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Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t...

Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23834190/linus-tech-tips-gamersnexus-madison-reeves-controversy

The controversy continues to grow.

Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t...::The YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has halted production after controversies over ethics and accuracy in reporting, spurred further this morning by accusations of sexual harassment experienced at the company.

73 comments

ImperialATAT

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So despite the recent “reactions” from LTT, and just to bring this all back to the beginning… Thank you to Gamers Nexus for doing some damn necessary journalism, which couldn’t have been done without a high level of ethical, and technical competency.

dueuwuje

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And courage, because this could have really been twisted and clouded, Gamers Nexus really went out on a limb (albeit justified).

AssholeDestroyer

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Steve and crew do amazing work. They seem so genuine compared to 99% of the content on YouTube. Its like the Red Letter Media guys compared to all the other movie review channels.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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What they did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It’s the only way to stop corrupt/incompetent reviewers from misleading people.

pachrist

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They really should, especially since LTT was trying to be GN by adding the Labs. Claiming to be better than GN while making basic mistakes was just super unprofessional, which is why Steve's response was so awesome. Anyone who has watched his channel knows he has a standard, and it's massively important to him. I don't think he would mind more competition in the space necessarily, even coming from LTT Labs, but the bedrock of GN is data, even if it's a little bit dry as content sometimes. If you're going to try to compete with or dunk on Steve, best meet the bar he's set.

dwks

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As much as this is Linus fault as the leaders, if LTT goes down for this. More than 100 of the employees will be out of job at the end of this.

Either way the outcome won’t be pretty for LTT staffs.

Icaria

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Most of those staff are going to have no trouble finding new jobs. It's a highly technical and specialised crew, many would already be in demand elsewhere, and a void left by LTT would be quickly filled by other groups producing similar content, who suddenly find themselves in need of more staff. Hell, a lot of former LTT staff would be gobbled up by LTT's own sponsors.

This is a terrible argument whenever there's any public controversies within the private sector. It's not worth thinking about 'the jobs' because that's not how the economy works. If there's fire behind this smoke, and LTT did fold, those left long-term unemployed are probably fewer in number than those who are currently being exploited and mistreated. It's almost always a zero-sum game.

stu

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While I agree with everything you've said, it's also fair to acknowledge that losing one's job unexpectedly is a disruptive life change that not everyone is adequately prepared for financially or emotionally and we can empathize with them.

Edit, seriously what have I said here that's downvote worthy?

BloodForTheBloodGod

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You're asking people to spare pity for a corporation abusing people.

Sure, it's not necessarily the fault of employees.

But many of us have only limited pity to spare, and we're saving it for the more direct victims. Not the employees.

Besides; many of them would probably do well to get away from there.

Not_Alec_Baldwin

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The mob is angry and you mentioned empathy.

People just aren't ready to have empathy, yet.

JigglySackles

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I get the concern. And I've been part of enough layoffs to know how much it sucks. But a company being held to its responsibility and a standard and held to the light like this to show it's failings, would be an acceptable condition. That said though, I really don't see anyone losing their jobs over this. This is a failing on the higher end of LMG, not the rank and file.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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Linus is not the only one to blame. The people who work there could have done something to stop the unethical behavior or quit. But some of them stayed there for years and enabled Linus. I can't look at those people and not think that they aren't incompetent or corrupt.

BrightCandle

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Given they couldn't even reign Linus in on the appology video and he is still playing the real victim they simply don't have the power to. The new CEO can't possibly be happy with what Linus said there but Linus is the boss and he certainly doesn't listen to anyone else trying to make him see sense. If Luke can't reach him, and he hasn't managed to at any point over the years, then the rest don't have a chance.

This is and has always been a culture that Linus has created and is continuing to reinforce.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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Good point, they can't change who Linus is. But then I don't understand why Luke and others would stay there for years and continue working with that guy, continue to take part in unethical behavior. It makes me think that it just didn't bother them enough.

Not_Alec_Baldwin

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It's cult of personality shit.

It's something Madison talked about in her Twitter rant.

For most of these people it's their dream job, and they don't believe they'll be able to do it on their own. For many of them they tried to do it on their own for years before joining LMG.

So they'll do anything to try and hold onto the fantasy. Including destroy themselves and the quality of their work. Which is really why the mental health of the company is in the shitter.

I mean this honestly: I like many of the team members and I hope that LMG is able to fix itself... But I don't know if it's possible.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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That's sad. I hope that the company fails and they get hired somewhere else.

kent_eh

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I see it as mostly them being sloppy and moving too fast to go through the proper checks and balances.

I've seen far too many companies go from "a couple of enthusiastic guys" to a large organization without taking the time and effort to put in place the structures and systems so everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, and as important, knows what other people are doing as it relates to their work.

And inevitably there comes a point where the organization is too big for that method to keep working, and the wheels fall off.

The only real difference I see here is that this time it's happening in complete view of the public.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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They were fine with Linus investing in companies and then reviewing their products or competing products and I don't see that as a result of sloppiness. They haven't even addressed it in their apology video.

Also moving too fast is not a valid excuse for misleading millions of people for years.

linearchaos

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They're not going anywhere. He'll take a hit from it. Now that the heat is actually on and he can't just say whatever he'll apologize he'll outline what they're going to do to make it better and then it'll all be back to where it was in another couple months, maybe with a little extra effort on the data.

Viper_NZ

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Other than “this should never have happened” I see this as the best possible outcome.

Now we wait and see I suppose.

Hazzard

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Agreed. The upload schedule has been a holy grail within LTT for a long time, and I truly believe it's the root of all of this, yes, even the sexual harassment. Or at least how that harassment was handled so poorly. When do you have time to make good HR policies? Pull people into HR for reprimanding? Have opportunities for others to second guess decisions? Do training? Or heck, even just have less tired and irritable people making in-the-moment stupid decisions?

This uncompromising maximum velocity hurts everyone, and I hope they keep never bring it back to this pace, even after the process improvements they have planned.

Rentlar

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This was my take as well. To add to it, on an individual level, the way to avoid biases is to step back and think critically for a second. In the interest of time, if you just blurt out every thought that comes to your head you'll say insensitive stuff every now and then. Or you'll unconsciously express favoritism out of convenience. The work culture there that tries to pass it off as "just the odd mean joke between friends" needs to change too, but having time to foster a positive environment involves taking away time from cranking out the next video.

Linus has got to look inside a little and find integrity again for his company, because that's what they lost years ago in pursuit of a constant churn of content.

kent_eh

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Very much so.

They've basically been operating in startup mode for years, and haven't bothered to transition their management systems to "decade old company with lots of employees" mode.

You can't burn on startup mode forever without things exploding at some point.

lps2

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The company has far outgrown Linus's ability to run it. Half the shit he says on the WAN show I cringe at as someone who's done corporate management / systems consulting for the last decade+. I get the feeling he really is unable to separate his ego from his corporate responsibilities and this inability seeps through in all their content. Just take the Billet Labs fiasco as an example, he was so convinced he knew better that he felt insulted on the WAN show that his conclusion was brought into question when it was shown his methodology was abhorrently flawed; or look to his and the entire team's proclivity to misappropriate inventory to their homes or the projects that personally benefit him and his family - I would hate to be his personal attorney as any litigation hitting LMG is sure to hit him personally as there is ample evidence of the corporate veil being pierced, and JFC why is the entire consumer tech market perpetually in the mindset of a horny 14 year old? Talk about a hostile work environment.

I found it hilarious when he was discussing Blizzard and their actions to be egregious when the vibe at LTT honestly doesn't seem all that different - he seems to be barrelling toward following in their footsteps

oryx

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My take as well. I hope after their break, they cut things down to have fewer videos with higher quality. We know from what Linus has said openly that they're set with money, so sacrificing some earnings to establish themselves as a channel that can truly be trusted seems like the obvious move.

just_another_person

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You don't see a lot of people come back from turmoil like this and stay as popular as they previously were. Will be interesting to see what changes they make.

ours

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They are popular because they really know how to leverage the Youtube algorithm and end up being suggested to a ton of people. Technically knowledgeable people might reject LTT even more due to this mess but there are still a ton of viewers following what Youtube suggests.

ShunkW

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It's not even that they know how to work the algorithm anymore. When you're that high level, you have a partnership with YouTube and they'll adjust the algorithm for you.

just_another_person

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Fair. They could also just reincorporate a new company and do the same with different people featured and make money I suppose.

Hamartiogonic

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I think this mess is just a sign of a company experiencing growing pains. Seems like they are still figuring out what kind of processes the company needs to have and who is the right person for each task. When a company grows quickly you tend to bump into (or more like crash into) unexpected issues like this. In the case of LMG, it got particularly nasty, but I’m glad they are finally addressing the issues.

stappern

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Permanently Deleted

Alexstarfire

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Did I miss something about the whole LTT debacle?

Hamartiogonic

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The situation got really bad because the company didn’t have what it takes to notice and intervene in time. Once they have noticed the problem, they should work to prevent it from happening in the future. Perhaps they need to fire people who don’t have manners. All of this applies to lots of other issues too; not just sexual assault, harassment etc. That’s why I was mainly focussing on the big picture rather than a single category of problems.

Fortunately though, they have already built processes to prevent certain issues from arising in the future, but obviously there’s still a lot they need to do in this regard. The way I see it, that’s a clear sign of growing pains in general.

garretble

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Hopefully things will get better, and also let’s hope the “shocked face” thumbnails for the videos go away. I don’t care if the algorithm says they convert better. I skip right over.

myrrh

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Unrelated hot take but the thumbnails don’t seem as egregious as others I’ve seen, but honestly I might’ve just gotten used to them, or I pay more attention to what he’s holding or something.

On another note, I do also hope things get better. Unfortunately, I’m disappointed in Linus’s own response in the video as he still victimized himself, but he said some things that seemed genuine after. Half the stuff about Billet labs I found reasonable but the rest seemed half-baked. Hats off to the rest of his staff and his CEO though—they were very genuine and not shy about taking accountability. I appreciate the CEO taking charge as he’s a much more sane voice than Linus in my opinion, and I appreciate Yvonne standing up.

ewe

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Yeah, while it is annoying, I know there is a whole art form to those thumbnail images and there are other people I respect that are worse about them. I think they've talked pretty openly about how those are simply the annoying part of being in the YouTube business and if they didn't, they would just be leaving views on the table.

garretble

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I’ve heard this, too, but I’m glad MBKHD’s thumbnails are largely not in this style. He’s our last hold out! (And he seems to be doing just fine.)

altima_neo

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I dont get why everyone is so up in arms about thumbnails. I watch the videos not the thumbnails!

But yeah, I was wondering if the new CEO would say anything about the matter, and I was surprised to see him actually say something. Even more surprised to se Yvonne speaking out too. Both her and the CEO seem to have basically told Linus to fuck off for a bit, cuz hes only making things worse.

myrrh

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Oh yeah, 100% with Yvonne and Teren. It’s kinda like Teren’s like “you hired me as CEO, now let me be CEO and back off.”

delitomatoes

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Worst thing is you never know the topic of the video, I cant tell if it's about PC building some random gadget review, some nonsense humour piece. The only one I wanted to see was Intel's $5000 build your tech thing. For PC building I go to other channels now

DoomBot5

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Skip the video and come back in a day. They actually change the title after 24 hours or so.

Anders429

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Really hits weird when a video talking about something so serious has a thumbnail that looks like it could be on a video about Fortnite.

PmMeFrogMemes

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And the title is an ambiguous clickbait question. Bad look for sure

avater

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here for you: https://lemmy.world/post/1569801 An addon to make thumbnails good again.

SaveComengs

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get the dearrow extension

garretble

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I do about 95% of my YouTubing on my iPad or AppleTV. I’m not sure I’d be able to utilize any extensions, unfortunately.

SaveComengs

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it really annoys me that apple doesn't allow non safari browsers, it's the one thing stopping me from using my beautiful iPhone 5s as my main phone

tonarinokanasan

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I had never heard about this, this is absolutely awesome

SaveComengs

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I know, I just found out about it recently because it's made by the same devs as sponsorblock

BrightCandle

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This has been coming for a long time. I have had issues with Linus and his channel for a long time including making a complaint about breach of advertising standards in Canada (which resulted in a change forced by the ASA). They have become the model of how to make money on Youtube but they do so in such an unethical way where they make or invest in competing products that they also review. They have never had any appearance of journalistic standards or integrity, they don't publish errata or corrections and they make a lot of mistakes and the abusive reviews have been going on for a long time.

I am not surprised to find sexual harassment as well as undue pressure being applied in the workplace. It all centres and comes from the Narcissist at the centre of it who has built a media group off the back of civil law breaches repeatedly and continues to push the limits.

Labs was a terrible idea mostly because Linus and his media group will corrupt the results for his personal profit and he and Yvonne are the only ones making big bucks in all this. This has been building for a very long time, the lack of basic morality has been on display since the beginning.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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They have been misleading millions of people for years and getting away with it. I hope this company is done. There have to be consequences for this kind of behavior.

What Gamers Nexus did should be the standard. Serious reviewers should check on each others work and point out errors on regular basis. It's the only way to get rid of corrupt channels like Linus Tech Tips and I suspect they were just one of many.

Auli

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Except I watch for entertainment and gamers nexus is boring.

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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It is possible to be entertaining and ethical at the same time. Someone else will take their place.

LakesLem

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Ah, colour me surprised that the spammiest channel on YouTube, which is practically unwatchable without Sponsorblock and has always been my go-to example use case for the addon (which Linus deems "Piracy"), turns out to have incredibly shady advertising practices. And incredibly shady practices in general.

oryx

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Permanently Deleted

Zatore

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You seem to be delusional. Do you know what fatigue is?

Buffalox

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I believe some of his early videos were basically undisclosed advertisements. They were so over the top positive, it just didn't feel right. I've had his channels blocked on YouTube for a while now. I simply don't trust anything coming from him.

BrightCandle

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That was their early model. They took money for a product and produced a positive video on it. That was the channel its how it got started and grew. They always used weasel words (still do) like a company "hooked them up" which meant they received a free product and payment to produce this video. They were actually caught properly on this on a series of AMD sponsored videos which were so incredibly positive and glossing over the issues and AMD explained the videos had been paid for. It turned out that was how the channel worked, they got paid for positive reviews.

Nowadays sponsorship is better declared (because the ASA required that of them) but conflicts of interests aren't. There is also the appearance of a lot of fraud too where free products are being placed into their homes. The Intel extreme series is a prime example of something that looks super dodgy and maybe a tax dodge. Right now its hard to prove something criminal is happening, based on their history however its not unreasonable to suspect it is.

Buffalox

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I think they are using workarounds, for instance they get paid for worthless advertisement, and then incidentally review your products nicely, which is the real advertisement.

They fooled me once, which is how I found out the review must have been fake. After that it became pretty easy to see other examples.

It's seems obvious to me that Linus reviews are according to what he is paid above all else.

BrightCandle

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Even if its not so direct there is a still a problem. Intel is giving each of the employees one after the other $5000 worth of whatever upgrade they want to their gaming gear. Almost everyone there is reaching the benefits of this Intel sponsorship personally. Sure looks like a bribe. If you start doing such a sponsorship deal the only way to remove the conflict of the interest and ethical problems is to never review anything involving Intel, because the entire staff is receiving significant bribes from that company.

It doesn't have to be as direct as getting paid for a sponsored video to bias a review more positively, they are so unethical in the deals they make they will happily maintain the appearance of taking bribes and review products from that company. Its by no means the only example of this given the amount of free tech that has gone into Linus' personal house that received a nice thumbs up only to be replaced 6 months later often on the quiet. Its everywhere in everything they are doing, companies are throwing goods and money at them and they are all taking it home and then the next week doing a review on products from that company.

Chocrates

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Misleading? Have they been lying about their reviews?

Buffalox

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Yes. When a review is in fact an advertisement and not a review, it's lie to call it a review without disclosing they are paid to make it, which makes it an advertisement.

They fooled me once about 8-9 years ago. After that it has been pretty obvious to me, that it was not just a 1 off.

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

The company has currently paused all production to improve its review processes, and CEO Terren Tong tells The Verge an outside investigator will be hired to examine the harassment allegations.

“We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” said Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke.

According to Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips reviewed a copper cooling block from Billet Labs on the wrong GPU, then auctioned it off at a recent fan event without the company’s permission.

The afternoon after Gamers Nexus posted its video, Sebastian began responding to concerned fans in the Linus Tech Tips forums.

Reeve went on to accuse the company of barring her from videos after she reported being “grabbed multiple times in the office” and being told to “calm my tits” and “stop being such a bitch.”

He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

BallShapedMan

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Good bot

IceMan

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The grabbing part is clear - but “calm your tits” and “stop being such a bitch”? At least where I live both are gender neutral, first one even used most often male to male. Am I missing something? Would it not have been sexual harassment but just toxic culture if it was another cuss? E.g. when you say “motherfucker” you don’t actually mean “somebody having sexual relations with one’s mother”. Can somebody with more knowledge about US legal system explain this to me?

virtualras

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You can make a distinction between gender when it comes to the phrases. To my male friends, yeah. Depending on the situation I can see myself saying both of those phrases. But to my female friends? They don’t mean the same thing.

“Calm your tits” is a maybe depending on the circumstances and how close we are, but never in an aggressive tone.

“Stop being such a bitch”, downright out. Never to those friends. So many better ways to phrase it depending on the circumstances.

And finally, all of these were to my friends, NOT A FUCKING COWORKER. You never say these things to coworkers. The whole goal of team management is promoting teamwork, these phrase foster nothing but animosity. I try to say anything even remotely close to those phrases and my ass will be out of a job before lunch (and for good reason).

In terms of legal, IANAL, but as far as I know you would have to present this to a jury or judge, and the bar that they’d have to pass in the US is “more likely than not”. In other words: “is it more likely than not that this comment was made to harass the individual based on their sex?” Pretty low bar to cross.

Also, LTT is a Canadian company, so the above paragraph is kinda moot to the whole situation.

TL;DR: those phrases are rude to women, LTT would likely have a rough time in court (if they were a US company)

IceMan

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Ah okay, thank you for explanation! Also I (wrongly) thought they are from US - thanks again :)

fiah

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If I said either of those things to any of the women I work with I'd likely get fired before the end of the week. And they really do not want to fire me

CanadianNomad

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Permanently Deleted

Mishmash2000

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Yikes, after reading that thread in its entirety I unsubbed from their channel. They will have to do a LOT to get me to ever come back. I'm not sure if that's even possible?

Sonofliberty776

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It has to do with how the parties involved interpret it. Between friends I have said the same things, but not everyone will be comfortable with these things said to them and can even interpret them maliciously. They can be seen as workplace harassment for this reason.

GravityAce

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In the US, the person experiencing the harrasment gets to define whether they felt it was sexual in nature.

AssholeDestroyer

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Forget about the legal system, saying those things to a coworker will get you fired from pretty much any job in the US. LMG is Canadian BTW.

MuThyme

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Permanently Deleted

Freesoftwareenjoyer

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But Steve didn't contact Linus to give him time to prepare an explanation in which he would blame everyone else and say how sad he is! It's just a poor $100M company, they are just humans and they make mistakes. :D

Rentlar

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ngl you had me in the first half. It's too early in the morning for me.

FrasseFisk

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Yeah but sometimes you have to make up some facts to base your opinions on!

CeeBee

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Someone replied to their apology video saying "I'm not entirely convinced that Madison isn't half making this up for attention." Followed by "as someone who works long hours in manual labor" then uses that as a reason the workers shouldn't be complaining about their work schedules.

I'm convinced half of LTT's fans are incels.

SinningStromgald

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If it's half as bad as the allegations some heads should be rolling when this is all said and done. Otherwise this is just a PR patch job. But for now, we wait.

scarabic

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It’s great to see that this has bumped up one level in the media and is actually getting wider attention than just us YT and forum nerds.

Linus thought he could just swipe back at this and make it go away but not. this. time.

RocketBoots

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Man, when I was a teen shopping for parts on NCIX, the last thing I'd have imagined was that the new-release hype guy was going to eventually get his own behind the music. Yet here we are. Life is truly strange. When I imagine purgatory, it looks like the inside of one of those stores. I can still hear the ticket thing.

cornstar

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In for the comments