’t give you the right to look down on people who do report it.
Okay, I wanna say that you’re right. It’s never an okay and cool thing to say to an employee that is working for you. However, let me give you some of my perspective, because I can easily see how stuff like this can happen by accident or “innocently”.
I’m socially retarded, I might even have a tad bit of autism. Social ques for me are just hard and sometimes takes a while for me to figure out. It’s like a science at times.
So I think “Calm your tits” is an expression used for basically “Calm down”, “Don’t get too excited” or “Take it easy”. And I can easily see two close friends taking this expression a step further and adding “Calm your tits and twerk for me!” as a fun way to say “Don’t get too exited but get exited”
Now I could easily see a younger me stumbling upon two dudes having this social interaction and hearing this new fun expression and wanting to try it out myself without thinking of how or to who I’m saying it to. So yeah, I could see shit like this happen by accident and without malicious intent.
I’m a grown up. I realize that the things I say and how I say it have consequences. The things I say to my friends might not always translate well into a work environment social setting.
So could this happen? Yes (at least I think so)
Should this happen? No.
If you’re a businessowner you have (for lack of a better word) “power” over your employees and you can’t go around using expressions like these in a professional setting.
Sorry for the long reply, I agree with you, just wanted to add some perspective!
Have a good day! <3
Hi. I’m autistic, as in I’ve had the diagnosis for close to two decades now, and on behalf of the autistic community I’d like to ask you to not associate your abhorrent psyche and worldview with us.
Ok I had to walk away and come back to this because this is horrifying.
You don’t “have a tad bit of autism.” You’re excusing your own bad behaviour because you’re anti-social and lazy, and implying that autistic people are bigots.
You claim to be a grown up, and you think “calm your tits” is a “fun way” to express something. In a workplace. To a woman. There is literally no excuse for this.
You are part of the problem, and your reaction is to claim autism and make excuses.
Knowing what women go through silently and how much more they go though when they try to speak up… Yeah… Nobody would volunteer to be harassed by women-hating techbros unless they had a very compelling reason.
I can assure you, this is not about people wanting to take down the 15M subscriber titan. (though undoubtedly some haters are just jumping on the opportunity, I don’t think that’s the majority) For many of us fans, we have been seeing this coming for a while, or those who are blindsided feel utterly betrayed after such a long time watching LTT religiously. It’s always been possible to ignore the awkward moments in videos or write off the bad behavior as just an “on-screen persona” thing. There’s a clear problem with company culture at LTT, and these things usually come out in this way, with victims waiting for the right moment. Presuming innocence on his part means presuming lies on the part of the victims, and that doesn’t sit right with me. I wouldn’t necessarily take it 100% at face value truth but there’s no doubt something majorly wrong going on in that office.
As a fan, I want to see transparency and a healthy working environment behind the videos. Linus’ response wasn’t just underwhelming, it was a complete betrayal. Even before I knew about the nasty working conditions, the simple back and forth between GN and Linus was enough to put a massive crack in the LTT facade. I didn’t need someone to confirm the working conditions were bad, to make an educated guess at how the guy totally unwilling to spend “up to” $500 man-hours more on a video to ensure it’s done right probably isn’t running a fair system of work.
Before the new CEO or whoever managed to get a hold of the situation Linus posted the equivalent of a temper tantrum as an “apology” on the forums. This “apology” featured bangers such as (direct quotes) “We didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it”, “If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re even looking for it”, “I still disagree the Billet Labs video (…) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We could have retested with perfect accuracy, but [… goes on to bash the Product again for alledgedly being unusable even if properly handled. His Source: trust me bro]”.
I think they made the correct call to hire a third-party to investigate this. A lot of things that are happening is LMG not treating themselves like a real company, rather a group of friends with a YouTube channel.
There’s been a lot of incompetence and mistakes that happened because of the company’s grindset, but they’re not evil. They made some serious fuck-ups, and need to take major action to remedy them. I feel like a lot of people don’t want to see these issues fixed, they just want to pull out the pitchforks.
I think when a company like this egregiously breaches our trust, damages other entities, and then stubbornly doubles down on the same, it is not only understandable but entirely rational to be far less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when new allegations arise.
But as always I, and hopefully everyone here, will update their point of view as new evidence arises.
“I got downvoted for my shitty opinion before, but I’m incapable of introspection, so I’m just going to keep saying my shitty opinions over and over again until someone tells me I’m right”
This is not really constructive information. You are being childish here. If you have something meaningful to add to the conversation just say it instead of being mocking.
Doesn’t matter about the downvotes. These are the type of people who were frothing at the mouth back when Reddit detectives “found” the Boston bomber (they didn’t actually and them jumping to conclusions made the situation worse)
The allegations are appalling, but that’s all they are, allegations.
LMG definitely needs to come out with a statement about her claims but until then it might be worth reminding yourself that you don’t know the full story.
I do think a healthy amount of scepticism is healthy here. Her accusations are worded very carefully to not directly target anyone in particular and there is no proof of her accusations nor any way for LMG to dispute her claims because of how they are worded. Regardless of the timing. It’s all a little too convenient.
That said, scepticism doesn’t mean blind faith in LMG, and it doesn’t mean tearing down the accuser. The new CEO getting an independent investigation is the best thing possible and we should hold our judgement until the result of that investigation.
Edit: made my point regarding the timing more clear.
I’m glad to see lemmy so active, even if it is negatively against my comment
Not to even mention the timing. It’s all a little too convenient.
The “timing” is “while everybody is discussing the issues within LTT”. That’s a completely reasonable time for an ex-employee to contribute their views.
If you’re presenting “how conversations work” as suspicious, I don’t think that skepticism is healthy at all.
Not to play semantics like the insanely bad take from Linus, but this isn’t just a conversation, her accusations are serious.
I was clearly being unclear, the timing isn’t important here. The me too movement showed that a lot of people who faced some of the same things she did stayed quiet for years.
The point of them being over worked is being known for a while. I mean the whole channel knows about it, they even filmed a video with employees stating it and asking for the production to slow down.
The other accusations are what indeed are weird. She accuses them of sexual harassment as well insulting her and shit.
Considering that she’s one of those people who “change” pronouns (she has she/they in the X profile) I’m just guessing she wasn’t the easiest person to handle in a work environment (specially in a company that at the time didn’t have a working HR department).
What point were you wanting people to take away from your comment? Because it seems like it’s supposed to be “people with preferred pronouns can’t be trusted and will just make up stories about sexual assault”.
In that case, what would you consider to be a suitable “timing” then?
Is it just after a victim (children/teenagers/men/women/anyone) was verbally/physically assaulted? Within an hour? Within 24/48/72 hours? A week? A month? A year?
When is the appropriate inconvenient (in contrast to your “too convenient”) time for you?
Whether the victim feels safe or not, ready or not, supported or not, free of any retaliation or not, when is it too late for a victim to speak out or tell their story? Is 2 years already too much? How about 5 years, 10 years or 20 years?
I was being unclear about my opinion on the timing. I meant to say take the timing out of the equation all together.
But yes, as a relative of someone who has been assaulted and sexually assaulted, my opinion is speak out loudly and immediately when faced with this kind of stuff. Every minute you waste speaking out is another minute the assaulter roams free. I get that some may be uncomfortable with that, and they should speak out as soon as they are emotionally able to.
I replied this in another thread. Which was downvoted…
It really feels like the pitchforks are out. People want blood and don’t care if the allegations are true or not.
Probably mistakes were made, hopefully just innocent mistakes or bad communication. But it really feels like people don’t care. They see LTT doing well and want to tear them down, even if bringing LTT down will be bad for everyone.
I’ve had a disgruntled employee before. Their version of events was very different to how the rest of the team saw it. If something innocent could have been taken badly it was. I’m not saying that happened here. But let’s investigate and presume innocence.
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“this is normal workplace stuff tho right gais? We all do this jeez.”
He did say “HOPEFULLY just innocent mistakes…” Which we all should hope whether we think all allegations are true or not.
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“Maybe she experienced it differently”
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You are joking right? I understand that you might not have wanted to report the sexual harassment you received but that’s a personal choice and doesn’t give you the right to look down on people who do report it.
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The comment I replied to described sexual touching when objection had been expressed, there’s nothing more clear cut than that.
When was the last time you accidentally told someone at work to calm their tits and twerk for you, and in what psychotic universe is that innocent
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Okay, I wanna say that you’re right. It’s never an okay and cool thing to say to an employee that is working for you. However, let me give you some of my perspective, because I can easily see how stuff like this can happen by accident or “innocently”.
I’m socially retarded, I might even have a tad bit of autism. Social ques for me are just hard and sometimes takes a while for me to figure out. It’s like a science at times.
So I think “Calm your tits” is an expression used for basically “Calm down”, “Don’t get too excited” or “Take it easy”. And I can easily see two close friends taking this expression a step further and adding “Calm your tits and twerk for me!” as a fun way to say “Don’t get too exited but get exited”
Now I could easily see a younger me stumbling upon two dudes having this social interaction and hearing this new fun expression and wanting to try it out myself without thinking of how or to who I’m saying it to. So yeah, I could see shit like this happen by accident and without malicious intent.
I’m a grown up. I realize that the things I say and how I say it have consequences. The things I say to my friends might not always translate well into a work environment social setting.
So could this happen? Yes (at least I think so)
Should this happen? No.
If you’re a businessowner you have (for lack of a better word) “power” over your employees and you can’t go around using expressions like these in a professional setting.
Sorry for the long reply, I agree with you, just wanted to add some perspective! Have a good day! <3
Hi. I’m autistic, as in I’ve had the diagnosis for close to two decades now, and on behalf of the autistic community I’d like to ask you to not associate your abhorrent psyche and worldview with us.
Ok I had to walk away and come back to this because this is horrifying.
You don’t “have a tad bit of autism.” You’re excusing your own bad behaviour because you’re anti-social and lazy, and implying that autistic people are bigots.
You claim to be a grown up, and you think “calm your tits” is a “fun way” to express something. In a workplace. To a woman. There is literally no excuse for this.
You are part of the problem, and your reaction is to claim autism and make excuses.
Bro that woman is getting death threats I kinda doubt she’d be lying just to be vindictive
Knowing what women go through silently and how much more they go though when they try to speak up… Yeah… Nobody would volunteer to be harassed by women-hating techbros unless they had a very compelling reason.
I can assure you, this is not about people wanting to take down the 15M subscriber titan. (though undoubtedly some haters are just jumping on the opportunity, I don’t think that’s the majority) For many of us fans, we have been seeing this coming for a while, or those who are blindsided feel utterly betrayed after such a long time watching LTT religiously. It’s always been possible to ignore the awkward moments in videos or write off the bad behavior as just an “on-screen persona” thing. There’s a clear problem with company culture at LTT, and these things usually come out in this way, with victims waiting for the right moment. Presuming innocence on his part means presuming lies on the part of the victims, and that doesn’t sit right with me. I wouldn’t necessarily take it 100% at face value truth but there’s no doubt something majorly wrong going on in that office.
As a fan, I want to see transparency and a healthy working environment behind the videos. Linus’ response wasn’t just underwhelming, it was a complete betrayal. Even before I knew about the nasty working conditions, the simple back and forth between GN and Linus was enough to put a massive crack in the LTT facade. I didn’t need someone to confirm the working conditions were bad, to make an educated guess at how the guy totally unwilling to spend “up to” $500 man-hours more on a video to ensure it’s done right probably isn’t running a fair system of work.
$500 to do a video right or $250k investment in Framework Laptops? Clearly you do the investment. Plebs are just plebs and Linus ain’t no pleb now.
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I am getting a little bit of Elon Musk vibe with Linus. Not sure if I’m the only one.
You aren’t.
I’m a bit out of the loop, is there a video of this outburst/ tantrum still online?
Before the new CEO or whoever managed to get a hold of the situation Linus posted the equivalent of a temper tantrum as an “apology” on the forums. This “apology” featured bangers such as (direct quotes) “We didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it”, “If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re even looking for it”, “I still disagree the Billet Labs video (…) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We could have retested with perfect accuracy, but [… goes on to bash the Product again for alledgedly being unusable even if properly handled. His Source: trust me bro]”.
Tantrum can be found in full here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641
Seconded, I’d want to see that too.
You lost me when you claimed that a low quality youtube channel going down would be somehow bad for me.
I think they made the correct call to hire a third-party to investigate this. A lot of things that are happening is LMG not treating themselves like a real company, rather a group of friends with a YouTube channel.
There’s been a lot of incompetence and mistakes that happened because of the company’s grindset, but they’re not evil. They made some serious fuck-ups, and need to take major action to remedy them. I feel like a lot of people don’t want to see these issues fixed, they just want to pull out the pitchforks.
Tech news is a saturated field. It’s no great loss if this sack of dicks gets thrown in the river.
It’s always been a toxic field. Because those that do Tech News are those that aren’t the Tech Do’s and they’re salty as fuck about it.
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I think when a company like this egregiously breaches our trust, damages other entities, and then stubbornly doubles down on the same, it is not only understandable but entirely rational to be far less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when new allegations arise.
But as always I, and hopefully everyone here, will update their point of view as new evidence arises.
“I got downvoted for my shitty opinion before, but I’m incapable of introspection, so I’m just going to keep saying my shitty opinions over and over again until someone tells me I’m right”
This is not really constructive information. You are being childish here. If you have something meaningful to add to the conversation just say it instead of being mocking.
I wish I could give this a million upvotes.
I’d honestly love an UI for Lemmy that hides the downvotes. Fuck that shit.
Doesn’t matter about the downvotes. These are the type of people who were frothing at the mouth back when Reddit detectives “found” the Boston bomber (they didn’t actually and them jumping to conclusions made the situation worse)
The allegations are appalling, but that’s all they are, allegations.
LMG definitely needs to come out with a statement about her claims but until then it might be worth reminding yourself that you don’t know the full story.
I do think a healthy amount of scepticism is healthy here. Her accusations are worded very carefully to not directly target anyone in particular and there is no proof of her accusations nor any way for LMG to dispute her claims because of how they are worded. Regardless of the timing. It’s all a little too convenient.
That said, scepticism doesn’t mean blind faith in LMG, and it doesn’t mean tearing down the accuser. The new CEO getting an independent investigation is the best thing possible and we should hold our judgement until the result of that investigation.
Edit: made my point regarding the timing more clear.
I’m glad to see lemmy so active, even if it is negatively against my comment
The “timing” is “while everybody is discussing the issues within LTT”. That’s a completely reasonable time for an ex-employee to contribute their views.
If you’re presenting “how conversations work” as suspicious, I don’t think that skepticism is healthy at all.
Not to play semantics like the insanely bad take from Linus, but this isn’t just a conversation, her accusations are serious.
I was clearly being unclear, the timing isn’t important here. The me too movement showed that a lot of people who faced some of the same things she did stayed quiet for years.
The point of them being over worked is being known for a while. I mean the whole channel knows about it, they even filmed a video with employees stating it and asking for the production to slow down.
The other accusations are what indeed are weird. She accuses them of sexual harassment as well insulting her and shit.
Considering that she’s one of those people who “change” pronouns (she has she/they in the X profile) I’m just guessing she wasn’t the easiest person to handle in a work environment (specially in a company that at the time didn’t have a working HR department).
What point were you wanting people to take away from your comment? Because it seems like it’s supposed to be “people with preferred pronouns can’t be trusted and will just make up stories about sexual assault”.
Wait. You are generalizing her as negative because she prefers to be called they? Lol human beings a fucking idiots.
In that case, what would you consider to be a suitable “timing” then?
Is it just after a victim (children/teenagers/men/women/anyone) was verbally/physically assaulted? Within an hour? Within 24/48/72 hours? A week? A month? A year?
When is the appropriate inconvenient (in contrast to your “too convenient”) time for you?
Whether the victim feels safe or not, ready or not, supported or not, free of any retaliation or not, when is it too late for a victim to speak out or tell their story? Is 2 years already too much? How about 5 years, 10 years or 20 years?
I was being unclear about my opinion on the timing. I meant to say take the timing out of the equation all together.
But yes, as a relative of someone who has been assaulted and sexually assaulted, my opinion is speak out loudly and immediately when faced with this kind of stuff. Every minute you waste speaking out is another minute the assaulter roams free. I get that some may be uncomfortable with that, and they should speak out as soon as they are emotionally able to.