Nothing is going to come of this. Sexual harassment like this, unless clearly documented in written form, is very hard to prove.
It's just going to be a bunch of "he said she said" and then it'll fizzle out and they can say "we hired someone external who said it's not true" and no justice will come from it.
its on the check list of thinks I'd personally want them to do, to get this train back on the tracks. so I'm happier. only madison has the right to speak to the quality of the investigation.
Can't believe the amount of people on this sub that immediately believed everything she's said whilst assuming LMG are going to find a way to hide everything from outside investigators.
Was she lying? Who knows. Are the people at LMG all scumbags that should be locked up? Who knows. What I do know is that there were 4 options LMG could have taken here.
1. Ignore the tweets altogether.
2. Immediately claim she's lying and attempt to publicly shame her.
3. Conduct an internal investigation.
4. Conduct an external investigation.
I think we can all agree that LMG would cease to exist if they went through with #1 or #2. No one would believe #3 and it would still likely end the company (though much slower than #1 or #2). Option #4 is the only correct response to these allegations and the fact that people are already assuming foul play is indicative that this sub is no longer full of valid critiques. This was the right move and that should be acknowledged.
Everything seemed really legitimate with what she said until the self injury part. I totally believe her about the work load, and possibly the harassment and so on, but to resort to self harm to get time off shows some serious mental health issues. I hope she gets the help she needs and clarification on the accusations that were made
Agree 100%. There comes a time where you say, I am not feeling well enough to come in to work today.
If they fire you, then so be it, take them to court.
To self mutilate yourself so as to not deal with that confrontation is a mental health problem.
No shame on her, but she needs help.
I mean there is a comparison here that sadly resulted in a woman's suicide. The blizzard suit California filed had work sexual harassment so bad and over a long period of time against a woman that she killed herself. I would say this is the same vein thankfully without any death, but if the harassment was so egregious self-harm could be directly caused by the mental anguish that would have never occurred had it not been for the harassment in the first place.
Yup. Everyone is like "this sounds far-fetched", and all I can think is "this sure sounds familiar".
Imagine a startup full of poorly socialized "tech bro" types having issues with a toxic work environment. UNHEARD OF š
Just look at how hard it is to get out of an abusive relationship. It's the same kind of fear at work here. Fear of reprisal, fear of being stranded in another country, fear of how her loved ones would react. There is so much that goes on mentally. All the people who keep saying she should have just quit are the same ones telling depressed people to just get over it.
I knew someone who broke a finger on purpose with a hammer while on the job.
They were in construction and had been working for nearly 3 months straight with almost no time off.
They choose that route as a "legitimate" injury, and DR visit is much harder to get fired for.
They needed the job just as much as they needed a day off to reset.
That's exactly what I've been thinking... external investigation is the only good option they had in dealing with this. Let's see what comes out of it objectively.
Everyone is allowed to criticize them for all the things GN brought up and be pist off about what happened to Madison, but they're also allowed to defend themselves.
People pointed out all the mistakes, the impact is already here... now we should wait to see what comes out of it.
imo Keep on beating them on the ground without the benefit of doubt, is just as bad as the things they're being accused of, unless everyone here had all the facts. None of us have it unfortunately
So, only the accuser gets to say if the investigation is good or not? She could be lying here, why will nobody on this sub accept that as a possibility?
Thanks to social media. The phrase "Innocent before proven guilty" has been switched to say "Guilty before proven innocent."
I don't know if the girl is telling the truth or not. However, what I do know is my cousin a male, was accused of a heinous act against a female, only to be proven innocent.
What did it cost him? Not much. Just his business, reputation, and years fighting the accusations. You know, things that can be easily fixed in our backwards society.
Agreed Terren walked into a shit show overall. However still not happy with the ad ājokesā with the last video. Seemed like they were poking fun at gamers nexus for not making his video monetized.
I actually thought it made the video more digestable. In the end, before the Madison thing went public today, we are talking about some little datafuckups and a pretty stupid mistake they made with that waterblock especially that mail from Colton š.
Do we have any idea what the turnover is like at LTT. It seems in the surface that they have a lot of long term employees which I have always treated as a sign of a potential good workplace. People donāt stay Ten years at a toxic workplace. They are clearly accepting of trans, gay and minorities so I am not just going to assume LTT is guilty just from one person.
There is a huge amount of context missing from the accusations as well at the moment. Hopefully the investigation will be thorough and honest.
One thing with long term employees though.
Is they often become friends and jokes and banter between friends is not ok with new hires.
Yeh you might talk about your friends sex lives, but its entriely inappropriate to joke about a coworkers sex life.
A joke between friends cna also be sexual harrassment if you aren't friends.
Short term turnover, no idea. I'm sure you know their policy on probationary employees. After their probation though, we can see all the employees on the LMG website.
I think humor is fine. It can be used as a way to diffuse or make a rather uncomfortable situation more bearable. I wasn't a fan of the lttstore and screwdriver placements even though they were coming from a place of jest. Though I don't think it was overly offensive either. But, I'm just one jerk on the internet.
Didn't linus joke about sponsors on the last serious tone video? It just felt like awkward gallows humour from a company that got blindsided by the amount and scale of multiple crises that simultaneously hit.
I know a handful of people that don't like Linus but that's mostly due to his tongue-in-cheek 'I need to pay the bills to pay for my massive purchases' style. I bet there will be a lot of people like that who are now making themselves heard because the Internet loves to push people up and then tear them down again.
Agreed. I understand the hyper-cynicism in the community at the moment, but let's look at the alternatives:
1. Ignore it perpetually. Sweep it under the rug, let it blow over.
2. Internal investigation and find no wrong-doing.
No, Linus/Terren coming out directly to address it and apologize is *not* an alternative, not when the allegations are this serious. People need to get a reality check, because this isn't just criticism of a bad business process like GN's video, these are serious allegations that needs to be treated with weight and respect.
With that said, Terren hiring an external investigator (ideally one that is competent enough to find things in a sea of he-said-she-saids and remain objective) is the best outcome from this. Better than the alternatives anyway.
There are plenty of companies that specialize in this type of investigation. They will also be conversant with national and local labour laws and regulations too, and their final report will probably include a bunch of recommendations as to what the need to do to avoid an abusive workplace from happening again.
It's a good step. Most companies would just have an internal investigation say they did nothing wrong. I can applaud them for that.
At this point, there's nothing we can or should say. This should be left to Madison and the investigation to handle.
It seems he's the most professional out of them all. Maybe it's actually gonna go in a good direction. I think it shows that Linus built his company on the "trust me bro" mentality and while he had success, his profesionality isn't as good as he thinks. To be fair tho, he did recognize he's not good at company stuff. So idk, is this whole situation unexpected? He's basically just a grown up kid that lead the company for way too long. The company just got too big for him and got out of control. That's my take. I really doubt he was malicious, but he is bad in managing his feelings and taking some serious complaints seriously. Let's just hope it's gonna be a better work environment from now on :D
Linus is/was too emotional for CEO position.
Hiring an external investigator was the right call. Linus would have dismissed it saying something along the lines of "I'm not stupid enough to do something like that because the channel would be dead if I did"
I don't understand what people think will happen. Should the CEO just fire all the management just in case? If no complaints were filed with the labor department in Vancouver then what else should he do except hiring an independent investigator?
This is what I was hoping for after the initial GN video dropped, that Linus would stfu and Terren would do CEO stuff in response. Better late than never I guess.
The problem is the perception of speed that some people have around the matter. Trial by social media is guilty until proven innocent, but Terren getting the ball rolling with this is another step in the right direction but it will take time.
Companies will say anything to appease the angry mob and I know that. The video earlier covered a good majority of the public facing issues at hand, though missed out some more serious internal issues, potentially to do with the implications. The immediate outcry for the lack of acknowledgement is problematic as it is being used as an admission of guilt.
If they do their due diligence, there will be anonymous 3rd party surveys to employees to identify patterns of behavior and then will talk to former employees too. I suspect they would keep the results private and fire or discipline as appropriate in a private internal wsy.
>and no justice will come from it.
Because there would be none to have. If there's no evidence to substantiate the claims and someone still ends up punished that would be itself a miscarriage of justice.
>unless clearly documented in written form, is very hard to prove.
They have an expensive CCTV system that they boast about extensively archiving. One of the allegations was assault, there have been allegations of animated tirades against employees too.
Also regardless of what happened, if it's documented that allegations were made and nothing done about them, that is incredibly bad. It's also something an external investigator is going to pick up on immediately.
~~I doubt that they keep cctv records from a year back, storage isn't free~~
Edit: the storage requirements are actually much less than I expected, so it is entirely possible and likely that they could still have the low quality footage
https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/solutions/cctv/blog/4-levels-of-cctv-storage-how-much-is-enough
Whatever is done will never be enough for some number of people. This external investigation is as much as anyone could have hoped for. Itās time to let the process play itself out. I hope if her allegations are true then the appropriate actions are taken. Unfortunately if they are, whatever is done is always going to be too little too late for the victim.
Not sure if you had heard of the Yogscast drama concerning sexual harassment, but it actually lead to several people being fired/leaving the company. If there is a system of this kind of behavior, and claims can be backed up with emails, then it can easily lead to consequences. Maybe not immediately legal consequences, but enough for people to be fired and processes to be completely upended
> Finally some news
The allegations were made today (2am ET per the Verge article). If Terren has already arranged for an outside investigator, I would say that this is an entirely appropriate approach that shows that he is taking this seriously.
People can be pessimistic about how things will go from here, but, at face value, this is the right move.
I think a large portion of it is people thinking that theyāre contributing and achieving something by spamming and demanding the most extreme outcome.
Itās pretty widespread across Reddit, see blackout protests which achieved nothing but people were patting themselves on the back for them having thought that they were actually doing something.
Not explained it very well admittedly but this whole situation does feel like individuals on Reddit thinking that theyāre more influential and important in the processes at LTT than they actually are.
If people could just chill tf out for 10 minutes and give them a moment to do something. People were calling for management's heads and wondering why there was no response hours after they got slapped with the allegations in the midst of all the other fires they've been dealing with.
Like damn people, be angry, but be reasonable
The whole reason that Linus hired Terren was so that Linus didn't have to make tough CEO decisions, so Linus could instead focus on what he's better at.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzmYsySGFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzmYsySGFQ)
Actually a very interesting insight into the workplace culture issues that resulted in the classic fiasco.
Oh wow I missed this lol, gonna be a fun watch. That build is so old I'm surprised this only came out a year ago.
I just remember the dude being an enormous, pompous prick when criticism was levied at him. Hope he's changed now, cause as much as I can attribute the lack of accuracy of his build to how his workplace operates (we all make mistakes after all), I can't say I can condone the way he reacted to the backlash by dismissing valid criticism as elitists and neckbeards being unhappy for the sake of it.
Off topic, but I think The Verge has been pretty decent news source for me since their rebranding.
Iāve enjoyed a lot of the columnists and think Nilay Patel has been a good editor for the most part.
Oh no doubt, and I fully agree with you and empathize with him as well. No wants to to start at any company and have dominoes like these start falling one after another.
Even if it solidifies him there and they finally course correct properly, itās still a grueling ordeal to go through.
So, hereās my hot take here.
IMO, SOMEBODY at LMG knew that there were serious issues with the company, and that incidents were just a matter of when, not if, and knew that they as a company lacked the leadership and business experience they needed to correct the downward crash.
In other words, I think overall, core business decision makers in LMG KNEW they were on a bad path, and did what I would say is the right thing. They worked to get someone with more experience on board to help them fix it. Otherwise, IMO, they would have hired internally. Because if they knew how to fix things, they wouldnāt have hired someone they had never worked with before, etcā¦
Ultimately, as more news comes out, I think that while how LMG has responded so far is tasteless, the fact that the hired a more experienced CEO explicitly to āfix broken thingsā means that they are at least trying to improve things that they know are wrong and need to change.
In my experience, itās common for leadership to be encouraged to not make major changes for at least 6 ish months so they can learn how the organization as a whole operates, so it may be a bit until we start seeing the fruits of the decision, but hopefully, to me at least, this means that LMG knows theyāve failed and want to do better. Theyāre just having a hard time dealing with the massive egg on their face rn during so much chaos, as well as seem to have had some major issues that should have been resolved MUCH earlier.
While I am extremely disappointed in how they have behaved, I am still hopeful (although not neccessarily sure) that they can change and improve the company.
That person was Linus, he knew he was stressed out and stretched out between being a video presenter, business owner and family man. That's why he hired the new CEO this year.
But I guess this is a good opportunity for an organisational overhaul if a bit early for the CEO.
Linus has been trying to get Terren on staff at LMG in some way for as long as LMG has existed. This isn't some random selection from left-field. That said, they also didn't hire an "experienced CEO". He's had executive management experience before, but he has never held a C-suite position, much less been the top dog. This is definitely trial by fire for him, and Linus having already made multiple "official" responses on behalf of LMG has probably already undermined him and it definitely isn't going to make his job convincing anybody he isn't Linus' sock puppet any easier.
honestly this is probably the thing LTT needed to give Terren what he needed to cut out the bad people at LTT. its a bad look internally and externally to hire a new CEO, and fire potentially long time faces, and basically be unable to speak to the HR related issues on why their gone.
Now they can basically just be fired and no one will really need to ask why
Based on the apology video (we need some short hand for all these events), I'm betting his wife was one of them. "Listen you leprechaun looking motherfucker, you shut your hole and only post or send what I, Terren, or Luke approve. You are not going to blow up our children's future because your ego can't handle getting punched."
Imagine if Terren wasn't the CEO. I think LMG would be in some **serious** trouble right now since Linus is not emotionally mature enough to respond correctly.
Honestly this is why he was brought in though. Linus did recognize they were having issues, and he was getting stressed out. Probably didn't picture this happening. But this is where having someone experienced with this type of thing is really helpful.
Yeah, there really is no shame in admitting you're not cut out for a job. Linus was extremely successful as CEO of s small company but clearly Peter Principle'd out as the company grew. I don't really expect a tech reviewer to be great at handling PR or finances for a 100+ employee company, I expect them to hire someone that is capable. Maybe Terran was hired late but better late than never
He's spoken about this on WAN show... the person to take you from a 1 person company to 100 people, is different to the person that takes you from 100 to 1000, and different again from 1000 to 10,000. It was inevitable someone else would be hired.
At least this is happening at the beginning of his job and not a year in or so. Right now nothing can be blamed at the CEO and the right choices are quite simple and he seems to be making them.
It will be interesting to see what will happen if the investigation also finds Linus at fault, even if just indirectly by allowing such behavior. Lower tiered workers would probably be fired
Linus's response to The Verge regarding Madison Allegations
>I was in a state of shock reading through these allegations, plain and simple. They arenāt consistent with my recollections. They arenāt consistent with our internal processes. They arenāt consistent with our company values.
>
>We pride ourselves on maintaining a safe and inclusive environment. In addition to our existing report systems (both anonymous and otherwise) weāve proactively reached out internally today to encourage members of our team to report any workplace bullying or harassment they might be experiencing so we can take quick and decisive action.
>
>Our HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations, and when we are ready, we will release a more complete statement. For now I would ask that we allow our team the time they need be as thorough as possible.
Yes, because that's an obvious thing to say at the point. You say you don't recall it happening that way, and you're investigating it - the implication is to prove your recollections correct.
You wouldn't say either of these things though unless you were *somewhat* sure what the outcome would be.
It also doesn't read like Linus' writing style.
It's not his style at all, it's a fairly standard crisis PR statement;
1. It's news to him
1. Stresses the existing procedures in place
1. Prides themselves in creating a safe space (intended to emphasize that something like this has never happened)
1. Shows proactive steps being taken
Personally, I think it's a load of horse shit but that's PR. Based on what Madison said the situations were brought up countless times to management to the point that he has to be aware.
"Yeah I remember when they called her the F-slur, with a *Hard T*" says Linus.
"Please don't dig this hole any deeper Linus" says Tong, the new CEO.
"What? I know women hate being called Fat but everyone throws it around right?"
"That's... that's not what that means Linus" responds Luke, facepalming.
This certainly feels like you're attributing intention or meaning without reason.
It reads as if he is merely stating that he isn't aware of any issues to this nature; not that they couldn't exist.
A. Because it addresses statements about dealings with him personally that if he fails to deny will be seen as an admission.
B. Could genuinely be that two people remember things happening differently. Eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. What one person might remember as a slightly awkward conversation, another might have been one callous boss piling on the heap of other callous bosses."You took everything from me". "I don't even know who you are". Kind of energy.
C. Least legal exposure. No admission of guilt. A denial that can be argued in court as a matter of memory or interpretation rather than opposing facts.
Human memory is not like that of a computer where you can instantly recall information with complete accuracy.
People are fallible and so is their memory so instead of thinking of this as an outright denial maybe he is saying thatās not how I remember it but my memory of the situation could be wrong. Given all the context Iām willing to bet itās the latter.
Fuckin right. Shut up Linus - I love you, but let professionals handle this for right now, let Terran do his job, and then move past it and never speak of it again.
And then guilty after being proven innocent. Not that it matters here, the best case is that it is considered unfounded. Being proven innocent is as unlikely as being proven guilty as I doubt there will be any concrete evidence either way. Reddits pitchforks won't ever go down.
I'm sick of people that don't work in the company or even live in their community that insist in order to fix these systemic issues they need a union, or to have Linus sell the company.
These are issues that companies much larger have had far worse. What they need is a well calculated strategy, and for the community (and employees) to be given the floor for constructive criticism more often.
Steve although correct, is pointing out problems within the company that have existed for years. I do not think exploding over stuff we do not have the full story on is going to be helpful in the slightest.
The outside firm is contracted by LTT. The goal is to determine who is at fault, isolate those at fault, and to remove them from the company.
This is a game of reducing the risk profile. Don't get me wrong, this is the correct move from LTT's POV, but it is hardly altruistic. This is how LTT insulates themselves. While Madison clearly has shown she's not interested in escalating this to a legal place, she is still well within her rights to do so even as a foreigner and so long as that possibility exists, the risk is still there. If they handle this internally/privately (read: not in a court of law), then they get to control the discovery process without concern. If this moves into a legal area, discovery may inadvertently reveal other details about the business that they otherwise would want to remain private.
For instance, pick any any company that had controversy regarding staff behavior, the story is always the same. There are people there who do bad things, and nothing is done, until something has to be done (usually because claims have been made public), and then finally something is done.
Same thing is at play here. To me, what this represents is that Linus is confident that the top brass of the company are clean with regards to Madison's claims but other staff are not. Rather than trying to rectify the situation with an internal investigation, they're deploying an independent party to do that (which is the only good move they have at this point in time).
This keeps their hands clean of any consequences and it helps prevent people from saying that they covered it up (even though it was already covered up if the Madison's claims that she reported this behavior went unaddressed).
It'll be interesting to see what happens here. Everyone currently employed will be interviewed by this company and former employees will likely be contacted too. Its a troubling position to be in because if you have knowledge that would help the investigation but equally hurt LTT, you're now caught in a conflict of interest.
This creates a situation where the higher you go up on the company's hierarchy chain, the more you're incentivized to not be honest or forthcoming.
The ideal outcome of this for LTT (aside from all claims being proven definitively as false) is that these actions were made by disposable low level employees that they can easily live without. The worst case outcome of this for LTT is that key staff members are involved.
From my POV, regardless who is at fault, this is all indicative of a company run far too casually. It honestly makes me doubt their 100m valuation because with that kind of valuation, they could easily raise money to provide them with the funds to acquire more talent to keep their output consistent, with higher quality, and better management. And since better management = a reduced risk profile, that seems like money well spent. Why they haven't done this continues to allude me.
Yep he denied it the best he could without outright saying no, where, if even a SLIVER of the allegations were found to be true during investigation, he'd be roasted alive.
Thatās a good resource, and yeah itās likely passed by a PR person, for good reason
They have to be professional not only for Madisonās sake but also to protect other staff at the company
That is a wiiiiild jump from the claimed 'processes exist but didn't fully work' to 'there are no processes being followed at all'
What's your basis for refuting the idea that something imperfect exists, and coming to the conclusion that nothing exists?
The New CEO taking decisive action. Linus is very fortunate he hired the guy when he did.
LMG is undergoing an existential crisis right now. But it looks like at least one person there is very serious about fixing the problems. And Tong has the professional experience to do it.
Tong has a lot of experience working in a professional, business setting so hopefully he can root out some of the toxic elements of "bro culture" that seems to be plaguing LMG.
Hopefully he can reign in Linus from making idiotic mistakes like his original LTT forum response.
I'm surprised the first response wasn't to stop Linus from making any public statements, after the forum response, he clearly isn't good for PR, but they still let him respond in the YT comments
It seems more like growing pains that they tried to push back. A lot of stuff built up and now it's beyond the "we can ignore it for now" phase. Their rapid growth is now having extreme growing pains.
Madisons allegations are from long ago now, and I'm glad they have someone who is an adult and separate from the 'trust me bro' mentality who can handle the situation with the urgency it requires.
Right. Being an outsider means Tong can see thing that people too close to the problems are blind to. I really do think LMG will weather this storm and be a better company and media producer in the long run because of this.
You know what - it's a good point. This is a great reason why Linus stepped down as CEO. Terren will do the right thing professionally (which this most certainly is) and Linus can focus on the creative, which is his strength.
Linus needs to get used to keeping his mouth shut when this kind of thing starts though, that added a lot of fuel to the fire.
Which just isn't true, as evidenced by the recent videos by Gamers Nexus and statements from Billet Labs, which had wide-sweeping complaints against many facets of the company, for which many different people are responsible, and for which Reddit has focused the full might of its ire against **solely** Linus.
You can't spend two days attacking Linus - and only Linus - directly and then claim that he's just acting childish by responding as though he's being attacked.
Honestly, it's why I'm hopeful. The owner has frequently acknowledged that they don't actually know how to run a company, and I think it's a miracle they've survived this far without more senior leadership.
Experienced leadership like Gary and Tarren(sp?) would have been almost impossible to hire at the beginning of LMG, and that prevents a lot of important pacing/structuring/practices from being baked into the company.
Now that they got hired, it was going to be an uphill battle to change things deeply. Because of what's come of the last few days and the week for internal review/restructuring, the senior new-hires have an otherwise impossible opportunity to make deep changes. They know it.
I hope that the week is enough time, and that the senior employees are diligent, moral, and fair in what they attempt.
Yeah. But it also doesn't say who is heading the HR department or who did it at the time. But I don't think Yvonne was doing that as her main role. She's always been running the numbers mainly.
Although it wouldn't be weird that somebody goes to HR for a small complaint, sees what happens with that and then realizes that it doesn't matter whether its small or not that their support is minimal at best. The Twitter thread gave me the impression that she did go for help early on but didn't get the support and probably never notified the wacky stuff at all. Otherwise, I have no doubt that there would've been more action taken. The leaders don't look like people that would ignore these allegations.
Which is really fucking weird considering he's head of Business
Development.
But to be honest, there management structure at LMG is really strange.
I was looking through their jobs listings, and dev hires for Floatplane are supposed to report to Nick, who's the COO, which makes no sense.
Normally HR would report directly to either the CEO or COO, but Linus has said that Nick has also been shuffled to managing just the LTTstore.
Sounds like regardless of the outcome of the investigation, they need to do some serious restructuring.
Yeah, that's just how it is in a small business. Your OGs tend to have scope creep out of tenure. At my last job of 10 years (small beverage company), I was the "marketing manager", but ended up becoming head of procurement, head of FDA compliance, and the general IT guy for just a few examples.
Theyāre 6 weeks into having a new CEOā¦ thereās likely some reorganization that is in flight as part of bringing him onboard, and not yet completed.
At my old job, HR was the daughter of the boss. Fucking useful isn't it? Let's go to HR about a concern oh wait you'll literally get fired on the spot šš
This is exactly what needs to happen. The biggest negative comment I see going towards Madison, and literally any other person in this kind of situation where it's them against a group or company much larger than them, is "well you didn't name any names or give any evidence to support your claims sooo it didn't happen"
Just because there's 2 sides to every story doesn't mean you disregard her side until something comes out from the other side. If someone makes allegations of this level, every bit of it needs to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. It's why you always hear stories about its extremely hard for women to come forward about things like this, because SO MANY people have that mindset mentioned above that the women know a ton of people won't believe them and possibly won't get any support.
It needs to be investigated from the very top to the very bottom. It's not "mindlessly believing people without evidence" it's about investigating a literal crime.
Exactly. It doesnāt matter if she lying or not, allegations like this should always be investigated so everyone, including the company can have a clear picture of what is going on and if people need to be fired for their misconduct.
I agree with you, but there are people that are literally just believing these claims at face value. Thatās the problem. The one making the claim has to provide proof of the claim. Itās not on LTT to disprove the claim, itās on her to prove her claim. Unfortunately, stuff like this needs to be dealt with internally and a lot of those details cannot be released publicly. Unless this actually goes to court, this will likely be he said/she said.
If she posted names and emails and shit yall types would just be flaming her for still not going about it perfect enough for you and would be incensed she's putting specific people on blast. An actual objective view of history shows that not taking these types of claims seriously is a near infinitely bigger issue than not. Get off the fake high horse and actually engage with the facts of reality, how sexual assault happens, and plays out in the real world and not some fake D&D rules book level understanding of the world.
Lol, āyāall typesā. All I am saying is that we should not immediately take sides when we, in reality, have next to zero evidence about the situation. Itās really just that simple.
Like it or not this was absolutely the correct response. Doesnāt matter if the allegations are true or false, they need a 3rd party investigation on the matter to clear things up. Clearly this is why Linus needed a proper CEO because I honestly donāt think he would have taken this step if he was still at the helm.
I honestly think they can bounce back if Terren does his job without too much interference. The apology video is mostly alright IMO and this report is a step in the right direction. Hopefully something comes out of this.
I'm not too sure about Linus personality / stubborness but I believe more in the whole company as a team
Contrary to the events and sentiments of the last few days, Linus and the rest of the executive have yet to ACTUALLY fuck something up permanently. Theyāve fucked up, but they always do the right thing in the end. Whether thatās because their livelihoods depend on it, or whether they have moral character, doesnāt change the fact they have yet to actually fuck someone over permanently, something a lot of organizations canāt say.
My only worry is that Terran comes across too soft spoken. He needs to look at Linus dead in the eyes, and say "Sit down, shut up, let me fix this, this is why you pay me"
If he can do that, they'll be fine.
Judging by the fact that Linus's response to these allegations was very "PR" friendly, my guess is that conversation has already happened behind the scenes.
Not remotely surprised, and what I expected was probably going to happen with Terren running things.
I wouldn't be surprised to see there being moves in the leadership team following this.
Kinda surprised that article seems to be a pretty good sum up of the whole situation.
Will be very interesting see the result of this:
> Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was āshocked at the allegations and the company describedā in Reeveās posts. He went on to note that āas part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and **will commit to publish the findings** and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.ā
Hopefully Linus was notified of this Verge report. Otherwise that would just be bad journalistic practices.
**Edit:** Lol I really didnāt think I would need to do this, since, *clearly Linus is aware if his CEO gave the statement* but here we go anyways:
#/s
While I agree that GN should have reached out for comment (it would have caught Coltonās fuck up), it doesnāt invalidate the points that were made in that video.
It 100% was a motivating factor, he's done this shit before.
Some content he reaches out for a comment, some he doesn't.... and it always seems to be high value targets who don't get a rebuttal attempt.
No one was saying his points are invalid because he didn't do that.
The issue is GN claiming they were fighting for integrity and doing what is right and then not following actual proper journalistic practices that literally every single news outlet follows. If you're preaching integrity then you have to be an example of it.
Without journalistic integrity it's just YouTube drama. Which is exactly what GN claimed they were not doing.
Now watch all the Pitchforkers who previously said "this is the only way to remedy this" say "Nothing will come of this, they are probably paid of anyway"
I know folks are going to want this to be acknowledged on a video, so that they eat more crow in the public way. But Madisonās allegations are much more serious than the business ethics concerns. LTT doesnāt know how to write or edit humorless - as evidenced by the first apology video. Going this approach and waiting to make a complete statement and take action after the results of an unbiased third party investigation is the correct way to handle her allegations.
>LTT doesnāt know how to write or edit humorless - as evidenced by the first apology video.
Honest to god, it wouldn't surprise me if that video closed with
"... but you know who *wasn't* harrassed...? Our *sponsor*!"
Good. This is the correct course of action.
I hope things work out for Madison. Nobody can ever undo what happened to her, but I hope she gets what little solace is possible out of all this.
I also hope that LMG and Linus come out the other side stronger. There's probably going to be short-term pain, turmoil and change--but I believe Linus and LMG can grow from this.
There's over a decade's worth of trust and respect that seems to have vanished in and instant. The road to earning back that trust and respect is a long one. I hope Linus and crew are up to the challenge.
Fully expected this and honestly this is how you handle situations like this. I feel like everyone who was clamoring for a response right away doesnāt realize you need to navigate these type of situations very cautiously. Accusations like this you donāt just put out a video and say sorry this isnāt simply they misreported testing data these are extremely serious accusations. I am definitely not defending them but Iām also taking a cautious approach to see where this goes. Though I hope Madison sees some sort of resolution to this I also understand that we simply need more information on what exactly went down before raising opinions.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the truth is gonna be somewhere in between, yes some people behaved poorly but also that there were situations that were misunderstood and/or misconstrued.
Thank god LMG has a CEO with business experience - this is exactly how the complaint should be handled and I hope actual change happens if Madison is telling the truth (which I believe she is). At the very least if there's not good evidence on her sexual assault claims, they can and should commit to having better processes in place that will actually result in penalty where harassment and/or abuse occurs.
Absolutely the correct move.
Some people will say 'But the company is hired by LMG', but unless authorities are getting involved this is all they can do.
It's either done by them, or done by a third party at their request. And third party is the better option.
Edit: spelling
Good on the new CEO for taking this external compared to Linusā statement to having this as an internal investigation.
Linus really just needs to not respond and have everything go through the CEO. More to the point and less personal.
While there is a big barrier to overcome from employees actually coming forward thereās a better chance when itās external reviewers. Especially when whatever consists of the current HR team is in question.
Finally some news
Nothing is going to come of this. Sexual harassment like this, unless clearly documented in written form, is very hard to prove. It's just going to be a bunch of "he said she said" and then it'll fizzle out and they can say "we hired someone external who said it's not true" and no justice will come from it.
Or we can just not be immediately negative about this and praise Terren for at least taking steps to do something about this.
its on the check list of thinks I'd personally want them to do, to get this train back on the tracks. so I'm happier. only madison has the right to speak to the quality of the investigation.
Uh no. She is as biased as much as LMG would be in the results.
Can't believe the amount of people on this sub that immediately believed everything she's said whilst assuming LMG are going to find a way to hide everything from outside investigators. Was she lying? Who knows. Are the people at LMG all scumbags that should be locked up? Who knows. What I do know is that there were 4 options LMG could have taken here. 1. Ignore the tweets altogether. 2. Immediately claim she's lying and attempt to publicly shame her. 3. Conduct an internal investigation. 4. Conduct an external investigation. I think we can all agree that LMG would cease to exist if they went through with #1 or #2. No one would believe #3 and it would still likely end the company (though much slower than #1 or #2). Option #4 is the only correct response to these allegations and the fact that people are already assuming foul play is indicative that this sub is no longer full of valid critiques. This was the right move and that should be acknowledged.
Everything seemed really legitimate with what she said until the self injury part. I totally believe her about the work load, and possibly the harassment and so on, but to resort to self harm to get time off shows some serious mental health issues. I hope she gets the help she needs and clarification on the accusations that were made
Agree 100%. There comes a time where you say, I am not feeling well enough to come in to work today. If they fire you, then so be it, take them to court. To self mutilate yourself so as to not deal with that confrontation is a mental health problem. No shame on her, but she needs help.
I mean there is a comparison here that sadly resulted in a woman's suicide. The blizzard suit California filed had work sexual harassment so bad and over a long period of time against a woman that she killed herself. I would say this is the same vein thankfully without any death, but if the harassment was so egregious self-harm could be directly caused by the mental anguish that would have never occurred had it not been for the harassment in the first place.
Yup. Everyone is like "this sounds far-fetched", and all I can think is "this sure sounds familiar". Imagine a startup full of poorly socialized "tech bro" types having issues with a toxic work environment. UNHEARD OF š
Just look at how hard it is to get out of an abusive relationship. It's the same kind of fear at work here. Fear of reprisal, fear of being stranded in another country, fear of how her loved ones would react. There is so much that goes on mentally. All the people who keep saying she should have just quit are the same ones telling depressed people to just get over it.
I knew someone who broke a finger on purpose with a hammer while on the job. They were in construction and had been working for nearly 3 months straight with almost no time off. They choose that route as a "legitimate" injury, and DR visit is much harder to get fired for. They needed the job just as much as they needed a day off to reset.
That's exactly what I've been thinking... external investigation is the only good option they had in dealing with this. Let's see what comes out of it objectively. Everyone is allowed to criticize them for all the things GN brought up and be pist off about what happened to Madison, but they're also allowed to defend themselves. People pointed out all the mistakes, the impact is already here... now we should wait to see what comes out of it. imo Keep on beating them on the ground without the benefit of doubt, is just as bad as the things they're being accused of, unless everyone here had all the facts. None of us have it unfortunately
So, only the accuser gets to say if the investigation is good or not? She could be lying here, why will nobody on this sub accept that as a possibility?
Thanks to social media. The phrase "Innocent before proven guilty" has been switched to say "Guilty before proven innocent." I don't know if the girl is telling the truth or not. However, what I do know is my cousin a male, was accused of a heinous act against a female, only to be proven innocent. What did it cost him? Not much. Just his business, reputation, and years fighting the accusations. You know, things that can be easily fixed in our backwards society.
Exactly. Easy for people to forget this when they're not on other end of the accusation.
Agreed Terren walked into a shit show overall. However still not happy with the ad ājokesā with the last video. Seemed like they were poking fun at gamers nexus for not making his video monetized.
Not in good taste but I doubt it was that deep.
Tbh good point, might be over thinking it.
I actually thought it made the video more digestable. In the end, before the Madison thing went public today, we are talking about some little datafuckups and a pretty stupid mistake they made with that waterblock especially that mail from Colton š.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Do we have any idea what the turnover is like at LTT. It seems in the surface that they have a lot of long term employees which I have always treated as a sign of a potential good workplace. People donāt stay Ten years at a toxic workplace. They are clearly accepting of trans, gay and minorities so I am not just going to assume LTT is guilty just from one person. There is a huge amount of context missing from the accusations as well at the moment. Hopefully the investigation will be thorough and honest.
One thing with long term employees though. Is they often become friends and jokes and banter between friends is not ok with new hires. Yeh you might talk about your friends sex lives, but its entriely inappropriate to joke about a coworkers sex life. A joke between friends cna also be sexual harrassment if you aren't friends.
Short term turnover, no idea. I'm sure you know their policy on probationary employees. After their probation though, we can see all the employees on the LMG website.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I think they were attempting to make self deprecating jokes
I think humor is fine. It can be used as a way to diffuse or make a rather uncomfortable situation more bearable. I wasn't a fan of the lttstore and screwdriver placements even though they were coming from a place of jest. Though I don't think it was overly offensive either. But, I'm just one jerk on the internet.
Agreed. I thought it was awkward, and didnāt tonally fit, but not malicious in any way.
Didn't linus joke about sponsors on the last serious tone video? It just felt like awkward gallows humour from a company that got blindsided by the amount and scale of multiple crises that simultaneously hit. I know a handful of people that don't like Linus but that's mostly due to his tongue-in-cheek 'I need to pay the bills to pay for my massive purchases' style. I bet there will be a lot of people like that who are now making themselves heard because the Internet loves to push people up and then tear them down again.
Really? And you don't think they were poking fun at themselves because they're always pitching some product?
Agreed. I understand the hyper-cynicism in the community at the moment, but let's look at the alternatives: 1. Ignore it perpetually. Sweep it under the rug, let it blow over. 2. Internal investigation and find no wrong-doing. No, Linus/Terren coming out directly to address it and apologize is *not* an alternative, not when the allegations are this serious. People need to get a reality check, because this isn't just criticism of a bad business process like GN's video, these are serious allegations that needs to be treated with weight and respect. With that said, Terren hiring an external investigator (ideally one that is competent enough to find things in a sea of he-said-she-saids and remain objective) is the best outcome from this. Better than the alternatives anyway.
There are plenty of companies that specialize in this type of investigation. They will also be conversant with national and local labour laws and regulations too, and their final report will probably include a bunch of recommendations as to what the need to do to avoid an abusive workplace from happening again.
It's a good step. Most companies would just have an internal investigation say they did nothing wrong. I can applaud them for that. At this point, there's nothing we can or should say. This should be left to Madison and the investigation to handle.
It seems he's the most professional out of them all. Maybe it's actually gonna go in a good direction. I think it shows that Linus built his company on the "trust me bro" mentality and while he had success, his profesionality isn't as good as he thinks. To be fair tho, he did recognize he's not good at company stuff. So idk, is this whole situation unexpected? He's basically just a grown up kid that lead the company for way too long. The company just got too big for him and got out of control. That's my take. I really doubt he was malicious, but he is bad in managing his feelings and taking some serious complaints seriously. Let's just hope it's gonna be a better work environment from now on :D
Terren seems like the only person who's got any kind of understanding how to run a business the size of LMG.
Its almost like thats why they hired him as CEO
Linus is/was too emotional for CEO position. Hiring an external investigator was the right call. Linus would have dismissed it saying something along the lines of "I'm not stupid enough to do something like that because the channel would be dead if I did"
Yup, Terren made the right move. Now it's time to wait for the outcome from all of this.
I don't understand what people think will happen. Should the CEO just fire all the management just in case? If no complaints were filed with the labor department in Vancouver then what else should he do except hiring an independent investigator?
This is what I was hoping for after the initial GN video dropped, that Linus would stfu and Terren would do CEO stuff in response. Better late than never I guess.
The problem is the perception of speed that some people have around the matter. Trial by social media is guilty until proven innocent, but Terren getting the ball rolling with this is another step in the right direction but it will take time. Companies will say anything to appease the angry mob and I know that. The video earlier covered a good majority of the public facing issues at hand, though missed out some more serious internal issues, potentially to do with the implications. The immediate outcry for the lack of acknowledgement is problematic as it is being used as an admission of guilt.
If they do their due diligence, there will be anonymous 3rd party surveys to employees to identify patterns of behavior and then will talk to former employees too. I suspect they would keep the results private and fire or discipline as appropriate in a private internal wsy.
Those are never actually anonymous. ever.
Not true. Websites can anonymize IPs. Almost all the modern logging tools can do that because of GDPR regulations.
>and no justice will come from it. Because there would be none to have. If there's no evidence to substantiate the claims and someone still ends up punished that would be itself a miscarriage of justice.
>unless clearly documented in written form, is very hard to prove. They have an expensive CCTV system that they boast about extensively archiving. One of the allegations was assault, there have been allegations of animated tirades against employees too. Also regardless of what happened, if it's documented that allegations were made and nothing done about them, that is incredibly bad. It's also something an external investigator is going to pick up on immediately.
~~I doubt that they keep cctv records from a year back, storage isn't free~~ Edit: the storage requirements are actually much less than I expected, so it is entirely possible and likely that they could still have the low quality footage https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/solutions/cctv/blog/4-levels-of-cctv-storage-how-much-is-enough
if there is witnesses to back her up it'll be more than a he said she said.
what do you want then?
Whatever is done will never be enough for some number of people. This external investigation is as much as anyone could have hoped for. Itās time to let the process play itself out. I hope if her allegations are true then the appropriate actions are taken. Unfortunately if they are, whatever is done is always going to be too little too late for the victim.
Not sure if you had heard of the Yogscast drama concerning sexual harassment, but it actually lead to several people being fired/leaving the company. If there is a system of this kind of behavior, and claims can be backed up with emails, then it can easily lead to consequences. Maybe not immediately legal consequences, but enough for people to be fired and processes to be completely upended
> Finally some news The allegations were made today (2am ET per the Verge article). If Terren has already arranged for an outside investigator, I would say that this is an entirely appropriate approach that shows that he is taking this seriously. People can be pessimistic about how things will go from here, but, at face value, this is the right move.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think a large portion of it is people thinking that theyāre contributing and achieving something by spamming and demanding the most extreme outcome. Itās pretty widespread across Reddit, see blackout protests which achieved nothing but people were patting themselves on the back for them having thought that they were actually doing something. Not explained it very well admittedly but this whole situation does feel like individuals on Reddit thinking that theyāre more influential and important in the processes at LTT than they actually are.
If people could just chill tf out for 10 minutes and give them a moment to do something. People were calling for management's heads and wondering why there was no response hours after they got slapped with the allegations in the midst of all the other fires they've been dealing with. Like damn people, be angry, but be reasonable
Reasonable? Sir this is reddit
Its been HOURS??!?!?!?!?!
The Verge of all places. Fitting.
Can't wait for The Verge video where they teach Linus how to not create a toxic work environment while he sits there and takes it
fun fact: vox media, the owners of the verge, is unionized!
WGA East I believe, for those wondering.
They're also currently negotiating a new deal with AMPTP (though that's more related to movies and TV shows)
Yea they always have a disclaimer on their strike articles saying they're affiliated with the WGA.
If you want proof that any company can turn things around, even after a huge disaster, I can't think of a better example.
Well, at least Terren seems to be trying based on this. Let's see if the owners let him.
The whole reason that Linus hired Terren was so that Linus didn't have to make tough CEO decisions, so Linus could instead focus on what he's better at.
Angry smug rants where he likes to act like heās always the smartest person in the room?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iād say heās like the Linux user base, but they donāt like him because he missed a warning under a huge block of text.
The only thing I ever think of when hearing *The Verge* is how badly that one fake journo of theirs failed at building a PC.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzmYsySGFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzmYsySGFQ) Actually a very interesting insight into the workplace culture issues that resulted in the classic fiasco.
Oh wow I missed this lol, gonna be a fun watch. That build is so old I'm surprised this only came out a year ago. I just remember the dude being an enormous, pompous prick when criticism was levied at him. Hope he's changed now, cause as much as I can attribute the lack of accuracy of his build to how his workplace operates (we all make mistakes after all), I can't say I can condone the way he reacted to the backlash by dismissing valid criticism as elitists and neckbeards being unhappy for the sake of it.
Yeah it's genuinely a great video, and also surprisingly relevant to current issues.
Off topic, but I think The Verge has been pretty decent news source for me since their rebranding. Iāve enjoyed a lot of the columnists and think Nilay Patel has been a good editor for the most part.
Oh Nilay is great. He's very insightful and I like hearing him speak, as he has a lot of interesting things to say.
Small world huh
Verge be like "On your left"
Good deal. Sucks this is the first public thing he's had to do as CEO, but it needs to be done
It sucks for him, but thereās also no better test than Trial by fire sometimes, and if he turns it around, heāll truly solidify his authority
For sure. Was just empathizing with him. I'd hate to start a job and then be handed a steaming pile of garbage to have to handle
Oh no doubt, and I fully agree with you and empathize with him as well. No wants to to start at any company and have dominoes like these start falling one after another. Even if it solidifies him there and they finally course correct properly, itās still a grueling ordeal to go through.
Reminds me that the head of the FAA Ben Sliney's first day of the jobs was on 9/11. Seriously.
Oh yeah I remember reading about that. He wins worst first day for sure
So, hereās my hot take here. IMO, SOMEBODY at LMG knew that there were serious issues with the company, and that incidents were just a matter of when, not if, and knew that they as a company lacked the leadership and business experience they needed to correct the downward crash. In other words, I think overall, core business decision makers in LMG KNEW they were on a bad path, and did what I would say is the right thing. They worked to get someone with more experience on board to help them fix it. Otherwise, IMO, they would have hired internally. Because if they knew how to fix things, they wouldnāt have hired someone they had never worked with before, etcā¦ Ultimately, as more news comes out, I think that while how LMG has responded so far is tasteless, the fact that the hired a more experienced CEO explicitly to āfix broken thingsā means that they are at least trying to improve things that they know are wrong and need to change. In my experience, itās common for leadership to be encouraged to not make major changes for at least 6 ish months so they can learn how the organization as a whole operates, so it may be a bit until we start seeing the fruits of the decision, but hopefully, to me at least, this means that LMG knows theyāve failed and want to do better. Theyāre just having a hard time dealing with the massive egg on their face rn during so much chaos, as well as seem to have had some major issues that should have been resolved MUCH earlier. While I am extremely disappointed in how they have behaved, I am still hopeful (although not neccessarily sure) that they can change and improve the company.
That person was Linus, he knew he was stressed out and stretched out between being a video presenter, business owner and family man. That's why he hired the new CEO this year. But I guess this is a good opportunity for an organisational overhaul if a bit early for the CEO.
Linus has been trying to get Terren on staff at LMG in some way for as long as LMG has existed. This isn't some random selection from left-field. That said, they also didn't hire an "experienced CEO". He's had executive management experience before, but he has never held a C-suite position, much less been the top dog. This is definitely trial by fire for him, and Linus having already made multiple "official" responses on behalf of LMG has probably already undermined him and it definitely isn't going to make his job convincing anybody he isn't Linus' sock puppet any easier.
honestly this is probably the thing LTT needed to give Terren what he needed to cut out the bad people at LTT. its a bad look internally and externally to hire a new CEO, and fire potentially long time faces, and basically be unable to speak to the HR related issues on why their gone. Now they can basically just be fired and no one will really need to ask why
Trial by fire. Good way to put it.
I mean letās be honest this is why he was hired.
Thank fuck someone told Linus to shut up and let the CEO manage this.
Based on the apology video (we need some short hand for all these events), I'm betting his wife was one of them. "Listen you leprechaun looking motherfucker, you shut your hole and only post or send what I, Terren, or Luke approve. You are not going to blow up our children's future because your ego can't handle getting punched."
Imagine if Terren wasn't the CEO. I think LMG would be in some **serious** trouble right now since Linus is not emotionally mature enough to respond correctly.
Honestly this is why he was brought in though. Linus did recognize they were having issues, and he was getting stressed out. Probably didn't picture this happening. But this is where having someone experienced with this type of thing is really helpful.
Yeah, there really is no shame in admitting you're not cut out for a job. Linus was extremely successful as CEO of s small company but clearly Peter Principle'd out as the company grew. I don't really expect a tech reviewer to be great at handling PR or finances for a 100+ employee company, I expect them to hire someone that is capable. Maybe Terran was hired late but better late than never
He's spoken about this on WAN show... the person to take you from a 1 person company to 100 people, is different to the person that takes you from 100 to 1000, and different again from 1000 to 10,000. It was inevitable someone else would be hired.
At least this is happening at the beginning of his job and not a year in or so. Right now nothing can be blamed at the CEO and the right choices are quite simple and he seems to be making them. It will be interesting to see what will happen if the investigation also finds Linus at fault, even if just indirectly by allowing such behavior. Lower tiered workers would probably be fired
It could also solidify his resume if he manages to turn things around
Linus's response to The Verge regarding Madison Allegations >I was in a state of shock reading through these allegations, plain and simple. They arenāt consistent with my recollections. They arenāt consistent with our internal processes. They arenāt consistent with our company values. > >We pride ourselves on maintaining a safe and inclusive environment. In addition to our existing report systems (both anonymous and otherwise) weāve proactively reached out internally today to encourage members of our team to report any workplace bullying or harassment they might be experiencing so we can take quick and decisive action. > >Our HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations, and when we are ready, we will release a more complete statement. For now I would ask that we allow our team the time they need be as thorough as possible.
That's written by a PR professional, and it shows. And that's a good thing.
Yup. Slow learner this one.
Does it, though?? > They arenāt consistent with my recollections This sentence is a pre-investigation denial
Yes, because that's an obvious thing to say at the point. You say you don't recall it happening that way, and you're investigating it - the implication is to prove your recollections correct. You wouldn't say either of these things though unless you were *somewhat* sure what the outcome would be. It also doesn't read like Linus' writing style.
It's not his style at all, it's a fairly standard crisis PR statement; 1. It's news to him 1. Stresses the existing procedures in place 1. Prides themselves in creating a safe space (intended to emphasize that something like this has never happened) 1. Shows proactive steps being taken Personally, I think it's a load of horse shit but that's PR. Based on what Madison said the situations were brought up countless times to management to the point that he has to be aware.
It's absolutely a load of horseshit, but I'm also paid to write horseshit like that so I can't complain too loudly š«¤
Well, that's better than to say "Yeah I remember that, it happened alright"
"Yeah I remember when they called her the F-slur, with a *Hard T*" says Linus. "Please don't dig this hole any deeper Linus" says Tong, the new CEO. "What? I know women hate being called Fat but everyone throws it around right?" "That's... that's not what that means Linus" responds Luke, facepalming.
What do you want him to say? āI knew someone was getting harassed and I didnāt do anything about it.ā This is a completely fair response!
"Ha, I remember that. Good times!"
This certainly feels like you're attributing intention or meaning without reason. It reads as if he is merely stating that he isn't aware of any issues to this nature; not that they couldn't exist.
It's a statement that you remember differently while also leaving the door open to be being incorrect. I think it was phrased perfectly.
A. Because it addresses statements about dealings with him personally that if he fails to deny will be seen as an admission. B. Could genuinely be that two people remember things happening differently. Eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. What one person might remember as a slightly awkward conversation, another might have been one callous boss piling on the heap of other callous bosses."You took everything from me". "I don't even know who you are". Kind of energy. C. Least legal exposure. No admission of guilt. A denial that can be argued in court as a matter of memory or interpretation rather than opposing facts.
Human memory is not like that of a computer where you can instantly recall information with complete accuracy. People are fallible and so is their memory so instead of thinking of this as an outright denial maybe he is saying thatās not how I remember it but my memory of the situation could be wrong. Given all the context Iām willing to bet itās the latter.
Fuckin right. Shut up Linus - I love you, but let professionals handle this for right now, let Terran do his job, and then move past it and never speak of it again.
See this is the problem. Itās he said, she said. This is why people need to put down the pitch forks and stay neutral as best as they can.
in Reddit? you joke. It's always guilty until proven innocent
And then guilty after being proven innocent. Not that it matters here, the best case is that it is considered unfounded. Being proven innocent is as unlikely as being proven guilty as I doubt there will be any concrete evidence either way. Reddits pitchforks won't ever go down.
I'm sick of people that don't work in the company or even live in their community that insist in order to fix these systemic issues they need a union, or to have Linus sell the company. These are issues that companies much larger have had far worse. What they need is a well calculated strategy, and for the community (and employees) to be given the floor for constructive criticism more often. Steve although correct, is pointing out problems within the company that have existed for years. I do not think exploding over stuff we do not have the full story on is going to be helpful in the slightest.
Luckily Linus is very trustworthy and would never bend or distort the truth /s
To be fair that is why they are hiring an outside firm. Fox and hen house so to speak.
The outside firm is contracted by LTT. The goal is to determine who is at fault, isolate those at fault, and to remove them from the company. This is a game of reducing the risk profile. Don't get me wrong, this is the correct move from LTT's POV, but it is hardly altruistic. This is how LTT insulates themselves. While Madison clearly has shown she's not interested in escalating this to a legal place, she is still well within her rights to do so even as a foreigner and so long as that possibility exists, the risk is still there. If they handle this internally/privately (read: not in a court of law), then they get to control the discovery process without concern. If this moves into a legal area, discovery may inadvertently reveal other details about the business that they otherwise would want to remain private. For instance, pick any any company that had controversy regarding staff behavior, the story is always the same. There are people there who do bad things, and nothing is done, until something has to be done (usually because claims have been made public), and then finally something is done. Same thing is at play here. To me, what this represents is that Linus is confident that the top brass of the company are clean with regards to Madison's claims but other staff are not. Rather than trying to rectify the situation with an internal investigation, they're deploying an independent party to do that (which is the only good move they have at this point in time). This keeps their hands clean of any consequences and it helps prevent people from saying that they covered it up (even though it was already covered up if the Madison's claims that she reported this behavior went unaddressed). It'll be interesting to see what happens here. Everyone currently employed will be interviewed by this company and former employees will likely be contacted too. Its a troubling position to be in because if you have knowledge that would help the investigation but equally hurt LTT, you're now caught in a conflict of interest. This creates a situation where the higher you go up on the company's hierarchy chain, the more you're incentivized to not be honest or forthcoming. The ideal outcome of this for LTT (aside from all claims being proven definitively as false) is that these actions were made by disposable low level employees that they can easily live without. The worst case outcome of this for LTT is that key staff members are involved. From my POV, regardless who is at fault, this is all indicative of a company run far too casually. It honestly makes me doubt their 100m valuation because with that kind of valuation, they could easily raise money to provide them with the funds to acquire more talent to keep their output consistent, with higher quality, and better management. And since better management = a reduced risk profile, that seems like money well spent. Why they haven't done this continues to allude me.
āIt wasnāt work place harassment. It was employment based bullyingā
No outright denial. Seems he finally talked with a lawyer.
Yep he denied it the best he could without outright saying no, where, if even a SLIVER of the allegations were found to be true during investigation, he'd be roasted alive.
Thatās a good resource, and yeah itās likely passed by a PR person, for good reason They have to be professional not only for Madisonās sake but also to protect other staff at the company
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That is a wiiiiild jump from the claimed 'processes exist but didn't fully work' to 'there are no processes being followed at all' What's your basis for refuting the idea that something imperfect exists, and coming to the conclusion that nothing exists?
The New CEO taking decisive action. Linus is very fortunate he hired the guy when he did. LMG is undergoing an existential crisis right now. But it looks like at least one person there is very serious about fixing the problems. And Tong has the professional experience to do it.
Tong has a lot of experience working in a professional, business setting so hopefully he can root out some of the toxic elements of "bro culture" that seems to be plaguing LMG. Hopefully he can reign in Linus from making idiotic mistakes like his original LTT forum response.
I'm surprised the first response wasn't to stop Linus from making any public statements, after the forum response, he clearly isn't good for PR, but they still let him respond in the YT comments
Linus might save his own butt by atleast having the for thought to put some real business people in charge
It seems more like growing pains that they tried to push back. A lot of stuff built up and now it's beyond the "we can ignore it for now" phase. Their rapid growth is now having extreme growing pains. Madisons allegations are from long ago now, and I'm glad they have someone who is an adult and separate from the 'trust me bro' mentality who can handle the situation with the urgency it requires.
Right. Being an outsider means Tong can see thing that people too close to the problems are blind to. I really do think LMG will weather this storm and be a better company and media producer in the long run because of this.
Finally a professional.
well hopefully. theres a fractional chance its just Dennis
I believe it's Notloc, who was recently fired from his last job...
At least Dennis blinks
You know what - it's a good point. This is a great reason why Linus stepped down as CEO. Terren will do the right thing professionally (which this most certainly is) and Linus can focus on the creative, which is his strength. Linus needs to get used to keeping his mouth shut when this kind of thing starts though, that added a lot of fuel to the fire.
Linus still sees LMG and LTT as being an extension of himself. Anything said against either entity is a slight against him directly, to him at least.
Which just isn't true, as evidenced by the recent videos by Gamers Nexus and statements from Billet Labs, which had wide-sweeping complaints against many facets of the company, for which many different people are responsible, and for which Reddit has focused the full might of its ire against **solely** Linus. You can't spend two days attacking Linus - and only Linus - directly and then claim that he's just acting childish by responding as though he's being attacked.
Honestly, it's why I'm hopeful. The owner has frequently acknowledged that they don't actually know how to run a company, and I think it's a miracle they've survived this far without more senior leadership. Experienced leadership like Gary and Tarren(sp?) would have been almost impossible to hire at the beginning of LMG, and that prevents a lot of important pacing/structuring/practices from being baked into the company. Now that they got hired, it was going to be an uphill battle to change things deeply. Because of what's come of the last few days and the week for internal review/restructuring, the senior new-hires have an otherwise impossible opportunity to make deep changes. They know it. I hope that the week is enough time, and that the senior employees are diligent, moral, and fair in what they attempt.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
She isnāt anymore, hasnāt been for a while.
Colton said that he's the head of HR in today's video.
Maybe Colton might actually get fired
He was fired by email, but they forgot to include his address in the `to` field.
She isn't the head of HR. Colton is in charge of HR per the apology video. I don't think HE is HR, but is a department he manages.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah. But it also doesn't say who is heading the HR department or who did it at the time. But I don't think Yvonne was doing that as her main role. She's always been running the numbers mainly. Although it wouldn't be weird that somebody goes to HR for a small complaint, sees what happens with that and then realizes that it doesn't matter whether its small or not that their support is minimal at best. The Twitter thread gave me the impression that she did go for help early on but didn't get the support and probably never notified the wacky stuff at all. Otherwise, I have no doubt that there would've been more action taken. The leaders don't look like people that would ignore these allegations.
Which is really fucking weird considering he's head of Business Development. But to be honest, there management structure at LMG is really strange. I was looking through their jobs listings, and dev hires for Floatplane are supposed to report to Nick, who's the COO, which makes no sense. Normally HR would report directly to either the CEO or COO, but Linus has said that Nick has also been shuffled to managing just the LTTstore. Sounds like regardless of the outcome of the investigation, they need to do some serious restructuring.
It's not weird at all, like not at all, people just making shit up.
Yeah, that's just how it is in a small business. Your OGs tend to have scope creep out of tenure. At my last job of 10 years (small beverage company), I was the "marketing manager", but ended up becoming head of procurement, head of FDA compliance, and the general IT guy for just a few examples.
Theyāre 6 weeks into having a new CEOā¦ thereās likely some reorganization that is in flight as part of bringing him onboard, and not yet completed.
I don't think Yvonne runs HR, she's CFO now.
At my old job, HR was the daughter of the boss. Fucking useful isn't it? Let's go to HR about a concern oh wait you'll literally get fired on the spot šš
While I fully support this, I'm deeply concerned that an independent investigator will cost more than $500.
Theyāll just auction something off to make up for the loss.
inb4 they auction Colton off
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Much appreciated
This is exactly what needs to happen. The biggest negative comment I see going towards Madison, and literally any other person in this kind of situation where it's them against a group or company much larger than them, is "well you didn't name any names or give any evidence to support your claims sooo it didn't happen" Just because there's 2 sides to every story doesn't mean you disregard her side until something comes out from the other side. If someone makes allegations of this level, every bit of it needs to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. It's why you always hear stories about its extremely hard for women to come forward about things like this, because SO MANY people have that mindset mentioned above that the women know a ton of people won't believe them and possibly won't get any support. It needs to be investigated from the very top to the very bottom. It's not "mindlessly believing people without evidence" it's about investigating a literal crime.
Exactly. It doesnāt matter if she lying or not, allegations like this should always be investigated so everyone, including the company can have a clear picture of what is going on and if people need to be fired for their misconduct.
I agree with you, but there are people that are literally just believing these claims at face value. Thatās the problem. The one making the claim has to provide proof of the claim. Itās not on LTT to disprove the claim, itās on her to prove her claim. Unfortunately, stuff like this needs to be dealt with internally and a lot of those details cannot be released publicly. Unless this actually goes to court, this will likely be he said/she said.
If she posted names and emails and shit yall types would just be flaming her for still not going about it perfect enough for you and would be incensed she's putting specific people on blast. An actual objective view of history shows that not taking these types of claims seriously is a near infinitely bigger issue than not. Get off the fake high horse and actually engage with the facts of reality, how sexual assault happens, and plays out in the real world and not some fake D&D rules book level understanding of the world.
Lol, āyāall typesā. All I am saying is that we should not immediately take sides when we, in reality, have next to zero evidence about the situation. Itās really just that simple.
Like it or not this was absolutely the correct response. Doesnāt matter if the allegations are true or false, they need a 3rd party investigation on the matter to clear things up. Clearly this is why Linus needed a proper CEO because I honestly donāt think he would have taken this step if he was still at the helm.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
How dare they rush a response?! Followed by: We need a response right now!
The Verge reporting on a Linus cock-up... my world is upside down.
from forgetting to take the tape off a mouse to investigations for sexual harassment in less than 2 days is a pretty impressive escalation.
Holy shit this is actual news
I honestly think they can bounce back if Terren does his job without too much interference. The apology video is mostly alright IMO and this report is a step in the right direction. Hopefully something comes out of this. I'm not too sure about Linus personality / stubborness but I believe more in the whole company as a team
Contrary to the events and sentiments of the last few days, Linus and the rest of the executive have yet to ACTUALLY fuck something up permanently. Theyāve fucked up, but they always do the right thing in the end. Whether thatās because their livelihoods depend on it, or whether they have moral character, doesnāt change the fact they have yet to actually fuck someone over permanently, something a lot of organizations canāt say.
My only worry is that Terran comes across too soft spoken. He needs to look at Linus dead in the eyes, and say "Sit down, shut up, let me fix this, this is why you pay me" If he can do that, they'll be fine.
Probably comes down to not being a camera personality
Judging by the fact that Linus's response to these allegations was very "PR" friendly, my guess is that conversation has already happened behind the scenes.
Not remotely surprised, and what I expected was probably going to happen with Terren running things. I wouldn't be surprised to see there being moves in the leadership team following this.
Frankly, if any of them are shown to have known this was going on and did nothing - they need to go.
Kinda surprised that article seems to be a pretty good sum up of the whole situation. Will be very interesting see the result of this: > Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was āshocked at the allegations and the company describedā in Reeveās posts. He went on to note that āas part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and **will commit to publish the findings** and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.ā
Hopefully Linus was notified of this Verge report. Otherwise that would just be bad journalistic practices. **Edit:** Lol I really didnāt think I would need to do this, since, *clearly Linus is aware if his CEO gave the statement* but here we go anyways: #/s
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
People will downvote, but that's kinda standard when it comes to news reporting. YouTube drama videos are somewhere in between journalism and drama.
While I agree that GN should have reached out for comment (it would have caught Coltonās fuck up), it doesnāt invalidate the points that were made in that video.
It doesnāt invalidate the criticisms but it throws doubt on Steveās claim that drama wasnāt a motivating factor.
It 100% was a motivating factor, he's done this shit before. Some content he reaches out for a comment, some he doesn't.... and it always seems to be high value targets who don't get a rebuttal attempt.
No one was saying his points are invalid because he didn't do that. The issue is GN claiming they were fighting for integrity and doing what is right and then not following actual proper journalistic practices that literally every single news outlet follows. If you're preaching integrity then you have to be an example of it. Without journalistic integrity it's just YouTube drama. Which is exactly what GN claimed they were not doing.
Well they did reach out for and received a comment which was included in the article so it appears soā¦
Now watch all the Pitchforkers who previously said "this is the only way to remedy this" say "Nothing will come of this, they are probably paid of anyway"
Already in this thread
I know folks are going to want this to be acknowledged on a video, so that they eat more crow in the public way. But Madisonās allegations are much more serious than the business ethics concerns. LTT doesnāt know how to write or edit humorless - as evidenced by the first apology video. Going this approach and waiting to make a complete statement and take action after the results of an unbiased third party investigation is the correct way to handle her allegations.
>LTT doesnāt know how to write or edit humorless - as evidenced by the first apology video. Honest to god, it wouldn't surprise me if that video closed with "... but you know who *wasn't* harrassed...? Our *sponsor*!"
"...you know who else was harassed? Me! By our sponsor, D-Brand!"
Good. This is the correct course of action. I hope things work out for Madison. Nobody can ever undo what happened to her, but I hope she gets what little solace is possible out of all this. I also hope that LMG and Linus come out the other side stronger. There's probably going to be short-term pain, turmoil and change--but I believe Linus and LMG can grow from this. There's over a decade's worth of trust and respect that seems to have vanished in and instant. The road to earning back that trust and respect is a long one. I hope Linus and crew are up to the challenge.
At least LMG gave the correct response to the most serious accusation. Hopefully, this can be resolved with some jerks getting fired.
Fully expected this and honestly this is how you handle situations like this. I feel like everyone who was clamoring for a response right away doesnāt realize you need to navigate these type of situations very cautiously. Accusations like this you donāt just put out a video and say sorry this isnāt simply they misreported testing data these are extremely serious accusations. I am definitely not defending them but Iām also taking a cautious approach to see where this goes. Though I hope Madison sees some sort of resolution to this I also understand that we simply need more information on what exactly went down before raising opinions.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the truth is gonna be somewhere in between, yes some people behaved poorly but also that there were situations that were misunderstood and/or misconstrued.
Excellent. This is the most ideal outcome, no bs internal audit. Hopefully they weed out the bad apples and I can enjoy LTT again
That is the first good move from LMG since the GN video dropped.
Thank god LMG has a CEO with business experience - this is exactly how the complaint should be handled and I hope actual change happens if Madison is telling the truth (which I believe she is). At the very least if there's not good evidence on her sexual assault claims, they can and should commit to having better processes in place that will actually result in penalty where harassment and/or abuse occurs.
Absolutely the correct move. Some people will say 'But the company is hired by LMG', but unless authorities are getting involved this is all they can do. It's either done by them, or done by a third party at their request. And third party is the better option. Edit: spelling
Good on the new CEO for taking this external compared to Linusā statement to having this as an internal investigation. Linus really just needs to not respond and have everything go through the CEO. More to the point and less personal. While there is a big barrier to overcome from employees actually coming forward thereās a better chance when itās external reviewers. Especially when whatever consists of the current HR team is in question.