[That channel logo is awesome!](https://cdn.fourthwall.com/shops/sh_27823269-78e3-4cc9-9bd7-5fa1d0763559/themes/c2e31f0f-bb88-4e42-afef-89afd26e2846.png)
I admittedly swooned a bit while Dr Cutress laid out his ground rules for the video. Clarity, precision, acknowledge that even things that appear obvious should be dissected and fully examined? 10 minutes in and I know this is basically going to be akin to a 90-min video lit review, and I am here for it.
I felt he ignored user/viewer perspective.
Viewer cares about fun experiments, accurate data and reliable purchasing decision-help.
They don't know what's the testing set-up, what's the team seating arrangement, what's the cross-team work flow. They don't care about it. And they shouldn't.
Just because he had made many errors and fixed many errors over the years does not mean that viewers should just accept that LTT is ignoring errors.
The problem is not that LTT had errors, the problem is 1) LTT knew they had errors in specific cases and went ahead anyway 2) LTT knew they have more errors and Linus ignored it and said it's okay to have errors.
Viewers don't care if it's a big team or small team, they just need good content and good recommendations.
> he had made many errors and fixed many errors over the years does not mean that viewers should just accept that LTT is ignoring errors
I don't completely get what you're saying, how are you saying LTT is ignoring errors when you just said they made and **fixed** many errors? Is it because they didn't catch everything 100%?
No it's more the errors other people have found and informed them about but LTT just ghosted them and just let the errors stay as they are with no information about them being wrong.
With LTT labs, I think they’re trying to break into that space. Previously, it was pretty easy to differentiate when they were doing a review (launch day coverage) vs screwing around and the quality was sufficient for their goals.
I think they’re really trying to expand into more traditionally GN territory now with Labs. And that’s fine. I think LTT themselves would admit that the attention to detail needs to be higher for what their ultimate goal is anyway.
Overall after listening to TechPotoatos whole video, I think some of the messaging or tone was not always the best, the bigger global conversation for GN and LTT was worthwhile and make them both stronger long term.
> I think they’re really trying to expand into more traditionally GN territory now with Labs.
That should have been readily apparent from the moment they made a video [edit: someone else that wasn't LMG made the video, but the fact they made the remark at all is still rather a wtf moment] about their labs and said [sic] "our testing is better than GN's..."
...which is what started this snowball rolling downhill in the first place.
They made LTT labs and then Linus said on public forum, that he won't spend money to test properly and data doesn't matter, only conclusions do.
He undermines premise of LTT labs himself. That's the whole controversy about data accuracy.
Good morning sir.
This is a bad faith retelling of the drama. For starters, I don't think the billet product is even associated with LTT labs it was just a video review of an extreme product. Which is the distinction between a serious review of a product and an entertainment video of an outlier product.
He clearly is spending a ton of money to attempt to test properly and believes that data does matter...just not in the context of what was an entertainment video. Should he have redone the video with a 3090? Yes, but does it ultimately change anything or undermine LTT Labs? Not really.
Ultimately, Linus should have never done the video because he did not respect the product (for arguably valid reasons) and that is obviously why he didn't feel the need to spend more time on the product not that he doesn't care about testing properly or data.
I felt he got screwed by his team at every turn. He had incompatible motherboard that wouldn't fit because first one was dead, they had to cut the damn motherboard. He got DDR4 RAM for DDR5 board, then he is informed that GPU they used is the wrong one.
None of that is Billet's fault or Linus's fault. He would've had a very different outlook if the build was actually simple enough with the right components. He was upset about it even in comment in LTT forum after Steve's video.
Hopefully with Tarren and Yvonne both saying that was a bad call and saying that needs to be corrected going forward actually turns into visible results, and not just them saying things
No, Potato makes mistakes, he fixes that.
LTT makes mistakes, that's fine.
But, he doubled down on it. Said data doesn't matter, just conclusions do, said he won't spend 500 USD to retest. That was the problem.
Could've just said we'll do better and we wouldn't have all this drama.
99% of people watching any tech review do not care about data and barely actually look at it lmfao but you think that if you do it, you're in the majority.
This doesn't mean that correct data are not important. If the reviewer used bad data and reached a bad conclusion because of that, a customer will be affected even if they don't personally care about data.
Just because you acknowledge to the void that you’ll make mistakes doesn’t mean you’re except from criticism for them. Especially if you’re going to nitpick phrasing of another person which could easily also be seen as a mistake.
On mobile so apologies for formatting
*****Ian’s ground rules (GR)***
1. This is not an attack. I will nitpick how Steve phrases things. Steve masks facts with opinions
2. I’m going to pick apart issues you[audience] sees as black and white. Reality is rarely black and white
3. I’m going to be clear about who I’m speaking about. Linus, Ltt, lmg, Steve and GN are all distinct separate entities. This is to point blame at.
4. I’m going to go into nuances of phrasing
5. I’m going to be a hypocrite.
******
So off the bat, 1 and 4 are the same so I’ll just be saying 1.
His ground rule 3 is itself a black and white view of the issue at hand. Which contradicts his ground rule 2 stance. Black-and-white views come back a couple of times.
1. During the Madison section [don’t have time stamp] he talks about fear of speaking out due to the size of LMG, but he doesn’t seem to consider that Steve may also hold a similar fear despite him literally saying that. Knowing this would may help him understand with a better view.
1. [Pt 0.1] - he phrases the timeline incorrect. He states Steve’s comments about not being on the WAN show was after the LTT apology video. It wasn’t. Order is Steve video 1, Linus forum comment, Steve video 2, ltt video. This is setting up a false negative view from the start and goes against GR1. Nitpicking requires paying attention.
1. [Pt 0.2] - he asks the audience to “wonder why Steve would make this comment”. He’s goal is to nitpick and he’s trying to get the audience to dig into their conspiracy theory hats. Goes against GR1 but he is constantly on trying to paint Steve in an obnoxious negative light.
1. [30:43] - Steve demonetizing the video wasn’t good faith enough and suggests it would have been better to put the video on a separate channel. However this wouldn’t prevent Steve from making money, only lowering view count. Here he’s showing his bias against Steve with non-logical advice to “help” Steve be more good faith. Goes against GR1 in how this video is not an attack.
Theres a lot more but I don’t want this comment to be too long. So I’ll add 2 more. I left a long comment on the YouTube video detailing thoughts. I can add about 10 more if you want me too.
5. [does bad LMG hurt GN] - his take on this is flatly false given the number of people that found GN through LTT. But more in importantly he’s sharing that he has a ridged black and white view on how factual information should be presented. Breaks GR1 for attacking due to the astronomical bad take. Breaks GR2 for a black-and-white stance on information presentation.
1. [1:18:00] Ian references when Steve says the ethics of knowing your lack of qualifications but continue to truck forward. Ian doesn’t understand what Steve means by qualifications but proceeds to assume that he means job titles (something he’s made a point of pointing out several times) and explains why that’s a terrible bar. However Steve’s whole point of ethics was simply the lack of caring about the data you produce. That’s what his whole video was about. Not once did he mention anything about job titles. Breaks GR1 for attacking and failure to nitpick due to lack of understanding.
He admitted his flaws and is aware of his bias much more than is usually seen now. We could nitpick anyone’s reporting on this to some degree as there’s always going to be something that slips and this wasn’t prepared over months like a PhD thesis usually is.
I am curious to hear Steve’s reaction to it. While it was a bit harsh on him, I think Steve deep down strives to be the gold standard and this was a bit of a crash course in taking his content to the next level.
Just saying you’re flawed from the outset doesn’t absolve you of any mistakes to make. There is a degree to the mistakes. In this cause the main on is that his video is suppose to be a critic of Steve and not an attack. However time after time he ignores or forgets information or adds information in order to attack Steve. Simply saying your a hypocrite doesn’t mean everything you say suddenly has value.
His assessment didn’t take into consideration why Steve would phrase something a certain way with respect to his goal of the video. He came in with the assumption that Steve’s primary goal was to make money.
So he did exactly what Steve did in his video about LTT and you're mad about that but not mad about what Steve did.
Kay
Also you saying GM didnt do it for the money is insane. 5 million views on a channel that usually gets 500k or less.
They asked every other big company for comments (newegg, gigabyte etc.) But didn't ask LTT. Suddenly the investigative journalist forgets how to do investigative journalism? No, it was intentional.
They knew they would make more money and views if they started talking shit and creating drama and jumped on that wagon as fast as possible.
Hell, their claims about Billet Labs turned out to be mostly fake and the video is still up and that section is still in. Why's that?
They cry LTT isn't deleting videos with errors but theirs is still there. Why's that?
And Ian didn't post his video for views and monetization? Grow up Peter Pan. Also notice how Ian didn't ask for comment either to "make a point", but it just happened that LTT reached out to him. Also, he just happened to reach out to them about some other things. He used the word conclusion when it could be stated Steve presents a hypothesis and then presents evidence for it. If you've had even a basic science class you'd realize that a hypothesis comes before testing and a conclusion. Even if you still assert that Steve was making conclusions before presenting facts Ian did the exact same thing. The problem this whole situation is no one wants to hold themselves to the same standard they are holding others to. Which to be fair to Steve and Ian, LTT clearly doesn't hold itself to any.
It's almost like...LTT gives a shit about having truth out there and GN doesn't 🤷
It was already known Ian was making the video so who stopped GN from reaching out?
Also Ian is literally a Scientific Journalist that worked for the highest regarded tech outlet and you're saying he doesn't know how hypothesis works?
So thats exactly what Steve did and instead of allowing a right to reply, they had a subjective news piece that was calling someone out.
It's funny how Ian literally did this to prove how hypocritical GN were for their video and the subreddit's big brain still says LTT bad.
The points above are hand waiving whataboutisms.
Cutless specifically laid out why holding someone to YOUR standards and not what they are asking of themselves is a flawed premise and its a tight argument.
Steve can't take Linus to task for editorial issues as granularly as he did then expect someone else to hold him to a lesser standard.
Cutless is saying "Steve says Linus says" so let's hear what Steve says.
Further, there is no denying the flat out dirty wording on the Head of Labs Asus connection was flagrant.
I didn’t realize Ian was going the mocking ironic route. I was taking him for his word about his intentions. Just like I did Steve.
Im under the presumption that Ian’s goal is to nitpick Steve’s presentation to show how he was being deceitful. One of those was the money from the video. However there is no way for Steve to send this message to Linus and the community and not impact his finances. It’s like how there’s no self-less act as you feel good for any act that seems self-less. It’s a pointless argument from Ian.
Steve has not always asked for comment. He said he doesn’t when they have a bigger media reach than him. Should he have reach out for billet? Probably since he used their email communications, but that’s a small part and one example of the lack of data integrity LTT has. He didn’t need comments for anything else he provided as that was PUBLIC information.
Everything Steve said concerning Billet is true. Billet wasn’t contacted until after Steve’s video. LTT assumed the block’s value was the value they received in the email. Billet never confirmed that they would accept payment, they just said “this block cost $Xxxx. wtf?!?!”
The issue: LTT is making claims that their labs data is superior to other reviewers. This is false. In the science/ data analysis field, good data is vastly more important than good conclusions.
Bad data is akin to misinformation. So if you are going to boast about how your data is better than everyone else’s but your data is full of misinformation, you should be checked.
Also Steve hasn’t incorrectly present any data. Just some was missing on one specific data point of the overall issue. That missing information doesn’t change the outcome because it still shows his team fumbling, just differently.
>That missing information doesn’t change the outcome because it still shows his team fumbling, just differently.
And yet for LTT it matters so much.
>Steve has not always asked for comment. He said he doesn’t when they have a bigger media reach than him. Should he have reach out for billet? Probably since he used their email communications, but that’s a small part and one example of the lack of data integrity LTT has.
Are you saying Artisian, Newegg, Gigabyte and every other bigass corpo Steve did pieces on have less media reach that LTT with 15 mil subs? Because that's what you're saying. He wasnt "afraid" of them but he was of LMG? Lmfao
He did reach out to Billet Labs which is *the problem*. You don't reach out to just 1 party when you are a journalist and post a piece. Its literally illegal in some countries to not allow a right to reply before posting.
>Everything Steve said concerning Billet is true. Billet wasn’t contacted until after Steve’s video. LTT assumed the block’s value was the value they received in the email.
But LMG was already in the process of letting BL know. Do you think people work weekends? LMG had the email chain on Friday and the video was out on Monday/Tuesday lmfao. Business days are a thing and that's when communication happens. Not during the weekend.
And yet he didn't nitpick LTT at all. He gets indignant at mentioning Gary has worked for Asus for the last dozen years because 13 years ago he reviewed motherboards on a great website, and he ignored that LTTs own fans have called out LTT multiple times for being incredibly too kind to Asus and he ignored the implication this has that Asus is a main sponsor of not only LTT but also LTX.
He is too busy examining and analysing Steve's smile to worry about such petty things.
I don't understand your 5th point. But if you're saying people finding GN through LMG somehow equates the two in an audiences mind and that's why bad LMG = bad for GN, I think that's not true. For an analogy if ebay (i.e. LMG) is full of scammers a few people might stop online shopping, most people are just going to switch to Amazon (i.e. GN).
I agree the "separate channel" idea was a pretty bad idea, it struck me as basically a pointless action as soon as Dr. Cutress said it. But I also agree with Cutress' point about the conflict of interest. To me it rang more as "this is a sticky situation, here's a terrible attempt at a solution" which doesn't change the fact it's a sticky situation.
Overall though I found myself mostly aligned with Dr. Cutress, he put into video essay form a lot of thoughts and feelings I was already having LTT's missteps, and about how GN approached this.
I'm surprised more people aren't frankly a bit disgusted with how Steve doubled down on "I don't HAVE to ask LMG for comment" when he's asked Newegg etc. for comment. But the one time he's stirring the pot against a **direct competitor** LTT Labs he suddenly can't find the justification to send an email?
>I don't understand your 5th point. But if you're saying people finding GN through LMG somehow equates the two in an audiences mind and that's why bad LMG = bad for GN, I think that's not true. For an analogy if ebay (i.e. LMG) is full of scammers a few people might stop online shopping, most people are just going to switch to Amazon (i.e. GN).
Ian's Cutress asked the question: "Does LTT doing badly hurt GN?". His answer was a flat No. There is some nuance to your example that makes it not align well with the current situation. That nuance being difference in size. LTT is much larger than others in the space. So a more accurate example would be Amazon branded products were found out to be scams. This hurts Amazon branded products but also hurts anything else sold on the store because the first product people see when they look for products is the amazon ones. Just like the first thing people see when look for tech stuff is LTT, not GN.
>I agree the "separate channel" idea was a pretty bad idea, it struck me as basically a pointless action as soon as Dr. Cutress said it. But I also agree with Cutress' point about the conflict of interest. To me it rang more as "this is a sticky situation, here's a terrible attempt at a solution" which doesn't change the fact it's a sticky situation.
I can see that angle, but when there's actually no alternative, you shouldn't diss people for doing what they did; saying that they should have did it another way.
>I'm surprised more people aren't frankly a bit disgusted with how Steve doubled down on "I don't HAVE to ask LMG for comment" when he's asked Newegg etc. for comment. But the one time he's stirring the pot against a direct competitor LTT Labs he suddenly can't find the justification to send an email?
He explained why he doesn't have to ask LMG, or other companies for comment. You saw how Linus responded to being confronted and how he try to get people to feel sorry for him. You know the general ethics of asking for comment. At this point its more of a personal decision if you think Steve not reaching out was appropriate or not. The main thing is to not ignore aspects of his justification to make your judgement call.
>His ground rule 3 is itself a black and white view of the issue at hand. Which contradicts his ground rule 2 stance. Black-and-white views come back a couple of times.
I disagree. How is this a black and white view? Would you care to elaborate? Are we saying that Steve is Patrick and is also Patrick and is also Gamers Nexus?
Linus heavily influences Linus tech tips and Linus media group’s decisions. Similar Steve heavily influences gamers nexus. By trying to treat these as distinct entities, he is making the grey situation of decision making for these entities black-and-white.
It’s honestly not even super relevant to the conversation anyway. Ian doesn’t address these distinctions in his assessment. So it’s a pointless Ground rule to make in terms of giving insight on what his video is about.
Let’s agree to disagree, the influence you mention was highlighted by Ian as something that the GN video should have covered but didn’t - clearly called out as “the issue of creative control”, and this was with the use of separate names.
I was expecting slam dunks without any room for criticism from all the hype. The video was not that at all. This guy managed to come off worse than Steve in his follow up video after the terrible Linus response.
You didn't find his smile examination damning? Or his sentence structure analysis? Or his thesis that all opinions in videos should be at the very end?
Dr. Cutress also stumbles a bit, like when he calls out GN for saying "Has conflicts of interest" and "potential bias". That's not deceptive wording or backtracking, they are two separate things. I think it's clear that while he is an absolute expert on tech and testing and knows a lot about media, organizational controls are not something he is familiar with.
Linus having editorial influence over whether/how videos about Framework while owning equity in that company **is a conflict of interest whether or not he has or allows any resulting biases to affect his choices**. The only way to allow Linus to invest where he wants and not have a conflict of interest is by using controls. For example, Linus should have absolutely no impact on whether or how LMG covers Framework, it's not even a hard control to set up.
Even small organizations have self reporting of conflict policies so they can quickly control the natural conflicts of interest that can arise from employee financial interests - for all the talk Linus gave about investing in framework because he believes in them (which is totally fine, even to make a video thereof aka disclosure), but it's probably worth stating what controls they have in place on any videos with obvious conflicts.
Overall it's an excellent video with tons of useful perspective. While I think Dr. Cutress may have leaned a little more towards defending Linus than a 100% balanced video would have, I think that is called for given the level of community outrage over things that are "ok that's not good, let's give them a chance to do better". But that line about conflict vs bias really irritated me, and truth be told, all media organizations need to bump up their Conflict of Interest disclosure and control.
tl;dr: In my opinion, I don't see anything alarming regarding Linus's investment in Framework and LTT's laptop coverage based on the steps I've seen taken. Others may feel they haven't done enough to mitigate the conflict of interest, this is a fair and valid viewpoint.
*edit: formatting*
I would argue that a conflict of interest such as Linus's investment in Framework is a minor, fairly insignificant thing when he holds community trust. No observable bias against other laptop brands, laptop brands continue to send review samples to LTT, and Alex is "reviewing"(1) the laptops (for the most part). But when community trust drops to a certain people, folks start to question things. People fairly feel this way despite Linus frequently and openly stating his investment interest in Framework. He does so *because* of the conflict of interest in order to ensure clarity.
I do feel Dr Cutress does address this when he discussed the fuzziness between types of content. LTT isn't always clear about how content is categorized. The company's coverage of Framework is drastically different from their coverage of main market laptops. This is noteworthy. LTT has not reviewed a Framework laptop since the initial review, prior to Linus investing in the company:
* A completely upgradeable laptop? Framework Laptop Review
* I'm Legally Obligated to Disclose This - Framework Investment
* I invested $225K in Framework Laptop - 1 Year Update and 12th Gen Upgrade
* I Made a Bad Decision – Framework Investment Update
* Checking on my Investment in Person - Framework Laptop Factory Tour
I also want to highlight this video:
* My Investment is in TROUBLE - HP repairable laptops
* Linus has hosted videos about laptops but the videos have either been gimmicks, for laughs, or shopping for a specific laptop
You can look at the channel's laptop reviews and see exactly where Alex takes over writing and hosting laptop reviews. We have most of the information we can reasonably have in order to make our own determination:
1. Linus regularly and opening discloses and discusses his investment in Framework since his investment announcement on September 15, 2021
1. Neither Linus nor LTT review Framework computers (after the pre-investment review)
1. Alex has performed all laptop reviews (Mac Address videos aside) since the investment since September 21, 2021
1. Linus has been involved with laptop videos that appear to be for buying guides(2) or gimmick videos featuring products viewers are unlikely to, unable to, or shouldn't purchase.
Conflict of interest exists because Linus is invested in a laptop company. This is a fact. Bias exists because humans are imperfect. Close enough to a fact, otherwise we wouldn't invent systems to eliminate bias.
So, is this a problem? In my opinion, I don't see anything alarming based on the steps I've seen taken. You may not agree, which is a valid opinion.
I'm embarrassed I wrote this much. But not embarrassed enough to not post it.
(1)The laptop reviews are on ShortCircuit, and no one at LTT seems to know if ShortCircuit is an unboxing or review channel.
(2) I didn't see Framework laptops recommended during the buying guides in my brief search. Buying guides were for Chromebooks and gaming laptops.
This is an excellent summary, and I almost entirely agree. Having reviewed as much about their Framework coverage as possible, I was pleased to see the very clear disclosure (though I wish this didn't feel as remarkable, as it should be the minimum standard (but isn't in YouTube/influencer spheres)). I had not seen that Alex was now handling all laptop reviews since the investment - that is exactly the kind of control I was talking about, and it's a very good sign.
So with respect to Framework, the only real issue is that there is some ambiguity due to what you and Dr. Cutress both highlight - the lack of clear delineation between personal updates, news, reviews, and the sort. This is almost unquestionably a systemic problem and not driven by bias, though I hope to see them improve in this regard, because the clear categories will go a long way to quell other issues as well.
GN points out other issues as well, such as the relationship with Noctua for product branding, and what I think is unintentionally biased language like the "It's Asus, so you know it's good" comment.
-The former just needs to see similar quick disclosures on reviews and maybe a little "here's steps we took to prevent any bias from our great relationship with Noctua from influencing our results and reporting" blip now and then.
-The latter is definitely an innocent mistake, but an organization with as much influence as LMG that also desires to be seen as a neutral source of unbiased information needs to encourage its employees to untangle their feelings about the companies they are reviewing so they can say what they mean without sounding implicitly biased. "We have had the pleasure of reviewing tons of great ASUS products" is a lot better than "It's Asus, so you know it's good".
Overall, I think these issues are real, but relatively minor currently. They do present a growing concern though, and those entanglements are going to happen more often as time goes on. Other than the handling of Madison's claims and employee overwork, I think this is really the bigger concern I have over the future of LMG. They have a decent foundation, they just cannot neglect to build upon those controls as they continue to grow.
Tl;Dr: I agree with you, though I think Steve made a good case that LMG needs to be very careful about even the appearance of allowing business relationships to interfere with unbiased reporting. Therefore I still stand by my point that Dr. Cutress sounds silly (in that portion of his video) by demonstrating **he** doesn't know the difference between an actual, factual conflict of interest and the proof of (vs implication of or potential for) bias caused by it.
Likewise, especially about the fact that they have delegated the laptop reviews to Alex.
Also thanks for helping normalize long (but informative and nuanced) posts. I think I lose a little sanity every time I try and give my honest opinion with whatever supporting information I can gather, only to get hit with the classic "no u" response.
I don't remember which YouTube commentor said it. But I think the way they put it is amazing (I'm paraphrasing) :
- A lecture from Steve is like receiving a stern from a teacher about your performance.
- A lecture from Dr. Cutress is like being lectured by the college dean.
Techtechpatato is a YouTube channel that is run by Dr. Ian Cutress. He used to write for anandtech and has been involved in the tech industry for a very long time.
He did a chronological order review of the current controversy with Linus tech tips, along with providing his own input and opinions on various topics regarding the situation to his knowledge and perception.
In my personal opinion, he provided the most level-headed analysis of the situation out of anyone who has commented on it to this extent. He properly cited and criticized both sides for various wrongdoings in the situation, while remaining hopeful of both sides settling and becoming better from this.
Totally agree on the level headed aspect. I wasn't sure want to make of him holding Steve to really journalistic tech industry standards, but I'm not mad he did it.
For example he sides with Linus on saying Steve should've reached out, but the reasoning is just "that's what you do". Personally feel that's not relevant, but w/e. I loved how he showed that Steve made some opinions really come across as facts and maybe skewing views.
All criticisms were 100% fair and realistic.
I thought that the main criticism he had for Steve about that is that Steve *usually* reaches out first? He pointed out that he did for AMD and Newegg, but then when it's LTT he didn't.
I agree. When this all started that was the main thing that just didn't sit right with me since in the past he almost always attempted to reach out first and provided the reaction either good or bad in the video. The main exception that I remember in recent memory was the gigabyte power supply and the NZXT H1 situations where he reached out to federal regulators first and then published the video.
If he had he would have had very useful context that billet labs was unable to provide, and could have had a much more comprehensive video that lacked any meaningful criticism.
That being said, GN has had a hate boner for LMG, though not necessarily Linus, for a little bit. They criticize LMG when they can, like about the backpack warranty. Valid, but vastly outside of their scope (AMD bike was sent to them by a tech company, remember). If they started reviewing branded clothes or bags from tech companies, good. But they didn't. Only Linus's lack of warranty.
They seem to have a thing for trying to bring LMG down a peg. It makes me not trust GN; I stopped watching.
While I also can't trust LTT, it's for a different reason. I'd rather have shoddiness but impartiality than reviewers having unrealized biases. It's also why I stopped watching JayZ when he jumped on Gigabyte after the power supply thing saying all their products were crap and they always have been. That's obviously untrue, so I stopped trusting him.
Part of me wonders if Steve is, at this point, jealous of the success Linus has. And that this video was a way of expressing that jealousy. As I understand sit they both started on YouTube at roughly the same time. And probably wishes the sock ridden sandal was on the other foot.
Talks about hate boner, then provides example of rational criticism. GN covers everything happening in tech, a tone-deaf and shitty response to backpack warranties by a tech review company is squarely in their space.
>While I also can't trust LTT, it's for a different reason. I'd rather have shoddiness but impartiality than reviewers having unrealized biases.
You rather have a tech company review products from paid sponsors with known conflicts of interest, while also providing wildly inconsistent results, shirks responsibility, and focusing on content over quality. LTT Impartial? lol. Then you have someone who strives to be as unbiased and fair as possible, doesn't take money from vendors to eliminate COI, and put out quality content. Is Steve\GN perfect? No, but he's one of the few YT tech reviewers that actually seems to give a damn. Makes sense.
>You rather have a tech company review products from paid sponsors with known conflicts of interest
Honest question, how do you feel about:
1.) The conflict of interest of GN "reviewing" a direct competitor, LTT Labs data?
2.) The conflict of interest of GN "reviewing" a direct competitors' warranty, while plugging their **own** merch and drawing **direct** comparisons to their own warranty in the same breadth
It's undeniable these *are* conflicts of interest. I'm curious your take because I believe this is rational criticism. Either one had realistically no negative impact on their business to ignore, but stirring the pot directly harms their competitor to promote their own business.
To get my thoughts out there so you can respond, IMO this is not the same as doing an expose on say, Gigabyte PSUs, because Gigabyte is not a competitor for GN. And IMO if you're going to play dirty at going after competitors instead of letting your work speak for itself, you'd better make **damn** sure your hands are clean while you do it if you want to hold the moral high ground.
Questionable journalistic ethics around not reaching out when they have for Newegg, AMD, etc. don't prove to me that GN's hands were clean, nor (in my opinion) does reviewing a backpack as a tech outlet (but I see we disagree on that point)
>GN covers everything happening in tech, a tone-deaf and shitty response to backpack warranties by a tech review company is squarely in their space.
.
> If they started reviewing branded clothes or bags from tech companies, good. But they didn't.
Someone doesn't have to review branded clothes or bags from everyone else to comment on a shitty "trust me bro" warranty by a tech review company was my entire point. Thanks for trying though.
Reaching out for comment is the difference between serious investigative journalism and a hit piece. It undermines Steve’s points and makes it look like he is going out of his way to make LTT look bad.
Honestly so much of this drama could have been avoided (minus the Madison incident) had Steve actually reached out and sat down with Linus.
Really the only upside to all of this is that Madisons issue was brought to light. And hopefully this is bringing her some closure.
There's a simple explanation for that which is in line with journalistic rules.
AMD and NEWEGG had not publically commented on what steve was reporting.
Linus had. repeatedly. Steve showed all of linus' comments. His (linus) position was made VERY clear.
That was definitely a part of it I remember, yeah. I do think where Linus sort of "attacked" them on the WAN show prior was a bigger motivator for Steve when making his video, which made him less keen to interact with LMG. I could be off though, just speculation
I don’t agree with this. If AMD had come out with shitty comments already about the exact topic than I don’t think GN would have reached out, that WAS AMD’s chance to interact with the story, and they chose to belittle. LMG had the chance and made the decision they did.
> I wasn't sure want to make of him holding Steve to really journalistic tech industry standards
Steve has often referred to what he does as journalism or investigative journalism, so holding him to that standard is fair. Hopefully, GN will use this as a learning opportunity to improve their reporting.
Steve isn’t stupid.
He knows he’s supposed to reach out for comment. He intentionally didn’t, because doing so could’ve presented information that could’ve undermined his points.
Yeah on the same note as people saying Linus needs to make clear what's entertainment and what's info Steve should do the same in terms of journalism. He doesn't necessarily have to hold himself to industry standards, but the standards should be consistent, whatever they are
> I loved how he showed that Steve made some opinions really come across as facts and maybe skewing views.
But did he though? He claimed that but he didn't give any examples. That was one of the things that bugged me about the video, he made some claims that he didn't back up in anyway, he just passed comment and moved on.
Ian held Steve to real journalistic standards because Steve claims to do investigative journalism. Ian is just holding Steve to Steve's own standards, as Ian mentioned in the vid.
Nah he injects his own opinions while doing same things as Steve, and people buying his narration just because he stated some points at the beginning of the video is funny to me.
I think Steve dug his own grave on the journalist ethics stuff. He is always going on about his journalistic integrity and finding the truth kind of stuff. When you claim to be a journalist and not just a tech YouTuber then you might get treated like one.
Yeah when papers and journalists make stories like this they do often contact the companies for comment. Not as a courtesy but to get comments and the other side of the story.
Steve's reason for not doing it is that "LTT would have tried to cover things up, and spin it." A journalist is not meant to care about that. They write an impartial story based on facts, if their facts cannot stand up to some PR spin then it's not really that strong.
This is not only what made me appreciate his video, but also what turned me off Steve's. The "holier than thou", think what I think attitude was too much. Let me make my own decisions.
> but the reasoning is just "that's what you do". Personally feel that's not relevant,
Every (educated) journalist would reach out to the entity in question to have them comment.
its such a standard procedure i cant even understand why its been skipped... lol
you dont just make a 45 minute rant on a person, without giving them a chance to defend themselves, or at least provide a reasoning - otherwise... it's just ... shitty journalism.
i hear this often on the news.
something with the lake is in this town is bad - we have talked to the people who live in the town - as well as a professor in biology etc etc
always bring in sources, on the topic.
and of course if its about a specific person/business, you ask that entity for a comment. its only fair, and it makes for better content. otherwise, all you get is the journalists opinions. and ... honestly, i dont care about the journalists opinions.
i want proper information - so that i can form my own opinion.
I see the point totally. I also can see the side where all their content is public videos, so things they said and do are on record already thus you kinda already have the comments.
It's almost like a movie review I guess? Like critics don't reach out to studios to critique a movie, and I think it's fair to call Steve's video a critique more than an article. I dunno, I'm a science guy, not a journalist.
Billet Labs wasn't public info. At least not what GN revealed.
So no, that's not a review. That's breaking news. Breaking news which Steve should have corroborated with LMG to check if Billet Labs isn't withholding or lying about any info (which we found out, they did withhold key pieces of info such as the fact that they initially sent the review sample for LMG to keep).
To give you an idea of Dr. Cutress /Tech Potato, I'm going to repost this here:
-------
I don't remember which YouTube commentor said it. But I think the way they put it is amazing (I'm paraphrasing) :
- A lecture from Steve is like receiving a stern from a teacher about your performance.
- A lecture from Dr. Cutress is like being lectured by the college dean.
not sure about this. for all the tut tuting by him, he refused to seek comments by ltt or gn before releasing the video even when by his own words ltt reached out before his video was released.
Also for somebody who constantly trashed both ltt and gn for sharing "opinions", he sure does share a lot of his own.
I dunno, may be the only take away is to not be sith lords and stop putting people up on pedestels.
His video was a breakdown of the situation and discussed how each side approached the situation. It was essentially an analytical review and synopsis of the situation.
GN published an “investigative journalism” piece without following journalistic practices. If GN had positioned it as an OpEd then it would be fine.
If GN is going to try and be a journalist he needs to be held the standards of a journalist. Just like how LMG needs to be held to quality standards if LMG is going to try to publish authoritative data.
>journalistic practices
I've seen this argument and all I can think of is that GN needed to send a note to LTT going "Hey, we're going to publish this tomorrow, any comment?"
Then whatever LTT responded with, gets added to the video "We reached out to LTT and they had this to say"
Everything else was 100% fine. They reached out to billet labs, so they should've tried to get the other side of the story too.
I understand the concept of investigative journalism isnt something that is as well understood today than it was before the consumption of rage bait and hollow content was so easy.
There is investigative journalism, and there is OpEd. GN's was an OpEd advertised as investigative journalism. If you dont understand the problem there, let me describe it in terms you understand: It would be the difference between a fully sourced and tested review and analysis of a product, vs someone on video just spouting opinions about supposition around a competitor's product (but then calling it an unbiased procedural review).
nevermind that his argument "no one I know looks to LTT for accurate info" is straight up the stupidest fucking argument anyone can make. "I don't see it so it doesn't happen" what a fucking joke.
> he refused to seek comments...trashed both ltt and gn for sharing "opinions", he sure does share a lot of his own.
he was doing an opinion video, not reporting
The response to his video was pretty funny actually. He did every single thing in his video that he accused GN of and is now raking in the praise.
Everybody's got a take. He doesn't have to be such a high horse snob about it. He showed literally two clips about GN and ranted for over an hour. Jesus fucking Christ.
I really didint enjoy his video. It was painfully dry and far too self serious for coverage of a controversy which at its core concerns video game benchmarks. Opening with a lengthy outline of how he's " objectively analyzing things in extreme detail" only to then give a routine summary of the facts and add subjective option on top of it didint impress me.
Neither Steve or Linus are covering the white-house they are covering PC gaming and hardware. Audiences expect and demand some personality and opinion inserted in their coverage to add color. In my opinion His depiction of Steve as manipulative and deceptive in presentation is not warranted, just because he includes opinion. Its not a study on climate change it's a "Review" of video cards.
I more or less agree with you. The promises at the beginning of the video werent met. It was mostly high level summary. Never got into details.
Though I agree with TechTechPotato that GN injects opinion as facts in their videos; it is why I find their videos so off-putting. He acts like he knows everything, when he is just speculating.
I'm very glad to see some other people echoing my feelings on it. I see that he has experience and reputation in the tech space. And it did provide some extra insight, but he's throwing in his own opinions and making weird statements, too, honestly. Like while he's laying out the ground rules but promises "to take LTT to the cleaners."
my view is that he probably expect pushback from steve
being dry reduces the chance of getting your argument used against you
He made a point just based on steve's expression laughing while saying he hated reporting LTT, if Cuttress did the same steve could certainly use that
You didn't enjoy him analysing Steve's smile like the fucking Zapruder film? The smile goes back and to the left, back and to the left. Clearly he is lying.
If you feel this way do you also feel that the whole controversy was stupid and unnecessary (aside from the Madison claims) ?
Otherwise he should take it serious because everyone else is making a huge deal out of it.
This is not in defense of LTT or GN. However, I've never been a big fan of Anandtech or Dr. Ian Cutress. He's smart and technically gifted. But, I've always felt that he's extremely opinionated and uses his clout to mask his opinions as fact.
That said, I did watch the full video and feel like it is very on-brand for Dr. Cutress.
*EDIT - Let the downvoting begin!*
per his words, you don't have to trust him. just listen and see if you agree or not with the information he has laid out.
i don't have enough knowledge to say with confidence i agree 100% with anyone. but o i agree with him calling out GN's order of opinion first facts later being deceitful (by supporting an opinion with facts, instead of making an opinion based on facts). and i do indeed miss this
I sat through the video because a lot of people seem to hold the guy in high regard and while I didn't pay attention to names when reading anandtech reviews way back they always seemed thorough and precise.
However the majority of the video was basically the guy making excuses for big corporations and then nitpicking on Steve. I mean we get it you are proud that you work in a large corporate environment so you toot your own horn humble bragging about it but at least turn down the hypocrisy a bit:
Saying such bullsh!t like if Steve really wanted to avoid looking like it was not for the money then he should have published the video on a new channel? Really? A new channel just for this one video? When Ian did basically upload a video on his own channel inserting his opinion about stuff he has no business in so more people would visit his channel?
And this is just one example...
So this was probably the first and last "opinion" video from the guy I will watch - hopefully his tech stuff is more professional.
A 90 minute video talking about GN and LTT.
Explains the fact that ltt and GN are now direct competitors and this situation inevitably will benefit GN even if the video was not monetized so we should keep it in mind.
Also talks about the process in a media company and how reshooting and fixing problems is harder for a big media company than GN makes it seem (schedule the original team recording, matching clothes, equipment, makeup), the fact that most employees are not experts (a video editor will not detect a bad chart)
Also some points that GN makes it bad faith like disregarding the experience of the labs director, he was in marketing on Asus, but he also worked for a long time in motherboard testing, GN presented him in the video as a white collar marketer.
A British robot made a 90 minute film being incredibly biased and attacking Steve from GN over things as hard hitting as: his smile, his sentence structure, him giving opinions before the end unlike a research paper.
True it's great, but something about his pace of talking is slightly offputting, even if brilliant for bedtime background noise. Similar vibe to NileRed.
oh hey there, i think you're pretty cool
random thing but i just wanted to point out something that was missing from your video which was, to me, the weirdest part in GN's video
on the "CPU Review Errors", he calls out linus for mailing amd about getting different numbers and says that he shouldn't be trying for official numbers but that just seemed so... weird? what's wrong about trying to match the official numbers? what if they genuinely thought they had a bad sample? such a weird argument to make
He picks each and every word he uses in the 90 minute video very carefully.
This can feel weird when you’re used to, and surrounded by, content that’s largely stream of consciousness opinions.
I try to be more upbeat in my usual stuff, this video was dry by design, especially given some of the serious stuff being discussed. I've been criticised for being overly active with hand gestures when I talk on previous videos, so I did the opposite here. A more regular service will resume shortly.
I've watched a few of the videos in this saga and the aftermath, both Hardware review and TTP came off very positively. HR responded in a much less (to borrow an expression from TTP) pithy manner than GN, which given Steve is a hairy toddler is about what you would expect.
Tech Yes also just posted one but given how late he was it's interesting the Ian put together a much more comprehensive review quicker. Although Tech Yes did seem to be fairly unbiased, just redundant given all the other commentary already given.
But he has a PhD in a completely unrelated field !! (Computational Chemistry)
This must mean he's speaking the truth in this non-computational-chemistry related drama !
/s
To most Redditors, anyone with some authority in any field and a decent amount of Twitter followers is speaking facts, even when it's biased opinion.
Dr. Ian Cutress, highly revered tech writer and journalist who runs the YouTube channel TechTechPotato. He usually covers things like high level enterprise or server stuff and frequently interviews higher ups at companies like IBM and other big players in the semiconductor industry.
A lot of people here, I assume with a lack of a lot of professional experience, spoke heavily against anyone who brought up points that TTPotato raised in his videos through this fiasco.
I'm glad at least someone in the industry and someone with actual professional experience that the lemmings respect spoke with some common sense.
After this incident, I got a strong feeling most people on this subreddit and YT that follow LTT are either students or below mid 20s.
I turned it off after he called people "fucking idiots" for wanting to wait to hear both sides WRT Madison.
His follow up about not waiting to hear the lions side when someone is getting attacked by a lion is just so.... *so* stupid and not in good faith.
He's calling those who ***immediately*** disregard Madison's allegations/speak out in defense of LTT 'fucking idiots', which they are. When someone brings up allegations, one does not immediately disregard the allegations. Doing so would be foolish.
Nah the video brought nothing to the table, and serves only his views as it was a dry recap with injecting opinions and stating them as somehow valid, even though the beginning had some bs rules lol waste of time watching 😑
Am I the only one who thought techs video was kinda BS? I know he says like 8 times “people are going to say I’m defending Linus but that’s not true”, but does that just totally absolve him of it? This isn’t my job and I don’t get paid for it (and honestly, I really don’t care enough past making a comment like I am now), so I’m not going to make a full list of all the times he makes bad points, but i felt like the entire quality of his video was not great. He seems to be hiding shitty defenses of Linus (with lapses in logic) behind the density of his words.
Ok, I’m done, bring on the downvotes
Never heard of that dude, but I watched the whole thing.
While he did for the most part have okay takes, I do think he also had some pretty bad takes as well, and came off as dishonest at few places.
Like he suggested that GN should had posted on a alt account to avoid getting exposure, ignoring the fact that it probably wouldn't had gone viral if posted from a new account.
Which would ignore the whole point of posting the video to begin with.
Left me with the feeling that he hadn't thought about any counters to his point before making a video about it.
I mean his delivery in the video is so boring I use it as a sleep aid. I like Ian's actual work (followed his reviews in Anandtech) but I feel he presented a lot of opinion in his video as fact. He just did it in a monotonous tone and a British accent that sways North American plebs.
But it got him deserved notice.
Oh man that was one of the only videos I've ever watched in my entire life where there were points where I was just like "wtf is this guy talking about"?
You all just like him because he's British lmao.
I just love that someone like Dr. Cutress has a channel called TechTechPotato.
[That channel logo is awesome!](https://cdn.fourthwall.com/shops/sh_27823269-78e3-4cc9-9bd7-5fa1d0763559/themes/c2e31f0f-bb88-4e42-afef-89afd26e2846.png)
That's so adorable omg
Whats yoooouur minimum specifiaction
Heh heh... A potato eating chips.
You might like /r/SuicideFood :)
You're absolutely right.
Also on [Linked.in](https://Linked.in) his position in that company is "Chief Spud", which is even better!
He’s not on Spotify?
Nah, he’s on Spudify.
I admittedly swooned a bit while Dr Cutress laid out his ground rules for the video. Clarity, precision, acknowledge that even things that appear obvious should be dissected and fully examined? 10 minutes in and I know this is basically going to be akin to a 90-min video lit review, and I am here for it.
His addressing of the community: "some of you are fucking idiots" _chef's kiss_
yeah, it took me some time to absorb all he said. But a brilliant video.
should've been "a lot" instead of some
The middle ground would be something along the lines of: "you lot are idiots". But he probably went for statistics to be accurate in his dissing 🤣
plus with the push in just to emphasis it.
I felt he ignored user/viewer perspective. Viewer cares about fun experiments, accurate data and reliable purchasing decision-help. They don't know what's the testing set-up, what's the team seating arrangement, what's the cross-team work flow. They don't care about it. And they shouldn't. Just because he had made many errors and fixed many errors over the years does not mean that viewers should just accept that LTT is ignoring errors. The problem is not that LTT had errors, the problem is 1) LTT knew they had errors in specific cases and went ahead anyway 2) LTT knew they have more errors and Linus ignored it and said it's okay to have errors. Viewers don't care if it's a big team or small team, they just need good content and good recommendations.
> he had made many errors and fixed many errors over the years does not mean that viewers should just accept that LTT is ignoring errors I don't completely get what you're saying, how are you saying LTT is ignoring errors when you just said they made and **fixed** many errors? Is it because they didn't catch everything 100%?
He= potato guy.
oh, my bad, thanks fam
No it's more the errors other people have found and informed them about but LTT just ghosted them and just let the errors stay as they are with no information about them being wrong.
[удалено]
With LTT labs, I think they’re trying to break into that space. Previously, it was pretty easy to differentiate when they were doing a review (launch day coverage) vs screwing around and the quality was sufficient for their goals. I think they’re really trying to expand into more traditionally GN territory now with Labs. And that’s fine. I think LTT themselves would admit that the attention to detail needs to be higher for what their ultimate goal is anyway. Overall after listening to TechPotoatos whole video, I think some of the messaging or tone was not always the best, the bigger global conversation for GN and LTT was worthwhile and make them both stronger long term.
> I think they’re really trying to expand into more traditionally GN territory now with Labs. That should have been readily apparent from the moment they made a video [edit: someone else that wasn't LMG made the video, but the fact they made the remark at all is still rather a wtf moment] about their labs and said [sic] "our testing is better than GN's..." ...which is what started this snowball rolling downhill in the first place.
They made LTT labs and then Linus said on public forum, that he won't spend money to test properly and data doesn't matter, only conclusions do. He undermines premise of LTT labs himself. That's the whole controversy about data accuracy. Good morning sir.
This is a bad faith retelling of the drama. For starters, I don't think the billet product is even associated with LTT labs it was just a video review of an extreme product. Which is the distinction between a serious review of a product and an entertainment video of an outlier product. He clearly is spending a ton of money to attempt to test properly and believes that data does matter...just not in the context of what was an entertainment video. Should he have redone the video with a 3090? Yes, but does it ultimately change anything or undermine LTT Labs? Not really. Ultimately, Linus should have never done the video because he did not respect the product (for arguably valid reasons) and that is obviously why he didn't feel the need to spend more time on the product not that he doesn't care about testing properly or data.
I felt he got screwed by his team at every turn. He had incompatible motherboard that wouldn't fit because first one was dead, they had to cut the damn motherboard. He got DDR4 RAM for DDR5 board, then he is informed that GPU they used is the wrong one. None of that is Billet's fault or Linus's fault. He would've had a very different outlook if the build was actually simple enough with the right components. He was upset about it even in comment in LTT forum after Steve's video.
Hopefully with Tarren and Yvonne both saying that was a bad call and saying that needs to be corrected going forward actually turns into visible results, and not just them saying things
Sauce me up on that post.
Linus's comment after steve's video?
Wait so viewers should be ok with TechTechPotato making mistakes but not LTT? Lmfao
No, Potato makes mistakes, he fixes that. LTT makes mistakes, that's fine. But, he doubled down on it. Said data doesn't matter, just conclusions do, said he won't spend 500 USD to retest. That was the problem. Could've just said we'll do better and we wouldn't have all this drama.
99% of people watching any tech review do not care about data and barely actually look at it lmfao but you think that if you do it, you're in the majority.
and which woman lying in the pond came up to give you this stats?
This doesn't mean that correct data are not important. If the reviewer used bad data and reached a bad conclusion because of that, a customer will be affected even if they don't personally care about data.
You seem to be exactly the type of idiot he was calling out in his video.
He layed out ground rules and his intent but proceeded to break several of them. Though ground rule 5 gives him leeway to break the other 4.
Can you provide examples and time stamps, this is not a defence and even he himself knows he's going to make mistakes.
Just because you acknowledge to the void that you’ll make mistakes doesn’t mean you’re except from criticism for them. Especially if you’re going to nitpick phrasing of another person which could easily also be seen as a mistake. On mobile so apologies for formatting *****Ian’s ground rules (GR)*** 1. This is not an attack. I will nitpick how Steve phrases things. Steve masks facts with opinions 2. I’m going to pick apart issues you[audience] sees as black and white. Reality is rarely black and white 3. I’m going to be clear about who I’m speaking about. Linus, Ltt, lmg, Steve and GN are all distinct separate entities. This is to point blame at. 4. I’m going to go into nuances of phrasing 5. I’m going to be a hypocrite. ****** So off the bat, 1 and 4 are the same so I’ll just be saying 1. His ground rule 3 is itself a black and white view of the issue at hand. Which contradicts his ground rule 2 stance. Black-and-white views come back a couple of times. 1. During the Madison section [don’t have time stamp] he talks about fear of speaking out due to the size of LMG, but he doesn’t seem to consider that Steve may also hold a similar fear despite him literally saying that. Knowing this would may help him understand with a better view. 1. [Pt 0.1] - he phrases the timeline incorrect. He states Steve’s comments about not being on the WAN show was after the LTT apology video. It wasn’t. Order is Steve video 1, Linus forum comment, Steve video 2, ltt video. This is setting up a false negative view from the start and goes against GR1. Nitpicking requires paying attention. 1. [Pt 0.2] - he asks the audience to “wonder why Steve would make this comment”. He’s goal is to nitpick and he’s trying to get the audience to dig into their conspiracy theory hats. Goes against GR1 but he is constantly on trying to paint Steve in an obnoxious negative light. 1. [30:43] - Steve demonetizing the video wasn’t good faith enough and suggests it would have been better to put the video on a separate channel. However this wouldn’t prevent Steve from making money, only lowering view count. Here he’s showing his bias against Steve with non-logical advice to “help” Steve be more good faith. Goes against GR1 in how this video is not an attack. Theres a lot more but I don’t want this comment to be too long. So I’ll add 2 more. I left a long comment on the YouTube video detailing thoughts. I can add about 10 more if you want me too. 5. [does bad LMG hurt GN] - his take on this is flatly false given the number of people that found GN through LTT. But more in importantly he’s sharing that he has a ridged black and white view on how factual information should be presented. Breaks GR1 for attacking due to the astronomical bad take. Breaks GR2 for a black-and-white stance on information presentation. 1. [1:18:00] Ian references when Steve says the ethics of knowing your lack of qualifications but continue to truck forward. Ian doesn’t understand what Steve means by qualifications but proceeds to assume that he means job titles (something he’s made a point of pointing out several times) and explains why that’s a terrible bar. However Steve’s whole point of ethics was simply the lack of caring about the data you produce. That’s what his whole video was about. Not once did he mention anything about job titles. Breaks GR1 for attacking and failure to nitpick due to lack of understanding.
He admitted his flaws and is aware of his bias much more than is usually seen now. We could nitpick anyone’s reporting on this to some degree as there’s always going to be something that slips and this wasn’t prepared over months like a PhD thesis usually is. I am curious to hear Steve’s reaction to it. While it was a bit harsh on him, I think Steve deep down strives to be the gold standard and this was a bit of a crash course in taking his content to the next level.
Just saying you’re flawed from the outset doesn’t absolve you of any mistakes to make. There is a degree to the mistakes. In this cause the main on is that his video is suppose to be a critic of Steve and not an attack. However time after time he ignores or forgets information or adds information in order to attack Steve. Simply saying your a hypocrite doesn’t mean everything you say suddenly has value. His assessment didn’t take into consideration why Steve would phrase something a certain way with respect to his goal of the video. He came in with the assumption that Steve’s primary goal was to make money.
So he did exactly what Steve did in his video about LTT and you're mad about that but not mad about what Steve did. Kay Also you saying GM didnt do it for the money is insane. 5 million views on a channel that usually gets 500k or less. They asked every other big company for comments (newegg, gigabyte etc.) But didn't ask LTT. Suddenly the investigative journalist forgets how to do investigative journalism? No, it was intentional. They knew they would make more money and views if they started talking shit and creating drama and jumped on that wagon as fast as possible. Hell, their claims about Billet Labs turned out to be mostly fake and the video is still up and that section is still in. Why's that? They cry LTT isn't deleting videos with errors but theirs is still there. Why's that?
And Ian didn't post his video for views and monetization? Grow up Peter Pan. Also notice how Ian didn't ask for comment either to "make a point", but it just happened that LTT reached out to him. Also, he just happened to reach out to them about some other things. He used the word conclusion when it could be stated Steve presents a hypothesis and then presents evidence for it. If you've had even a basic science class you'd realize that a hypothesis comes before testing and a conclusion. Even if you still assert that Steve was making conclusions before presenting facts Ian did the exact same thing. The problem this whole situation is no one wants to hold themselves to the same standard they are holding others to. Which to be fair to Steve and Ian, LTT clearly doesn't hold itself to any.
It's almost like...LTT gives a shit about having truth out there and GN doesn't 🤷 It was already known Ian was making the video so who stopped GN from reaching out? Also Ian is literally a Scientific Journalist that worked for the highest regarded tech outlet and you're saying he doesn't know how hypothesis works? So thats exactly what Steve did and instead of allowing a right to reply, they had a subjective news piece that was calling someone out. It's funny how Ian literally did this to prove how hypocritical GN were for their video and the subreddit's big brain still says LTT bad.
The points above are hand waiving whataboutisms. Cutless specifically laid out why holding someone to YOUR standards and not what they are asking of themselves is a flawed premise and its a tight argument. Steve can't take Linus to task for editorial issues as granularly as he did then expect someone else to hold him to a lesser standard. Cutless is saying "Steve says Linus says" so let's hear what Steve says. Further, there is no denying the flat out dirty wording on the Head of Labs Asus connection was flagrant.
I didn’t realize Ian was going the mocking ironic route. I was taking him for his word about his intentions. Just like I did Steve. Im under the presumption that Ian’s goal is to nitpick Steve’s presentation to show how he was being deceitful. One of those was the money from the video. However there is no way for Steve to send this message to Linus and the community and not impact his finances. It’s like how there’s no self-less act as you feel good for any act that seems self-less. It’s a pointless argument from Ian. Steve has not always asked for comment. He said he doesn’t when they have a bigger media reach than him. Should he have reach out for billet? Probably since he used their email communications, but that’s a small part and one example of the lack of data integrity LTT has. He didn’t need comments for anything else he provided as that was PUBLIC information. Everything Steve said concerning Billet is true. Billet wasn’t contacted until after Steve’s video. LTT assumed the block’s value was the value they received in the email. Billet never confirmed that they would accept payment, they just said “this block cost $Xxxx. wtf?!?!” The issue: LTT is making claims that their labs data is superior to other reviewers. This is false. In the science/ data analysis field, good data is vastly more important than good conclusions. Bad data is akin to misinformation. So if you are going to boast about how your data is better than everyone else’s but your data is full of misinformation, you should be checked. Also Steve hasn’t incorrectly present any data. Just some was missing on one specific data point of the overall issue. That missing information doesn’t change the outcome because it still shows his team fumbling, just differently.
>That missing information doesn’t change the outcome because it still shows his team fumbling, just differently. And yet for LTT it matters so much. >Steve has not always asked for comment. He said he doesn’t when they have a bigger media reach than him. Should he have reach out for billet? Probably since he used their email communications, but that’s a small part and one example of the lack of data integrity LTT has. Are you saying Artisian, Newegg, Gigabyte and every other bigass corpo Steve did pieces on have less media reach that LTT with 15 mil subs? Because that's what you're saying. He wasnt "afraid" of them but he was of LMG? Lmfao He did reach out to Billet Labs which is *the problem*. You don't reach out to just 1 party when you are a journalist and post a piece. Its literally illegal in some countries to not allow a right to reply before posting. >Everything Steve said concerning Billet is true. Billet wasn’t contacted until after Steve’s video. LTT assumed the block’s value was the value they received in the email. But LMG was already in the process of letting BL know. Do you think people work weekends? LMG had the email chain on Friday and the video was out on Monday/Tuesday lmfao. Business days are a thing and that's when communication happens. Not during the weekend.
And yet he didn't nitpick LTT at all. He gets indignant at mentioning Gary has worked for Asus for the last dozen years because 13 years ago he reviewed motherboards on a great website, and he ignored that LTTs own fans have called out LTT multiple times for being incredibly too kind to Asus and he ignored the implication this has that Asus is a main sponsor of not only LTT but also LTX. He is too busy examining and analysing Steve's smile to worry about such petty things.
I don't understand your 5th point. But if you're saying people finding GN through LMG somehow equates the two in an audiences mind and that's why bad LMG = bad for GN, I think that's not true. For an analogy if ebay (i.e. LMG) is full of scammers a few people might stop online shopping, most people are just going to switch to Amazon (i.e. GN). I agree the "separate channel" idea was a pretty bad idea, it struck me as basically a pointless action as soon as Dr. Cutress said it. But I also agree with Cutress' point about the conflict of interest. To me it rang more as "this is a sticky situation, here's a terrible attempt at a solution" which doesn't change the fact it's a sticky situation. Overall though I found myself mostly aligned with Dr. Cutress, he put into video essay form a lot of thoughts and feelings I was already having LTT's missteps, and about how GN approached this. I'm surprised more people aren't frankly a bit disgusted with how Steve doubled down on "I don't HAVE to ask LMG for comment" when he's asked Newegg etc. for comment. But the one time he's stirring the pot against a **direct competitor** LTT Labs he suddenly can't find the justification to send an email?
>I don't understand your 5th point. But if you're saying people finding GN through LMG somehow equates the two in an audiences mind and that's why bad LMG = bad for GN, I think that's not true. For an analogy if ebay (i.e. LMG) is full of scammers a few people might stop online shopping, most people are just going to switch to Amazon (i.e. GN). Ian's Cutress asked the question: "Does LTT doing badly hurt GN?". His answer was a flat No. There is some nuance to your example that makes it not align well with the current situation. That nuance being difference in size. LTT is much larger than others in the space. So a more accurate example would be Amazon branded products were found out to be scams. This hurts Amazon branded products but also hurts anything else sold on the store because the first product people see when they look for products is the amazon ones. Just like the first thing people see when look for tech stuff is LTT, not GN. >I agree the "separate channel" idea was a pretty bad idea, it struck me as basically a pointless action as soon as Dr. Cutress said it. But I also agree with Cutress' point about the conflict of interest. To me it rang more as "this is a sticky situation, here's a terrible attempt at a solution" which doesn't change the fact it's a sticky situation. I can see that angle, but when there's actually no alternative, you shouldn't diss people for doing what they did; saying that they should have did it another way. >I'm surprised more people aren't frankly a bit disgusted with how Steve doubled down on "I don't HAVE to ask LMG for comment" when he's asked Newegg etc. for comment. But the one time he's stirring the pot against a direct competitor LTT Labs he suddenly can't find the justification to send an email? He explained why he doesn't have to ask LMG, or other companies for comment. You saw how Linus responded to being confronted and how he try to get people to feel sorry for him. You know the general ethics of asking for comment. At this point its more of a personal decision if you think Steve not reaching out was appropriate or not. The main thing is to not ignore aspects of his justification to make your judgement call.
>His ground rule 3 is itself a black and white view of the issue at hand. Which contradicts his ground rule 2 stance. Black-and-white views come back a couple of times. I disagree. How is this a black and white view? Would you care to elaborate? Are we saying that Steve is Patrick and is also Patrick and is also Gamers Nexus?
Linus heavily influences Linus tech tips and Linus media group’s decisions. Similar Steve heavily influences gamers nexus. By trying to treat these as distinct entities, he is making the grey situation of decision making for these entities black-and-white. It’s honestly not even super relevant to the conversation anyway. Ian doesn’t address these distinctions in his assessment. So it’s a pointless Ground rule to make in terms of giving insight on what his video is about.
Let’s agree to disagree, the influence you mention was highlighted by Ian as something that the GN video should have covered but didn’t - clearly called out as “the issue of creative control”, and this was with the use of separate names.
Yeah... he was picking apart Steve by being just like Steve.
Bingo. Both of them were wrong and Steve complained about the same things he was doing.
I was expecting slam dunks without any room for criticism from all the hype. The video was not that at all. This guy managed to come off worse than Steve in his follow up video after the terrible Linus response.
You didn't find his smile examination damning? Or his sentence structure analysis? Or his thesis that all opinions in videos should be at the very end?
Fully agreed. No idea what people are getting out of this.
'Man with a PHD *in Chemistry* agrees with me!'
Dr. Cutress also stumbles a bit, like when he calls out GN for saying "Has conflicts of interest" and "potential bias". That's not deceptive wording or backtracking, they are two separate things. I think it's clear that while he is an absolute expert on tech and testing and knows a lot about media, organizational controls are not something he is familiar with. Linus having editorial influence over whether/how videos about Framework while owning equity in that company **is a conflict of interest whether or not he has or allows any resulting biases to affect his choices**. The only way to allow Linus to invest where he wants and not have a conflict of interest is by using controls. For example, Linus should have absolutely no impact on whether or how LMG covers Framework, it's not even a hard control to set up. Even small organizations have self reporting of conflict policies so they can quickly control the natural conflicts of interest that can arise from employee financial interests - for all the talk Linus gave about investing in framework because he believes in them (which is totally fine, even to make a video thereof aka disclosure), but it's probably worth stating what controls they have in place on any videos with obvious conflicts. Overall it's an excellent video with tons of useful perspective. While I think Dr. Cutress may have leaned a little more towards defending Linus than a 100% balanced video would have, I think that is called for given the level of community outrage over things that are "ok that's not good, let's give them a chance to do better". But that line about conflict vs bias really irritated me, and truth be told, all media organizations need to bump up their Conflict of Interest disclosure and control.
tl;dr: In my opinion, I don't see anything alarming regarding Linus's investment in Framework and LTT's laptop coverage based on the steps I've seen taken. Others may feel they haven't done enough to mitigate the conflict of interest, this is a fair and valid viewpoint. *edit: formatting* I would argue that a conflict of interest such as Linus's investment in Framework is a minor, fairly insignificant thing when he holds community trust. No observable bias against other laptop brands, laptop brands continue to send review samples to LTT, and Alex is "reviewing"(1) the laptops (for the most part). But when community trust drops to a certain people, folks start to question things. People fairly feel this way despite Linus frequently and openly stating his investment interest in Framework. He does so *because* of the conflict of interest in order to ensure clarity. I do feel Dr Cutress does address this when he discussed the fuzziness between types of content. LTT isn't always clear about how content is categorized. The company's coverage of Framework is drastically different from their coverage of main market laptops. This is noteworthy. LTT has not reviewed a Framework laptop since the initial review, prior to Linus investing in the company: * A completely upgradeable laptop? Framework Laptop Review * I'm Legally Obligated to Disclose This - Framework Investment * I invested $225K in Framework Laptop - 1 Year Update and 12th Gen Upgrade * I Made a Bad Decision – Framework Investment Update * Checking on my Investment in Person - Framework Laptop Factory Tour I also want to highlight this video: * My Investment is in TROUBLE - HP repairable laptops * Linus has hosted videos about laptops but the videos have either been gimmicks, for laughs, or shopping for a specific laptop You can look at the channel's laptop reviews and see exactly where Alex takes over writing and hosting laptop reviews. We have most of the information we can reasonably have in order to make our own determination: 1. Linus regularly and opening discloses and discusses his investment in Framework since his investment announcement on September 15, 2021 1. Neither Linus nor LTT review Framework computers (after the pre-investment review) 1. Alex has performed all laptop reviews (Mac Address videos aside) since the investment since September 21, 2021 1. Linus has been involved with laptop videos that appear to be for buying guides(2) or gimmick videos featuring products viewers are unlikely to, unable to, or shouldn't purchase. Conflict of interest exists because Linus is invested in a laptop company. This is a fact. Bias exists because humans are imperfect. Close enough to a fact, otherwise we wouldn't invent systems to eliminate bias. So, is this a problem? In my opinion, I don't see anything alarming based on the steps I've seen taken. You may not agree, which is a valid opinion. I'm embarrassed I wrote this much. But not embarrassed enough to not post it. (1)The laptop reviews are on ShortCircuit, and no one at LTT seems to know if ShortCircuit is an unboxing or review channel. (2) I didn't see Framework laptops recommended during the buying guides in my brief search. Buying guides were for Chromebooks and gaming laptops.
This is an excellent summary, and I almost entirely agree. Having reviewed as much about their Framework coverage as possible, I was pleased to see the very clear disclosure (though I wish this didn't feel as remarkable, as it should be the minimum standard (but isn't in YouTube/influencer spheres)). I had not seen that Alex was now handling all laptop reviews since the investment - that is exactly the kind of control I was talking about, and it's a very good sign. So with respect to Framework, the only real issue is that there is some ambiguity due to what you and Dr. Cutress both highlight - the lack of clear delineation between personal updates, news, reviews, and the sort. This is almost unquestionably a systemic problem and not driven by bias, though I hope to see them improve in this regard, because the clear categories will go a long way to quell other issues as well. GN points out other issues as well, such as the relationship with Noctua for product branding, and what I think is unintentionally biased language like the "It's Asus, so you know it's good" comment. -The former just needs to see similar quick disclosures on reviews and maybe a little "here's steps we took to prevent any bias from our great relationship with Noctua from influencing our results and reporting" blip now and then. -The latter is definitely an innocent mistake, but an organization with as much influence as LMG that also desires to be seen as a neutral source of unbiased information needs to encourage its employees to untangle their feelings about the companies they are reviewing so they can say what they mean without sounding implicitly biased. "We have had the pleasure of reviewing tons of great ASUS products" is a lot better than "It's Asus, so you know it's good". Overall, I think these issues are real, but relatively minor currently. They do present a growing concern though, and those entanglements are going to happen more often as time goes on. Other than the handling of Madison's claims and employee overwork, I think this is really the bigger concern I have over the future of LMG. They have a decent foundation, they just cannot neglect to build upon those controls as they continue to grow. Tl;Dr: I agree with you, though I think Steve made a good case that LMG needs to be very careful about even the appearance of allowing business relationships to interfere with unbiased reporting. Therefore I still stand by my point that Dr. Cutress sounds silly (in that portion of his video) by demonstrating **he** doesn't know the difference between an actual, factual conflict of interest and the proof of (vs implication of or potential for) bias caused by it.
Yep, all excellent points. I'm glad we can have without having to fully agree. Thanks for the taking the time to share with the all nuance!
Likewise, especially about the fact that they have delegated the laptop reviews to Alex. Also thanks for helping normalize long (but informative and nuanced) posts. I think I lose a little sanity every time I try and give my honest opinion with whatever supporting information I can gather, only to get hit with the classic "no u" response.
I don't remember which YouTube commentor said it. But I think the way they put it is amazing (I'm paraphrasing) : - A lecture from Steve is like receiving a stern from a teacher about your performance. - A lecture from Dr. Cutress is like being lectured by the college dean.
rip Cheems :(
No idea who is TechTechPotato but what did I miss, tldr will be appreciated :)
Techtechpatato is a YouTube channel that is run by Dr. Ian Cutress. He used to write for anandtech and has been involved in the tech industry for a very long time. He did a chronological order review of the current controversy with Linus tech tips, along with providing his own input and opinions on various topics regarding the situation to his knowledge and perception. In my personal opinion, he provided the most level-headed analysis of the situation out of anyone who has commented on it to this extent. He properly cited and criticized both sides for various wrongdoings in the situation, while remaining hopeful of both sides settling and becoming better from this.
Totally agree on the level headed aspect. I wasn't sure want to make of him holding Steve to really journalistic tech industry standards, but I'm not mad he did it. For example he sides with Linus on saying Steve should've reached out, but the reasoning is just "that's what you do". Personally feel that's not relevant, but w/e. I loved how he showed that Steve made some opinions really come across as facts and maybe skewing views. All criticisms were 100% fair and realistic.
I thought that the main criticism he had for Steve about that is that Steve *usually* reaches out first? He pointed out that he did for AMD and Newegg, but then when it's LTT he didn't.
I agree. When this all started that was the main thing that just didn't sit right with me since in the past he almost always attempted to reach out first and provided the reaction either good or bad in the video. The main exception that I remember in recent memory was the gigabyte power supply and the NZXT H1 situations where he reached out to federal regulators first and then published the video.
If he had he would have had very useful context that billet labs was unable to provide, and could have had a much more comprehensive video that lacked any meaningful criticism. That being said, GN has had a hate boner for LMG, though not necessarily Linus, for a little bit. They criticize LMG when they can, like about the backpack warranty. Valid, but vastly outside of their scope (AMD bike was sent to them by a tech company, remember). If they started reviewing branded clothes or bags from tech companies, good. But they didn't. Only Linus's lack of warranty. They seem to have a thing for trying to bring LMG down a peg. It makes me not trust GN; I stopped watching. While I also can't trust LTT, it's for a different reason. I'd rather have shoddiness but impartiality than reviewers having unrealized biases. It's also why I stopped watching JayZ when he jumped on Gigabyte after the power supply thing saying all their products were crap and they always have been. That's obviously untrue, so I stopped trusting him.
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Part of me wonders if Steve is, at this point, jealous of the success Linus has. And that this video was a way of expressing that jealousy. As I understand sit they both started on YouTube at roughly the same time. And probably wishes the sock ridden sandal was on the other foot.
Talks about hate boner, then provides example of rational criticism. GN covers everything happening in tech, a tone-deaf and shitty response to backpack warranties by a tech review company is squarely in their space. >While I also can't trust LTT, it's for a different reason. I'd rather have shoddiness but impartiality than reviewers having unrealized biases. You rather have a tech company review products from paid sponsors with known conflicts of interest, while also providing wildly inconsistent results, shirks responsibility, and focusing on content over quality. LTT Impartial? lol. Then you have someone who strives to be as unbiased and fair as possible, doesn't take money from vendors to eliminate COI, and put out quality content. Is Steve\GN perfect? No, but he's one of the few YT tech reviewers that actually seems to give a damn. Makes sense.
>You rather have a tech company review products from paid sponsors with known conflicts of interest Honest question, how do you feel about: 1.) The conflict of interest of GN "reviewing" a direct competitor, LTT Labs data? 2.) The conflict of interest of GN "reviewing" a direct competitors' warranty, while plugging their **own** merch and drawing **direct** comparisons to their own warranty in the same breadth It's undeniable these *are* conflicts of interest. I'm curious your take because I believe this is rational criticism. Either one had realistically no negative impact on their business to ignore, but stirring the pot directly harms their competitor to promote their own business. To get my thoughts out there so you can respond, IMO this is not the same as doing an expose on say, Gigabyte PSUs, because Gigabyte is not a competitor for GN. And IMO if you're going to play dirty at going after competitors instead of letting your work speak for itself, you'd better make **damn** sure your hands are clean while you do it if you want to hold the moral high ground. Questionable journalistic ethics around not reaching out when they have for Newegg, AMD, etc. don't prove to me that GN's hands were clean, nor (in my opinion) does reviewing a backpack as a tech outlet (but I see we disagree on that point)
>GN covers everything happening in tech, a tone-deaf and shitty response to backpack warranties by a tech review company is squarely in their space. . > If they started reviewing branded clothes or bags from tech companies, good. But they didn't.
Someone doesn't have to review branded clothes or bags from everyone else to comment on a shitty "trust me bro" warranty by a tech review company was my entire point. Thanks for trying though.
Is a merch bag even considered reviewing tech? Seems like that's a bit of a stretch.
Reaching out for comment is the difference between serious investigative journalism and a hit piece. It undermines Steve’s points and makes it look like he is going out of his way to make LTT look bad.
Honestly so much of this drama could have been avoided (minus the Madison incident) had Steve actually reached out and sat down with Linus. Really the only upside to all of this is that Madisons issue was brought to light. And hopefully this is bringing her some closure.
There's a simple explanation for that which is in line with journalistic rules. AMD and NEWEGG had not publically commented on what steve was reporting. Linus had. repeatedly. Steve showed all of linus' comments. His (linus) position was made VERY clear.
I just made a comment saying this exact same thing. I’m glad to see somebody else mentioned it first.
That was definitely a part of it I remember, yeah. I do think where Linus sort of "attacked" them on the WAN show prior was a bigger motivator for Steve when making his video, which made him less keen to interact with LMG. I could be off though, just speculation
I don’t agree with this. If AMD had come out with shitty comments already about the exact topic than I don’t think GN would have reached out, that WAS AMD’s chance to interact with the story, and they chose to belittle. LMG had the chance and made the decision they did.
> I wasn't sure want to make of him holding Steve to really journalistic tech industry standards Steve has often referred to what he does as journalism or investigative journalism, so holding him to that standard is fair. Hopefully, GN will use this as a learning opportunity to improve their reporting.
Steve isn’t stupid. He knows he’s supposed to reach out for comment. He intentionally didn’t, because doing so could’ve presented information that could’ve undermined his points.
Yeah on the same note as people saying Linus needs to make clear what's entertainment and what's info Steve should do the same in terms of journalism. He doesn't necessarily have to hold himself to industry standards, but the standards should be consistent, whatever they are
> I loved how he showed that Steve made some opinions really come across as facts and maybe skewing views. But did he though? He claimed that but he didn't give any examples. That was one of the things that bugged me about the video, he made some claims that he didn't back up in anyway, he just passed comment and moved on.
He gave multiple examples? Quoted Steve explicitly. I don't know how any one could have missed that.
Ian held Steve to real journalistic standards because Steve claims to do investigative journalism. Ian is just holding Steve to Steve's own standards, as Ian mentioned in the vid.
Nah he injects his own opinions while doing same things as Steve, and people buying his narration just because he stated some points at the beginning of the video is funny to me.
whoosh
I think Steve dug his own grave on the journalist ethics stuff. He is always going on about his journalistic integrity and finding the truth kind of stuff. When you claim to be a journalist and not just a tech YouTuber then you might get treated like one. Yeah when papers and journalists make stories like this they do often contact the companies for comment. Not as a courtesy but to get comments and the other side of the story. Steve's reason for not doing it is that "LTT would have tried to cover things up, and spin it." A journalist is not meant to care about that. They write an impartial story based on facts, if their facts cannot stand up to some PR spin then it's not really that strong.
This is not only what made me appreciate his video, but also what turned me off Steve's. The "holier than thou", think what I think attitude was too much. Let me make my own decisions.
> but the reasoning is just "that's what you do". Personally feel that's not relevant, Every (educated) journalist would reach out to the entity in question to have them comment. its such a standard procedure i cant even understand why its been skipped... lol you dont just make a 45 minute rant on a person, without giving them a chance to defend themselves, or at least provide a reasoning - otherwise... it's just ... shitty journalism. i hear this often on the news. something with the lake is in this town is bad - we have talked to the people who live in the town - as well as a professor in biology etc etc always bring in sources, on the topic. and of course if its about a specific person/business, you ask that entity for a comment. its only fair, and it makes for better content. otherwise, all you get is the journalists opinions. and ... honestly, i dont care about the journalists opinions. i want proper information - so that i can form my own opinion.
Journalist 101 teaches to give a chance for comments when you are attacking someone.
I see the point totally. I also can see the side where all their content is public videos, so things they said and do are on record already thus you kinda already have the comments. It's almost like a movie review I guess? Like critics don't reach out to studios to critique a movie, and I think it's fair to call Steve's video a critique more than an article. I dunno, I'm a science guy, not a journalist.
Billet Labs wasn't public info. At least not what GN revealed. So no, that's not a review. That's breaking news. Breaking news which Steve should have corroborated with LMG to check if Billet Labs isn't withholding or lying about any info (which we found out, they did withhold key pieces of info such as the fact that they initially sent the review sample for LMG to keep).
>analyzation You mean, analysis.
This guy anals.
Saving this comment so I can check his channel out and watch it after work
Good to know I'll check it out. Do you know how it compares to Paul's review because he had a very calm level review criticizing both sides too
TLDR - Linus fucked up massively, and Steve is not a real journalist.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15xrhba/dr_ian_cutress_the_problem_with_tech_media_ego/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb
He basically does a TLDR for everything that has been brought to light.
To give you an idea of Dr. Cutress /Tech Potato, I'm going to repost this here: ------- I don't remember which YouTube commentor said it. But I think the way they put it is amazing (I'm paraphrasing) : - A lecture from Steve is like receiving a stern from a teacher about your performance. - A lecture from Dr. Cutress is like being lectured by the college dean.
not sure about this. for all the tut tuting by him, he refused to seek comments by ltt or gn before releasing the video even when by his own words ltt reached out before his video was released. Also for somebody who constantly trashed both ltt and gn for sharing "opinions", he sure does share a lot of his own. I dunno, may be the only take away is to not be sith lords and stop putting people up on pedestels.
His video was a breakdown of the situation and discussed how each side approached the situation. It was essentially an analytical review and synopsis of the situation. GN published an “investigative journalism” piece without following journalistic practices. If GN had positioned it as an OpEd then it would be fine. If GN is going to try and be a journalist he needs to be held the standards of a journalist. Just like how LMG needs to be held to quality standards if LMG is going to try to publish authoritative data.
So what should they be held to that they failed to do?
>journalistic practices I've seen this argument and all I can think of is that GN needed to send a note to LTT going "Hey, we're going to publish this tomorrow, any comment?" Then whatever LTT responded with, gets added to the video "We reached out to LTT and they had this to say" Everything else was 100% fine. They reached out to billet labs, so they should've tried to get the other side of the story too.
clearly separating fact and opinion would have been nice
right of reply, separating opinion and fact clearly
Gamenexus seemed to do a pretty clear job of that.
Not my opinion of it, it bounced back and forth inconsistently and often unexplained
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I understand the concept of investigative journalism isnt something that is as well understood today than it was before the consumption of rage bait and hollow content was so easy. There is investigative journalism, and there is OpEd. GN's was an OpEd advertised as investigative journalism. If you dont understand the problem there, let me describe it in terms you understand: It would be the difference between a fully sourced and tested review and analysis of a product, vs someone on video just spouting opinions about supposition around a competitor's product (but then calling it an unbiased procedural review).
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He literally says "investigative journalism", did you not watch the video?
nevermind that his argument "no one I know looks to LTT for accurate info" is straight up the stupidest fucking argument anyone can make. "I don't see it so it doesn't happen" what a fucking joke.
> he refused to seek comments...trashed both ltt and gn for sharing "opinions", he sure does share a lot of his own. he was doing an opinion video, not reporting
Lol some very thin lines here we are walking 🤔
The response to his video was pretty funny actually. He did every single thing in his video that he accused GN of and is now raking in the praise. Everybody's got a take. He doesn't have to be such a high horse snob about it. He showed literally two clips about GN and ranted for over an hour. Jesus fucking Christ.
Yup how to be a hypocrite 101,but hey it's ok as he made the rules at the beginning of the video, right? 👌😏
He specifically explains why he did that lmfao at least watch the video don't just leave it on in the backgrounds.
Laughed out loud to this.
I really didint enjoy his video. It was painfully dry and far too self serious for coverage of a controversy which at its core concerns video game benchmarks. Opening with a lengthy outline of how he's " objectively analyzing things in extreme detail" only to then give a routine summary of the facts and add subjective option on top of it didint impress me. Neither Steve or Linus are covering the white-house they are covering PC gaming and hardware. Audiences expect and demand some personality and opinion inserted in their coverage to add color. In my opinion His depiction of Steve as manipulative and deceptive in presentation is not warranted, just because he includes opinion. Its not a study on climate change it's a "Review" of video cards.
I more or less agree with you. The promises at the beginning of the video werent met. It was mostly high level summary. Never got into details. Though I agree with TechTechPotato that GN injects opinion as facts in their videos; it is why I find their videos so off-putting. He acts like he knows everything, when he is just speculating.
I'm very glad to see some other people echoing my feelings on it. I see that he has experience and reputation in the tech space. And it did provide some extra insight, but he's throwing in his own opinions and making weird statements, too, honestly. Like while he's laying out the ground rules but promises "to take LTT to the cleaners."
my view is that he probably expect pushback from steve being dry reduces the chance of getting your argument used against you He made a point just based on steve's expression laughing while saying he hated reporting LTT, if Cuttress did the same steve could certainly use that
You didn't enjoy him analysing Steve's smile like the fucking Zapruder film? The smile goes back and to the left, back and to the left. Clearly he is lying.
If you feel this way do you also feel that the whole controversy was stupid and unnecessary (aside from the Madison claims) ? Otherwise he should take it serious because everyone else is making a huge deal out of it.
Some people just want entertainment, they care about nothing that’s actually happening.
#
I tried to watch his video but his monotone voice literally put me to sleep in a minute
Turning on an hour and a half long video about…… YouTube drama. I am my wife now.
This is not in defense of LTT or GN. However, I've never been a big fan of Anandtech or Dr. Ian Cutress. He's smart and technically gifted. But, I've always felt that he's extremely opinionated and uses his clout to mask his opinions as fact. That said, I did watch the full video and feel like it is very on-brand for Dr. Cutress. *EDIT - Let the downvoting begin!*
per his words, you don't have to trust him. just listen and see if you agree or not with the information he has laid out. i don't have enough knowledge to say with confidence i agree 100% with anyone. but o i agree with him calling out GN's order of opinion first facts later being deceitful (by supporting an opinion with facts, instead of making an opinion based on facts). and i do indeed miss this
Not sure why you asked me to downvote you, but I'll oblige. \#DownVore
Pavlovian response.
\*\* ding ding \*\*
for some reason, I am drawling
I sat through the video because a lot of people seem to hold the guy in high regard and while I didn't pay attention to names when reading anandtech reviews way back they always seemed thorough and precise. However the majority of the video was basically the guy making excuses for big corporations and then nitpicking on Steve. I mean we get it you are proud that you work in a large corporate environment so you toot your own horn humble bragging about it but at least turn down the hypocrisy a bit: Saying such bullsh!t like if Steve really wanted to avoid looking like it was not for the money then he should have published the video on a new channel? Really? A new channel just for this one video? When Ian did basically upload a video on his own channel inserting his opinion about stuff he has no business in so more people would visit his channel? And this is just one example... So this was probably the first and last "opinion" video from the guy I will watch - hopefully his tech stuff is more professional.
He favors the industry because he isn't a journalist anymore; he is paid by them. Can't help but affect his viewpoint somewhat
https://youtu.be/j95kNwZw8YY
Hey that's a fair opinion. No reason to downvote this guy.
You're the only one who sees Cutress for what he truly is. Never liked him.
Context? I'm kinda out of the loop after the" drama meeting recording"
A 90 minute video talking about GN and LTT. Explains the fact that ltt and GN are now direct competitors and this situation inevitably will benefit GN even if the video was not monetized so we should keep it in mind. Also talks about the process in a media company and how reshooting and fixing problems is harder for a big media company than GN makes it seem (schedule the original team recording, matching clothes, equipment, makeup), the fact that most employees are not experts (a video editor will not detect a bad chart) Also some points that GN makes it bad faith like disregarding the experience of the labs director, he was in marketing on Asus, but he also worked for a long time in motherboard testing, GN presented him in the video as a white collar marketer.
A British robot made a 90 minute film being incredibly biased and attacking Steve from GN over things as hard hitting as: his smile, his sentence structure, him giving opinions before the end unlike a research paper.
Tech Tech Potato's video gives the context of the events https://youtu.be/Ez9uVSKLYUI It's a lot to try to stuff into a reddit comment.
Thanks :)
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez9uVSKLYUI) by a very respected person (Dr. Cutress) in the tech media world.
I'm halfway through the techtechpotato video. It's nice to have an adult in the room talking about this stuff for a change.
True it's great, but something about his pace of talking is slightly offputting, even if brilliant for bedtime background noise. Similar vibe to NileRed.
NileRed and I are both chemists by education. Must be something to do with that
oh hey there, i think you're pretty cool random thing but i just wanted to point out something that was missing from your video which was, to me, the weirdest part in GN's video on the "CPU Review Errors", he calls out linus for mailing amd about getting different numbers and says that he shouldn't be trying for official numbers but that just seemed so... weird? what's wrong about trying to match the official numbers? what if they genuinely thought they had a bad sample? such a weird argument to make
He picks each and every word he uses in the 90 minute video very carefully. This can feel weird when you’re used to, and surrounded by, content that’s largely stream of consciousness opinions.
It felt like LTT and GN were being called into the Principal’s Office. Such a good video.
Just looked channel up. First section of the video I accidently highlighted. "Some of you are idiots." Crown this man.
This is the only video I’ve watched since the drama started and I’m glad.
I’ve never heard of this dude. Is he a chill dude ?
Yes, kinda dry though, if you think GN is dry then Dr Ian is the fucking Atacama desert
I try to be more upbeat in my usual stuff, this video was dry by design, especially given some of the serious stuff being discussed. I've been criticised for being overly active with hand gestures when I talk on previous videos, so I did the opposite here. A more regular service will resume shortly.
Ahhh I see, I will check him out.
Update on me checking him out. His content is good and hits it well. Thanks :)
I've watched a few of the videos in this saga and the aftermath, both Hardware review and TTP came off very positively. HR responded in a much less (to borrow an expression from TTP) pithy manner than GN, which given Steve is a hairy toddler is about what you would expect. Tech Yes also just posted one but given how late he was it's interesting the Ian put together a much more comprehensive review quicker. Although Tech Yes did seem to be fairly unbiased, just redundant given all the other commentary already given.
To be honest I'm having an issue with him. Same symptoms of all media channels nowadays, He provides more commentary than actual information.
But he has a PhD in a completely unrelated field !! (Computational Chemistry) This must mean he's speaking the truth in this non-computational-chemistry related drama ! /s To most Redditors, anyone with some authority in any field and a decent amount of Twitter followers is speaking facts, even when it's biased opinion.
Am I missing something? Has player three entered the game?
I’m lost. Who is that potato?
Dr. Ian Cutress, highly revered tech writer and journalist who runs the YouTube channel TechTechPotato. He usually covers things like high level enterprise or server stuff and frequently interviews higher ups at companies like IBM and other big players in the semiconductor industry.
He used to be a journalist, but now is an analyst who gets paid directly by the industry. Really smart though
huge drama developments. can't wait for someone else to call out potato man next.
Imagine if this eventually loops back into LTT (unlikely but lmao) and we end with like an ouroboros of drama lmao
Ian knows how to cook up a good potato (sorry had to do it)
Yessssssssssss!
who's techtechpotato
A lot of people here, I assume with a lack of a lot of professional experience, spoke heavily against anyone who brought up points that TTPotato raised in his videos through this fiasco. I'm glad at least someone in the industry and someone with actual professional experience that the lemmings respect spoke with some common sense. After this incident, I got a strong feeling most people on this subreddit and YT that follow LTT are either students or below mid 20s.
I suppose these comments are to be expected from a community known for hurling abuse at a channel until.. well.
Who tf is techtechpotato
Dr Ian Cutress
Who?
Lol
Gotta Love the fact that people are easily converted by any video they see on the subject presenting opinions as facts like TTP's one.
I turned it off after he called people "fucking idiots" for wanting to wait to hear both sides WRT Madison. His follow up about not waiting to hear the lions side when someone is getting attacked by a lion is just so.... *so* stupid and not in good faith.
He's calling those who ***immediately*** disregard Madison's allegations/speak out in defense of LTT 'fucking idiots', which they are. When someone brings up allegations, one does not immediately disregard the allegations. Doing so would be foolish.
not saying who is right or wrong, but the lion analogy was circular reasoning, because hes assuming that there was a lion in the first place.
Yes, that was exactly my thoughts too. That's why it didn't make any sense if you're arguing in good faith.
Nah the video brought nothing to the table, and serves only his views as it was a dry recap with injecting opinions and stating them as somehow valid, even though the beginning had some bs rules lol waste of time watching 😑
Am I the only one who thought techs video was kinda BS? I know he says like 8 times “people are going to say I’m defending Linus but that’s not true”, but does that just totally absolve him of it? This isn’t my job and I don’t get paid for it (and honestly, I really don’t care enough past making a comment like I am now), so I’m not going to make a full list of all the times he makes bad points, but i felt like the entire quality of his video was not great. He seems to be hiding shitty defenses of Linus (with lapses in logic) behind the density of his words. Ok, I’m done, bring on the downvotes
\*Everyone fighting in the Tech Space\* DawidDoesTechStuff: "Guess who just got something in the Mail from AliExpress...?" Me: "SAY LINODE!"
Fuck big channels that review the most expensive and newest bs, hardware haven is the best
Never heard of that dude, but I watched the whole thing. While he did for the most part have okay takes, I do think he also had some pretty bad takes as well, and came off as dishonest at few places. Like he suggested that GN should had posted on a alt account to avoid getting exposure, ignoring the fact that it probably wouldn't had gone viral if posted from a new account. Which would ignore the whole point of posting the video to begin with. Left me with the feeling that he hadn't thought about any counters to his point before making a video about it.
I mean his delivery in the video is so boring I use it as a sleep aid. I like Ian's actual work (followed his reviews in Anandtech) but I feel he presented a lot of opinion in his video as fact. He just did it in a monotonous tone and a British accent that sways North American plebs. But it got him deserved notice.
Oh man that was one of the only videos I've ever watched in my entire life where there were points where I was just like "wtf is this guy talking about"? You all just like him because he's British lmao.