Transcript
Linus Sebastian (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling. Wherever you sell with Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period@shopify.com tech all lowercase, that's shopify.com SL tech Hey everyone, before we start our pre WAN show topic today, I'd like to acknowledge a couple folks. I'd like to acknowledge our team who work so hard to deliver outstanding content to our community. And second, I'd like to acknowledge our community. No one's perfect. Yes, even us. And for as long as Linus Media Group has existed, you guys have been there to help us. You've held us accountable when we've gone astray, and you've also supported us when an attack against us is unfair and it's time for someone else to be held accountable. Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus took us out of context again, and I can't keep ignoring this sort of thing. Linus, recently, in a WAN show episode, said the following regarding why they did.
Luke Lafreniere (1:14)
Not make a video when they found.
Linus Sebastian (1:16)
Out about the Way Honey works years ago in response to how he believed he might be perceived if he had raised awareness to Hani's actions when his team discovered them. Everyone's mad at me. It's that simple. The I'm spreading the word for the smaller creators. That argument doesn't save me there, and it's not gonna save me if I tell people to uninstall this extension that gets them a better deal so that smaller creators can get their affiliate revenue. Are you kidding me? There is just no way that I make that video and I don't end up hanging from the nearest tree. Well, that's the video we're making right now. And if that were to result in backlash like he thinks it would, then so be it. Even if we ignore how disingenuous it is to compare the climate today and what we know today to the climate years ago when we originally dropped our Honey sponsorship, our regular viewers will know that I provided additional context that dramatically changes the meaning of that quote. I mean, I don't expect everyone to agree with my viewpoint. It's very clear that not everybody does. But what I do expect is for it to be fairly represented. And this particular instance of misquoting is bad enough that many from Steve's own community have used words to describe it, like disappointing, misleading, disingenuous, and strawman. To my knowledge, no retraction has been issued, even though I believe it is unlikely that the volume of comments about this went unnoticed by Steve and his team. You guys may remember another video Steve made about us back in August of 2023, but what you might have missed is that his treatment of us then was part of the same pattern of poor ethics and misrepresentation. To be clear, many points in his video were valid, but many others were not, and it was due to fundamental flaws in his approach. Not careless or sloppy flaws, but objectively unethical un journalistic flaws. You shouldn't take my word for that. While I do often report on things and I do my best to act in the community's interest, I'm not a journalist. So why don't we Instead look@ethicsandjournalism.org they have some good articles on subjects like bad news, bias, and right to respond. Or maybe we could look to the BBC. You can pick your poison. The point is that while not every publication has exactly the same rules, are plenty of helpful resources out there that outline the generally accepted standards and ethical responsibilities of a journalist. It's clear, reading any of them, that Steve's approach in recent years falls short in numerous ways. If you prefer a video summary, here's a convenient one from Dr. Ian Cutrus of More Than Moore. The story Gamus Nexus provides is one specifically about Linus Media Group, which changes the nature of such a topic. For example, one part of ethical investigative journalism is, unless it's uncovering an explicit crime or break of the law, reaching out to get a formal response in advance. Gamers Nexus did it with principled technologies and that blew up. Gamers Nexus did it with Newegg and that blew up. Somehow those companies got special treatment, but Linus Media Group did not. This isn't me sticking up for Linus Media Group here, but I'd be interested to hear the reason for the disparity. Steve in his update video explicitly states he doesn't have to ask permission, but that's not the point here. Reaching out to Linus Media Group wouldn't stop you from posting your video, just like it didn't stop you posting him posting the principal technologies or Newegg videos. The precedent set for the last 20 years of tech journalism and 100/plus years of investigative journalism is that you at least reach out. Ian's critique was carefully worded and I don't blame him given the climate at the time. But it was both extremely valid and it was pointed enough that Steve felt compelled to respond to it. Ironically with a rushed late night ramble fest that was so poorly received that he pulled it down before I even got a chance to finish watching it back then. Thankfully there are re uploads of the video if you look for them, but in a nutshell, Steve spent about 20 minutes rationalizing that decades of journalistic best practices around right to reply simply don't apply to him. Felt a little ironic coming from someone who has accused me of gaslighting in the past. Now he did issue a sort of retraction via a community post that you can still find on the channel where he committed to republish that video at a future date, but he said that it would be within a broader channel update, so I'm not actually sure if that ever happened. And either way what he didn't do is retract his flawed arguments, only the video where he made them. I say this because you can still find many of these arguments on his secondary GN mini site in the ethics statement section. Now obviously there are some valid policies in here, but many of the others pretty much boil down to Steve's personal moral code rather than the standard journalistic code. And I'll expand on that a bit later, but the short version is that no reputable journalist would validate his arbitrary justification for his own conflicts of interest or his convoluted no contact policy that he used to justify his failure to reach out to us for commenting as part of our right to respond. Now, some folks don't seem to understand why this is so important. I have seen lots of speculation that Linus was just upset because Steve cleverly didn't give him a chance to weasel out of legitimate criticism. But that is not the case. We have proven over the years again and again we welcome constructive criticism and and we go out of our way to maintain open communication channels with our community. Like through our sponsor, excuse me, through our Sponsor concern section of our forum, and through our incredible ECC squad who lends us their expertise at multiple stages of our production pipeline. No right to respond matters because of the impact that it can have on your accuracy. By taking a single source and for his own reasons refusing to fact check their misrepresentations, Steve made multiple critical errors in his coverage of the Billet Lab situation. Now look, I know this example is from two years ago, but it's one that I'm obviously familiar with and it very clearly illustrates the way that Steve believed and still believes that he should be allowed to just avoid inconvenient data sources when he crafts his narratives. First up, Steve missed that Billet originally gifted the block to us we were under no obligation to return it. He missed that they told us explicitly that it should work with a 4090 before we attempted it. He missed that Billet told us they were comfortable with us publishing the underperforming results as long as we put it in context. And finally, Steve missed that the block only went into our charity auction because of an internal miscommunication that left the block marked as Keeper, a mistake that I took action on within literal minutes of finding out. Now, I acknowledge that I didn't handle the situation perfectly, but I think it is undeniable that these omissions and errors are significant and that they've done significant, possibly irreparable damage to my reputation, to my company, and to my finances. To be clear, I'm only pointing out the finances because it's such an important factor in cases of libel and defamation. As I stated recently when I was discussing the Honey class action, I'm not a litigious person. I have no intention of filing any kind of suit because a it's really hard to say if the line to defamation has been clearly crossed, and B it would be a giant waste of time and money for everyone involved. I only bring it up to underscore the gravity of the situation. The thing is, words mean what they mean, and while morality is a personal judgment, journalistic ethics is not. It's determined by collaboration and consensus between peers in the industry. Look, if Steve wants to do his own thing and call himself a YouTuber with strong moral fiber, that's his opinion and he's entitled to it. And you're entitled to agree or disagree. But if he wants to use words like ethics or investigative journalism, then there are objective standards that he needs to uphold and he doesn't get to decide when they're important and when they're not. Now, I believe that Steve is aware of these distinctions which suggest that he is either ignoring his knowledge because he has failed to properly understand it, or because he is dishonest. I have no evidence to suggest that he is not smart enough to understand these principles. What I do have experience with personally is his dishonesty. The misquote of me in the Honey Lawsuit video that forced me to address this is self evident, but it's the rationalization for not reaching out about billit that paints a more complete picture. For starters, he asserts that the information presented in his the problem with Linus Media Group video was already public knowledge. Some of it was, some of it clearly wasn't. Billet Lab's representations of our private communication were not public knowledge and as we demonstrated in our response, they were not provided in good faith or with the appropriate context. Had he reached out for clarification, I feel it would have been clear both to himself and to his audience that the events that led to the block being auctioned were an honest accident caused by a miscommunication. I think it also would have been obvious that any perception that I behaved like a thief or a liar is not supported by the facts. It also would have been clear that some retractions and corrections were required in order to address the information that I provided. To my knowledge, no such action has been taken and the original video is still up. Since we're at this, I would also be very curious to see receipts for the claims that we have a history of failure to resolve issues or unprofessionalism in prior communications. Okay. GN further writes, we previously had non public contact with this organization LMG here about similar matters that were not resolved satisfactorily or wherein we sometimes were the recipients of aggressive messaging pertaining to review Top topics. Sorry, topics. That is an extraordinary claim that I believe requires extraordinary evidence. I'm not going to deny I've had my fair share of cranky days in my life. It is possible also that he could be referring to another individual who worked here. But I dug through every DM and email that I could find with Steve. I probably don't have all of them. I have switched phones many times in my life, but I can't find any evidence to support this. I'm not perfect. So I want to make it up front right here and say that if I acted unprofessionally or aggressively at any point, that was not my intention and I'm truly sorry. But also, the whole thing just doesn't make any sense. Like if you stop and think about it, if he reached out for comment and I actually responded in the manner that he alleges, I might with dishonesty or aggression, publishing that response, right? That would be great supporting material for his expose. So even if the argument that he doesn't need to reach out because I could be rude in return held up ethically, which it doesn't. It also doesn't hold up logically. And the same goes for his claims that I could somehow turn it into an opportunity to mislead. Mislead who? Assuming his evidence and conclusions are solid, any deceptive action that I took in public would again give him further ammunition to make his case. And unless he's afraid that I could somehow bamboozle him in private, the most that I could do there is offer an explanation or context, both of which could only help him if his intent was truly to provide an accurate account. Unfortunately, as many of you have come to realize after the latest honey thing, I don't believe that that was ever the intent. Now look, I know that the first criticism of this segment is going to be There goes Linus again, all emotional defensive. But what would you do? What would you have me do? I apologized for the errors that we've made and I kept my mouth shut about this stuff for ages in the interest of moving past. This is not working. And like this isn't some random comment on Reddit, guys. This is an influencer with massive reach misrepresenting me on an ongoing basis. How long should I stay silent to atone for my real sins? And how many times should I be unfairly attacked before I'm allowed to get defensive? Thing is, if I allow myself to be misrepresented, that opens the door for someone else to be misrepresented. At some point, I'm sure you guys can agree, it becomes necessary to stand up for yourself. I am not saying I'm perfect, spoiler, I'm super not. But there are numerous conflicts of interest around Gamers Nexus covering us in any way, which he well knows because he lists them on his website. And a token gesture like forgoing the AdSense revenue on one video falls a little flat when you compare what can be gained through subscriber growth AdSense revenue on future videos, not to mention from elevating one's own reputation and brand at the cost of a competitor. Over the last year and a half, I've made sometimes quite difficult efforts to put aside my personal feelings and move on, in spite of my well founded concerns about Steve's impartiality. Not to mention the painful personal history some of which I just laid out. We, including me personally, have made an active effort to just go back to normal. Start shouting out gamers Nexus. We've done it multiple times for their stories of reporting, and so we should when people do good work, we as an industry should praise it. But that should be a two way street. The honest truth is I don't actually know what Steve's issue with me is today. My last message to him was on the day he published the expose and I never got a response. I will read it here so we can all be on the same page. A journalist might have reached out for comment to get valuable context first, but we both know that once again, this wasn't about making the most accurate video your glass house is showing here. I'm referring, of course, to the analogy of throwing stones in a glass house. Scaling beyond a few dudes is a big challenge, and I really hope that one day you get there. 1. I still think that even if your judgment is clouded right now by the giant conflict of interest you have around reporting on us, you your heart's in the right place and that it would be good for the industry. 2. I think it'll be good for your content and for your audience for you to have a broader perspective. I'll be moving forward as normal and won't be participating in any kind of nonsense public sniping. It'd be good for views or whatever, but I'm pretty focused on growing the company and our test capabilities and our team. You're still welcome at future LTX events and we'd be happy to resume working together in good faith if you ever decide again that working together as pressure is good for the industry. Until then, Linus, what I said holds true today, including the part at the end. I want to move forward, but that's going to take some work from both parties, not just me. So I'm going to shift gears and the next part will be directed to Steve, who was sent an advance copy of my letter today, which he has responded to, kind of along with a request for comment on his apparent personal challenges around covering us objectively. Steve on WAN show Today I'll be doing a segment outlining some of the ethical and journalistic issues with your content that I have observed personally and that I have seen raised by the community, I will be especially focused on how they have impacted your coverage of me and my company because I'm most familiar with the relevant facts. But these issues appear to run deeper and I believe they could be impacting your ability to be objective overall, something I know the community values greatly. There will be a particular focus on your stance around right of reply since it affects accuracy so much, and there will also be some discussion around misquoting, as in the recent Honey video, as well as your ability to address or use your inability to address your clear conflicts of interest when it comes to covering an entity that you have chosen to view as a direct competitor rather than as a collaborator or peer as you did in the past. If you have some comments and evidence on what breakdowns caused your inaccurate coverage of us in the past, why you seem to find it so challenging to cover us objectively, and what steps you plan to make to rectify these issues in the future. I would be happy to include your thoughts in this segment. The segment will also include the following letter that is addressed to you. Steve we do our best around here to do what we believe is right and to stand up for the consumer. That leads to us doing journalisty things sometimes, and I understand basic journalistic principles, but I'm not a journalist and I've never claimed to be. The reason I'm sending this to you then is not because I'm some journalist reaching out for comment, but out of respect and because I was once a collaborator and supporter, and I hope to be again someday. For that to happen, though, I do have some requests. Everyone is human and we all make mistakes, but I believe that for you to become the journalist you aspire to be, there are some errors in both your approach and in your coverage that are large enough to merit correction. Obviously, not everything needs to be pulled your methods aside. It's clear you were right about a lot of things in August of 23, but it's also clear that between the conjecture, editorialization and what I hope are simply errors rather than lies, a number of retractions are in order both on that piece and in your other coverage. This isn't just for me, but also for your community who looks to you to do the right thing. As for the personal side of things, I can't ask you to like me. You clearly disagree on a personal moral basis with some things I do which of them are real and which of them are performative. I'm actually not sure anymore, but it doesn't matter. That's your personal compass and you got to follow it. What does matter is treating others in the industry with respect and being prepared to be held accountable the same way you hold others accountable. Traditional journalism, while a competitive battlefield, has no absolute authority and is quite often a brotherhood with shared goals that hold each other accountable to mutually agreed upon standards. Standards. It's not a brutal free for all. So as part of being a contributing member of the Tech brotherhood, I expect you to be open to critique in the same way that you expect others to be open to critique. I also expect that if you cover us publicly in the future, you do so with honesty, impartiality, and proper disclosure of your numerous conflicts of interest. With that said, regardless of your motives in 23, your actions did serve as a wake up call for us to supercharge the changes that we were slow rolling and for that I'm thankful. Now it's time for your wake up call, should you choose to accept it. If you can't put your biases aside, simply recusing yourself is an option, but it might require some further retractions since you've claimed in the past that covering us is so very important because of our business's relevance to the tech industry. Well, if that's no longer the case, then any snipes that relied on that for justification probably need to go too. I understand you may not want to rebuild this bridge, but I still want you to know that while Gamers Nexus LLC is every bit as much of a for profit business as Linus Media Group Incorporated, I, Linus Sebastian the individual, still see you, Stephen Burke the individual, as a colleague and potential future collaborator. Because the reality of it is personal feelings aside, we both fight for the same team, the consumers and the community. A community that is stronger if we just cut the tribalism and work together. I've always said that a rising tide lifts all ships and that we all benefit from more interest in our hobby and more contributors to our community. I have always encouraged our viewers to follow multiple outlets and get multiple perspectives, including yours. You used to tell me that you agreed with those things. I hope you can again, because this is going to be especially important as we navigate the weirdness around benchmarking machine learning assisted cards like the upcoming 50 series. So in summary, I welcome valid, constructive good faith two way feedback. But when I told you a year ago that I had no interest in public sniping matches, that was the truth. Our community in tech used to stand out as one that embraced collaboration and rejected beef. I would like that again. I chose to make my statement as a segment on WAN show and a clip on our clips channels rather than a dedicated video in hopes of finding a balance between sharing my side finally and igniting drama for views. So can we forget the past and move forward? See you at Computex, Linus. Now I'd like to come back to addressing you all for once in the history of online communities. Guys, I beg of you, this is not. Ooh, shots fired. Do not get into a mudslinging match over this. Continue the good work you do holding creators accountable. But this is not, and it should never be, LTT versus gn, Us versus Them. Some folks are going to insist on interpreting it that way, but I believe that the majority, the rational viewers should be able to see the truth of what I'm saying, even if they don't always agree with the source and see the importance of moving on. As for the ones that can't do that, look, if their viewpoint is closed, we gain nothing but arguing with them except wasting our energy. Energy we need to power RTX 5090s. So let's rise above it. So with that in mind then, funny memes inbounds. I like humor as much as anyone, but if Steve wants to move on then I would like to respectfully request an end to the GN bashing posts. For that matter, any other publication in our various community gathering places, YouTube comments, Discord, Reddit and the LTT forum, and any that I haven't thought of. I'd like us to be the change we want to see in the world. Thank you you guys. One last note. I know that we did announce that we were going to launch our Mod Mat this week, a project, by the way, that we kicked off long before the August controversy, and that was created in collaboration with modrite, the owner of the Mod Mat patent who's been making them since before anyone in the creator space got the idea. But even even though our Mod Mat has nothing to do with Steve, I felt it would be tacky for us to have a long discussion about an important topic like this, then immediately pitch to a sales pitch, our pivot to a sales pitch for a product that competes with one of his. So we're pushing the launch to next week. Now, with that unpleasant business out of the way, welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show for you guys this week. I went on the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, so I'm going to be talking about that. I had. Dude, I had the time of my life.