He is one of the scummiest tech influencers around. He was great at the start, but as time went on, he became increasingly worse. As his channel grew, he started focusing far more on ‘entertainment’ while neglecting actual, useful information.

I’m sure everyone knows the controversies about him and his channel, but I’ll still talk about them.

He and other massive YouTube channels sponsored Honey, a malicious extension. He knew that the extension was suspicious but said nothing for so many years; he just stopped sponsoring it. Massive thanks to MegaLag for talking about this extension, here’s the link.

There are a lot of errors in their benchmarks. Gamers Nexus made an amazing video about this and other issues. They have so many errors because the testing is rushed. This is mainly Linus’s fault, as he forces his team to produce a massive amount of content just to make more money.

The reviews are biased. It’s clearly biased because the company that sent the product also sponsored them. Not only do they have to sign NDAs in order to review products before they hit the market, but they also have an incentive to speak positively so the company doesn’t blacklist them in the future. I know that almost every big YouTuber does this, but I don’t think they should, and it doesn’t result in a fair review.

He didn’t want to increase his old friends/employees pay or solve their complains, saying that’s how capitalism works.

He bought a private jet. A lot of his employees are poorly paid, and some of them barely get by. On top of that, he tries to justify it by saying that he got the plane for ‘$0’ and that it’s actually cheaper using his ‘girl math.’ In reality, that plane costs an average of $6.6M to purchase, plus $1.5 million to $2.5 million annually in operating costs.

He has many more problems and controversies. I don’t know how he has so many ‘fans’ and why people still watch and support him. He’s a scummy, narcissistic, and greedy person, creating videos where he forces his underpaid employees to work on his home.

LINKS:

MegaLag - Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam

Gamers Nexus - The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility

Head Pluck - A perfectly balanced mouse review. (Pwnage x Shortcircuit / LTT Edit)

Vex - Linus has a WEIRD Problem

Linnus Tech Tips - The Gamer Jet is Real! and it Cost $0*, The Highest PC Build EVER - World Record

  • drdiddlybadger@pawb.socialEnglish
    501·
    6 days ago

    I stopped watching after a while. His stuff just stopped being good as he grew and the weird drama that popped up around him wasn’t great at all.it was especially telling that people who had been there from the beginning were lesving. Who let’s talent like that go when you have the money to hold on to them.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
      813·
      6 days ago

      Who let’s talent like that go when you have the money to hold on to them.

      Some creative folks eventually want to do their own thing and no amount of money will change their mind. It is very authoritarian to try to use money as a form of control over others. Linus is many things but he is not a petty tyrant.

        • lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
          11·
          6 days ago

          I remember that video – seems like a nice and genuine dude. It’s sad that growing up with a small company like that doesn’t give you more growth you know? Especially when Linus is doing so well. I know there are complexities and all that but still.

          • godsammitdam@lemmy.zipEnglish
            8·
            6 days ago

            Using a quote from ChicoSuave above correctly:

            It is very authoritarian to try to use money as a form of control over others.

            Because Linus did become a petty tyrant. If the workplace was democratic and not authoritarian, under Linus’s control, pretty sure all those people would’ve pushed for better compensation, and their peers probably would have too.

        • Anivia@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          He would rather see his old friends go

          And this is quite literal, since Linus famously has no friends outside of work

      • Scratch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        6 days ago

        Also: overpaying employees to keep them working for you == tyrant.

        So what does underpaying employees while demanding massive output make you?

      • Scratch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        Sure, but some of them are leaving and just doing more tech stuff that they’ve always done.

        How hard would it have been to just keep them on, give them a budget to make the videos they want to make, reduce the requirements on them to produce the modern LTT content and keep all that deep expertise in-house?

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        expect he is litterally a petty tyrant? The reason over half of them left was explictedly because he was a petty tyrant and he even tried to fuck a bunch of them over with legal threats

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    26·
    6 days ago

    I stopped watching LTT after they got the jet, the video tour of it was cringe as hell, not to mention Linus misunderstanding the economics of it.

    “Girl math” is such a cringe expression…

  • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
    22·
    6 days ago

    Watched a few of his videos a few years ago, but watching him install tech on his house was beyond frustrating.

    It was like he’d do things like make everything communicate over Bluetooth, and then whoops the 2.4ghz is overloaded. I felt like I kept seeing stuff a mile away that he hadn’t considered. Gave me the impression he had no idea what he was talking about, or he was doing it on purpose. Either way, turned me right off.

    • FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      51·
      6 days ago

      I’ll be devil’s advocate and suggest that, if he fixed those problems later in the video, then he might have been doing it to be educational? Like “how do I rig my house with different types of tech from first principles” and teaching less tech savvy people (probably most of his audience) to identify those problems in the process

      • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
        8·
        6 days ago

        No these were problems that made a second video. Sure, hypothetically you could do that, but the format is asinine. I’m not looking for someone to tell me how to do a hundred things incorrectly.

  • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.worldEnglish
    231·
    6 days ago

    I stopped watching around all the controversies, after he got that Porsche car he changed, more narcissistic.

    The WAN show went from tech news to fucking nonstop taking about his business, trying to push sales the entire show. He wouldn’t let Luke talk much. He became the face of EVERY video. Fuck Linus.

  • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    15·
    6 days ago

    His videos used to be entertaining and had some use for people learning about tech. Now it’s all branded, merchandised, and promoted junk. I often times question his overall competency with tech.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      He was always a computer hardware guy and stumbled his way into other stuff without trying to master the knowledge.

  • ThePantser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    201·
    6 days ago

    Never watched the guy more than a few seconds. He always felt fake and non genuine.

    Compare his content to Big Clive or Steve1984 and see what it feels like to watch someone who actually cares about what they talk about and not just there for sponsors.

  • Narauko@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    I unsubscribed and stopped watching his stuff after one of the many instances of him/his company being unscrupulous, scummy, or evil and failing to actually learn their lesson and turn things around. I can’t even remember which one it was because there have been just enough of them to blur together. Truly a model case for living long enough to become the villain.

    Sadly for humanity, for every Gamers Nexus or Valve, we get a hundred or a thousand Linus’ or Googles who lets the fame/money/power corrupt them to shit.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        gamer nexus and steve its head are one of the few good ones. Steve went from tech youtuber to proper indie journalist. Instead of the normal tech youtuber to shitbag/pedo.

        Steve/gamer nexus year after year has only ever given more reasons to trust him and become more and more ethical. Which is rare as fuck.

  • Randelung@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    5 days ago

    Oh no, this budget phone doesn’t have wireless charging, that’s a deal breaker! Completely out of touch.

    • WizardArtsPropaganda@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      You should have seen what he said about the Steam Machine, it’s a good workstation but it’s missing some things but good thing it’s a gaming device and gamers don’t care about it but it’s an amazing workstation and works perfectly for, chrome, vlc, obs and even the calculator app, truly an amazing workstation or gaming device, depending on the missing features. And that review was mostly on KDE Plasma.

  • absquatulate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    6 days ago

    Never really followed him or other youtubers, but after the reddit api thing I tuned in to their “wan show” for a couple of shows because it seemed like they were discussing interesting topics/news. Until I realized that he spent an absolutely enormous amount of time either talking about running linus media group, merchandising, or just running ads. I swear half the 3h run time of those shows is talking and screeching about the business or just ads in one form or another. “So luke, what’s the next news?” “synology drm’d their nas-es” “oh man, that’s a bummer. We don’t ever drm our merch, not even the screwdrivers. How would we even sell them???” etc

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I’ll admi that I did bite the bullet and buy the precision screwdriver, and it really is excellent. The full-size screwdriver doesn’t interest me, because I’ve never been happy with a full-size driver with interchangeable bits, but the precision driver is a really high-quality product.

      He’s an ass, but at least that one bit of merch is quality.

  • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    6 days ago

    Years ago I got tired of his videos. Apart from the quality clearly decreasing, something felt off. Like it was more and more about money, less about interesting topics and passion for hardware.

    Needless to say, I wasn’t even a bit surprised to learn about all the drama surrounding him. It was pretty obvious for a long time he’s a fraud, but there just wasn’t evidence for it yet. Or none that I’ve seen at least.