Comment by fartcannon
3 years ago
Do you trust Linus, though? He often promotes himself as without bias, but he very clearly hates Apple (except the watch). He also loves things he already understands (anything Microsoft). He's got heavy duty fanboyitis. And he's clearly someone you can buy demonstrated by his flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise.
I don't think he outwardly lies (at least not in a way that matters), or anything, but he's got pretty good soft selling skills which he definitely uses for evil/to make money.
All LMG channels are great. But to me anyways, they're great because they're basically comedies.
As an Apple fanboy, I can easily say that Linus does not hate Apple.
Linus DOES hate a lot of what Apple does; cases where they make things more unrepairable for no real reason, or various socio-political causes (like opposing Right to Repair or unions or whatever).
Regardless of that though, I would trust a Linus review of a new iPhone or iPad a lot more than I would trust a lot of other sites, because I know he's not going in with Apple fanboyism (the way I would, for example), and he gives reasons for all his opinions.
Fundamentally, he always comes across as principled. If he has an opinion he'll tell you, and he'll give you a reason. He'll admit that he was wrong when he (believes he) was wrong. He'll contextualize his thoughts so you can decide if this or that opinion is really relevant to your situation.
As far as I've seen, his AMD/Intel/nvidia opinion changes follow along with the facts. He's pretty PO'ed at Intel for basically just sitting around with their fingers up their asses for however many years, and only actually trying to make good products at good prices (and largely failing) when AMD suddenly stepped everything up.
nvidia makes great video cards, the best on the market, but he's not going to avoid calling them out for shady or anti-consumer business practices. AMD makes great CPUs and good video cards, but if they have a disingenuous benchmark or claim he's going to say something about it.
I dunno, no one is entirely unbiased, but from what I've seen over the years, I can trust Linus more than most other people.
As an Apple apologist, I also concur with most of the above.
Though I do find it amusing that Linus has often commented negatively on companies that don't want their employes to unionise, when Linus does much the same thing. In the case of LMG, Linus employs emotional threats, publicly warning his employees that forming a union would represent a declaration of "personal failure". Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with Linus here. Unionising is what you do in response to exploitation, not as a default state of affairs. I just wish he could see the parallel when commenting on other companies which aren't currently unionised.
[Edit: just noticed that this exact point was already discussed to death elsewhere in this sub-thread.]
Unionisation as a default state of affairs is what prevents exploitation. Join a union.
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You also unionise to prevent exploitation, it's not just a reactionary option. Yes, it can get unnecessarily adversarial. We'd be better off if unions were the default but were only adversarial where necessary. I believe countries like Germany do a bit better at this?
> Unionising is what you do in response to exploitation, not as a default state of affairs.
You're not from France I can tell ;)
But yeah if people in such a small company start organising it means stuff is wrong
As someone who loathes Apple, I disagree. But I do agree that there's basically no place to get a trustworthy resource on Apple. Because, for the same reason I don't trust Linus, money is involved.
It is unreasonable to expect any one source to be consistently reliable. The "trustworthy resource" is multiple sources with diverse views. Combine your LMG diet with some Rene Ritchie, Hoeg Law, etc.
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I think the truth is you cant trust any one reviewer, you should always look at multiple reviewers.
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> And he's clearly someone you can buy demonstrated by his flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise.
He gives praise where praise is due, that isn't bias. Many times on the WAN show he's reminded viewers and especially Red/Green/Blue fanboys that none of these companies are your friend. And big deal if he's more productive using Windows than Linux.
I'm in no way defending Linus, there's a bunch of stuff him and another staffer get up to that's utterly cringeworthy. But as to the rest of your comment I think it's your own biases that are playing in your head.
I think that's a little naive. He's more of an entertainer making money with sponsorships than a reviewer telling hard truths.
Heck, even the Wirecutter, owned by the NYTs, is known to push products based on sponsorships...
Maybe, but those WAN show lectures are often starkly mirroerd by strongly worded submarine advertisement playing as segments on his various shows. He basically does a thing, then says that people shouldn't do that. To put it gently, it's exactly what someone with soft sales skills would do. He deflects like a politician. Even if he's wrong, and admitting it, he's very skilled at making it sound like its everyone who was wrong, or he's the hero for admitting it.
Narcissist is probably the word.
Again, I like the shows (well until his rabid fanboyism or petulance comes out). I mostly just don't trust him to review things.
> Maybe, but those WAN show lectures are often starkly mirroerd[sic] by strongly worded submarine advertisement playing as segments on his various shows.
Every one of their videos clearly mention who the sponsors are i.e. the "sponsored showcase" videos. And when they're not those types of videos, but just have regular advertising, they say out loud and clear "and this segway's to our sponsor...".
I'm not shilling for the fella but their content is some of the best when it comes to being transparent about who's paying for their videos. He can't risk getting that wrong.
> Narcissist is probably the word.
He's clearly offended you somehow and sometime in the past so why continue to watch their content? If a content creator offended me this much then I'd just walk away.
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He's also vocally anti-union and actively tried to stop his employees from marketing themselves on personal social media (to stop them from building a following and then leaving, I'm guessing), so I refuse to watch any of his content or support his business in any way now.
I know this is completely subjective, and his millions of subscribers tell me my opinion is far from ubiquitous, but he's also just straight up obnoxious to me. One of those people whose voice, demeanor, appearance, everything, just immediately turns me off.
Because he sounds like the stereotype of a Hot Topic-shopping turbonerd c.2002 ? Personally, I find it nostalgic, and even endearing.
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I think he, personally, is largely entertainment. His company does produce some genuinely useful (as in, not total SEO spam) reviews etc. though.
Agreed. I always think of his Amazon go video where thinks he “stole” tampons that were actually pads.
Do you mind sharing some links to back up these claims?
Just watched a video [0] where he clearly comes across as being pro workers rights, and against passing prop 22 in California. He seems to be generally pro-union while still trying to point out some general issues with them. He also says he would be "offended" if his employees unionized at LMG, which while maybe is a bit stupid to say, I don't think counts as anti-union.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpyiNOD-MOk
People should also understand why he said he would be offended. He would be offended because it meant they didn’t talk to him and work with him - and that he did such a bad job as a manager that they decided to unionize.
He’s pro-union - he just hopes he is a good enough boss that his employees don’t feel like they need to unionize. He clarified his viewpoint in later videos. Offended was probably not the best choice of word - and he admits that too. I don’t recall the video but someone can find it. (I’m on mobile and on vacation - idk why I’m even here)
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I watch one of his employees stream on twitch, I found out about his channel from a Linus tech tips video, I don't think your second claim is all that true.
I googled it and there's this. I'm not sure if it's what OP is talking about or not. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bTHSwBZVNI
a lot of LMG employees have personal social media and either YouTube or Twitch streams, often getting viewers from fans of their persona on LMG videos. I think the issue is only with competing content and/or leveraging the LMG platform. For example, if an employee started a GPU review channel and called it out in an LMG video, like ok yeah probably not. More like non-compete than some draconian restrictions
Ah, that's pretty brutal. Thanks for the information I will keep that in mind. Seems less funny now. :/
Honestly, I would expect that from him as CEO. He only makes money off people watching the channel and subscription numbers are hugely important. Any efforts by employees to gain subscribers for their channels could dilute visitor numbers and subscribers to LMG. And obviously he doesn't want to create competition.
In the end he's still a CEO and the others are his employees, not his friends. For that, he doesn't appear to be a terrible boss.
Can you elaborate in the anti-union thing? I can't seem to find anyone discussing this.
> flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise
This is a silly take. Tech evolves and companies release more than one product at a time. It would be weird if LTT /didn't/ have "flip-flopping" takes on various companies.
I disagree that it's silly. I think that's unfairly dismissive of a valid point when he is paid money to advertise for those companies and we are discussing the validity of his reviews of that equipment.
It's silly because it isn't a valid point. Linus flip flopping on those brands is precisely why he isn't suffering from fanboyitis.
It's kind of rediculous to claim he's a fanboy in one sentence then claim he's just a shill in the next when the evidence contradicts your first statement.
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LTT makes almost all of it's money from floatplane, youtube premium, and youtube advertisements. The "deals" they work with companies are almost entirely outside of the product space they review.
This mud-slinging idea you continue to push (with zero evidence) is contrary to their financials and directly contrary to their business model.
Why on earth would Linus leverage his entire business in debt to buy a huge facility to produce hardware reviews if that would mean "his sponsors" (your salacious claim) would abandon him or force him to change?
It literally doesn't make sense. If they were truly bought and paid for and producing faux-content that is actually advertising, they would have legitimately zero need to spend millions of dollars on hardware testing labs.
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LTT very clearly demarcates which videos are sponsored and which are not.
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Not having bias doesn't mean not having an opinion on things. It's a review channel, it doesn't work unless he "likes" some things and "hates" others, as long as he elaborates on the /reasons/ for those opinions.
Well, no, it would work way better if he had no bias. Otherwise you have to trust that he's aware of his bias and is somehow capable of separating his opinion from reality. Otherwise how does it help anyone make a financial choice?
I like the show(s). They're fun. But I don't use them to determine which CPU to buy or whatever. Their opinion changes depending on who is sponsoring them, no?
> Their opinion changes depending on who is sponsoring them, no?
No, to the extent humanly possible. They have reviews, which are not sponsored by anyone having anything to do with the product being reviewed. Those are their actual opinions and evaluations of products.
Separately they have sponsored showcase videos, or whatever they call them, where they won't say anything untrue, but they're just showing off whatever it is, not really evaluating it deeply. These videos are _very_ obviously different, and very obviously labelled.
LTT has top tier policies and openness about these issues compared to really anyone on youtube or anywhere.
More anecdotally, I've seen them give takes on previous or current sponsors that were _very_ not in their financial best interests. If sponsors are paying for easy coverage, they're not getting their money's worth.
> Well, no, it would work way better if he had no bias.
That would just be lying. There are no humans without biases.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zt57TWkTF4 is probably a good summary on Linus's thoughts on sponsors/funding. If you trust what he says or not is up to you. I do though.
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Are there reviewers you would recommend without any biases at all?
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As somebody who has followed Linus for the last couple of years, I have to say I deeply disagree with your conclusion about hating apple and being for sale.
He is not without flaws, but I think he is fair, balanced and very well-intentioned.