- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.
To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.
The investigation found that:
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Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.
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Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
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Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
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There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.
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Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.
In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.
With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.
Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.
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It’s unbelievable how much hate for LTT there is on this platform. I like them. No one is perfect. This investigation from a third party is a good thing and the findings are good as well. The statement about defamation, I feel, is warranted because the ex-employee made a ton of very damning claims and really hurt their image. The Fediverse is a great example of this damage.
The hate from this community towards LTT is extreme and unfounded.
I’m glad this report showed their innocence but I unsubscribed after the GN/Billet Labs thing.
I might check them out again later but that situation made me kind of uncomfortable with supporting them
fwiw, they changed their process and output amount a lot after that
According to who?
Tbh I don’t trust anyone that reacted the way Linus did in response to GN’s investigation or that only changes things once they get called out on it publically.
Okay, let’s go back in time, gamers Nexus just releases the video. You’re Linus. How do you respond?
If I were Linus I’d stay as far the fuck away from any investigation as possible if for no other reason than having anything to do with it would sow doubt in any conclusion favorable to LTT.
No one should trust the conclusions of an investigation paid for by the accused any more than you should trust an inspector that was hired by the real estate agent selling you a house and for the exact same reasons.
… the investigation has nothing to do with the GamersNexus video, so your reply is irrelevant to the parent comment. But since you posted, I’ll take the dive: you really think it’s better they don’t investigate? If you were Linus, you’re saying you would rather bury your head in the sand about potential employee abuse because your reputation is too important? Sounds like your morals are worse than LTT.
I saw that which is why I’m willing to give them another chance. I really don’t think Linus is a scummy guy or anything, they just grew too fast without thinking.
I haven’t had a strong desire to get back into the channel but if a video pops up on my feed again, I might resub.
personally, I think they handled the situation the best way the could.
Gamers Nexus had genuine good criticism, and they took it, took a moment to pause and implemented fixes.
Mistakes happen. And they learned from them
I agree but it did shake my confidence enough to make me back off. I watched LTT mostly for entertainment (GN for news and reviews) and I’ve since “filled that spot” so it’ll probably only make its way back into my watch list once a different thing falls off.
I mean they hired a CEO, which is probably what they needed (somebody who actually knows how to run a company).
The hate from this community towards LTT is extreme and unfounded.
Are you just going to ignore Linus and the companies abhorrent response to the situation? That alone should make anyone lose any respect they had for them.
Yeah, same for me. Linus’ response was so stereotypicaly defensive, dismissive and shitty, I lost all trust. Couple that with GN’s fact checking of LMGs sloppyness, and I was done ever watching their channel.
I don’t have LTT, I just find it worthless. Their content is frequently shallow, I dislike the presentation (clickbait-y titles and thumbnails, annoying segways, etc), and I find Linus himself annoying. Then again, I do watch their content from time to time, if they have something worth watching. That’s not very often, but they do make some decent content occasionally. I rarely care about PC shenanigans, but sometimes I’ll watch Jays2Cents if I want some of that (he’s perhaps more annoying than Linus, but it is what it is, I guess).
I mostly watch Gamers Nexus for reviews, news, and benchmarks. I find the delivery much more in-line with what I’d like, though I find Steve a bit long-winded so I tend to skip a bunch in the videos. But the content is high quality.
To each their own though. My coworker really like LTT and went to LTX recently, so I’ll watch a video here and there for water-cooler discussions.
An investigation from a neutral third party is a good thing, but in this case LTT hired the third party investigator so the investigators obviously have an incentive to find LTT innocent of all charges since LTT is paying them through Linus Media Group (LMG). It’s better than nothing, but it’s like when there’s an internal affairs investigation into police misconduct… by the police… Nobody believes it and for good reason.
Who would be paying for an investigation if not LMG? Firms don’t hire auditors/investigators to give them a rosy report. They want the truth so they can adjust their processes so they don’t spend more money on regulatory actions/fines.
If the report is bad they just don’t release it to the public. But a third party audit lying to a firm to make them look good does not provide value. The company isn’t biased just because they are being paid by LMG, that’s just not how it works. LMG could just say they investigated themselves and found no wrong doing if that was their objective.
Saying that you don’t believe the report because the company investigating it was paid for by PMG shows that you are biased more than they are.
Firms don’t hire auditors/investigators to give them a rosy report.
That’s exactly why firms do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwbq9OsHvp4
But a third party audit lying to a firm to make them look good does not provide value.
Why not? Making them look good IS providing value according to the client that pays tha audit firm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTxt96DwaFk
If the absolute auditing giant EY doesn’t say anything bad on behalf of their clients, this firm doing it is certainly within realms of possibility.
If the law firm bungled the investigation, it would affect their reputation and future business. Wouldn’t that mean they have a monetary incentive not to favor LMG in their investigation?
Bro, CEOs pay them to not find things. Finding things would make CEOs not want to pay them
That’s…no…that’s not how this works.
Of course LTT hired the investigator, who else would hire an investigator?
The law firm would be putting themselves on the line for LTT if there was any further legal action, or if the subject of the investigation brought forth more evidence.
I doubt LTT is big enough to give them the incentive to do that.
Hiring a third party investigator is not the same as internal affairs. Internal affairs have only one client and little incentive to bite the hand that feeds them.
If LTT goes down after this and it comes out that the law firm missed something major or outright lied, it would call into question every investigation they’ve done (at least recently) and destroy their reputation.
That’s not how this works. Maybe if you get some business consultants, but this ain’t it. Just because you hire them yourself, doesn’t mean that they’ll fall in line with your wishes.
I just don’t like Linus because he’s annoying and abuses clickbait thumbnails and titles.
Some of their videos (from other people than himself) are good, but usually I’ll avoid LTT content all together.
For that reason I’m not really sure what happened, and I don’t really care.
I just don’t like Linus because he’s annoying and abuses clickbait thumbnails and titles.
You can blame Google for that. It’s just what you have to do to be successful on the platform, and Google does nothing about it. Veritaseum made a whole video about it.
Have you ever looked at the DeArrow extension?
The defamation statement was maybe a bit much, but also warranted. People need to know that just throwing accusations out there that are just plainly not true is actually legally problematic.
I also don’t get why people feel this is “threatening people who want to speak up in the future”.
If your “speaking up” has merit, it’s not defarmation. Plain and simple.
Companies make mistakes (and aparently some were made in this case, and dealt with).
But I find it concerning that people also just blindly trust any and all claims that individuals make about these kind of situations. Believe that they are telling the truth, but also verify that this is actually true. The latter part is important. Blind trust is as damaging as not doing anything at all about a proble, There are people out there who get laid off for legitimate reasons, and try to retaliate for that. Even by claiming BS reasons.
I wish you never have to find yourself facing a corporation. The power imbalance is so massive that you feel like an ant, it’s the most disempowering experience anyone could face in legal terms. LTT could destroy people’s lives and it would be decades if ever, for them to ever have to face consequences.
This is why I always default to believing the individual over the corporation. The corporation has no soul, no heart, no conscience and no remorse. Imagine being a person who wants to speak up about something else you know for certain happened, but a million dollar law firm just put in writing that such kind of thing didn’t happen. You have no recourse or power, it’s your word against a literal army of lawyers. Regardless of whether the investigation was good or not. The result still has a silencing effect.
As with corporate mediators though, wouldn’t such investigation companies have a financial incentive to favor their clients, so as to improve the odds of being rehired?
Yes and no. The reason companies are hiring them is for the image of impartiality they bring. If your firm gets a reputation for just always siding with the company, regardless of what actually happened, that image gets destroyed.
Plus, I’m willing to bet that there’s not a whole lot of recurring business from individual companies for this type of service. That would kind of defeat the purpose of being the “neutral third party”.
Haven’t you seen The Big Short?
As someone who used to work in a job that involved giving companies reports they paid for, I gotta say while large auditing firms will likely defend their reputation before the company that hired them, mid and small companies will just follow the paycheck. Doesn’t look that big to me.
If you’re one of the people in this thread insisting this does nothing to exonerate LTT, what would you accept as evidence that they’re innocent? I don’t follow YouTube drama much at all, I just think it’s wild when people form an opinion based on on set of statements and then are never open to learning more facts about the case ever again.
Welcome to the Internet. You must be new here.
Just because we’re still astonished by people’s stupidity doesn’t mean we’re not veterans of it. People/humanity still disappoint(s) me, even though I’ve watched them/it fail each other/itself for decades now.
Nothing will. They want to see LTT fail because they made a few bad mistakes. These are the same people on the relationship forms who say “break up” at the slightest negative.
Receipts. The actual data used to come to these conclusions. I have worked with attorneys in corporate law firms in some capacity for almost 20 years and while I am not a lawyer I can confidently say they don’t take these engagements to find the truth. They do it to prep for a case and to build a chain of events that show they are acting in good faith increasing their chances filing a motion to dismiss while identifying liability and building a defense. The one point they conceded regarding her claims that they lied in onboarding the attorneys are basically saying if that case gets filed there is a high chance a judge will find it has merit and move it forward. Idk of Canada court system is the same but in America thats corporate lawyer for youd probably pay a settlement or damages on this point.
What if that standard were to be applied to the people making the assertions? Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the accuser, not the accused? Seems kinda backwards the way you described it, someone can just say some things about you and now you are obligated to release internal documents/chat logs/emails or whatever else to prove their assertions wrong?
No they’re not obligated to release anything, and neither is she. In a situation like this its up to the observer to form their own opinions. People will take each parties past and future actions in account as well. It is very believable to me that LTT has a toxic culture based purely on the upload schedule and past conflict with other reviewers and product startups. I think most of the claims were descriptive enough to be believable although some may have been exaggerated and painted by the whistleblowers past experience such as the bait and switch onboarding. My opinion doesn’t really matter though, im just going to stop interacting with LTT based on how theyve reacted and conducted themselves over multiple public incidents.
Generally speaking, the employer has all the power and own the records which would prove the whistleblower right or wrong and it is much more difficult to retain that information as an employee. The power imbalance in the relationship and the role of the company as custodian of records here is what changes the expectation. Power imbalance is what has caused high profile people with money and fame to get away with bad behavior for thousands of years so society is working to address that now. Not going to be perfect at first but its a good start
So basically they hired a law firm that gets paid by corporations to dissolve evidence and destroy lawsuits and they “didn’t find anything”
Right, another day in capitalist heaven
Though that is fruit for thought I can not find any information to back op that claim. I did however found articles about them defending remote working. It’s a bit too easy to me to throw out claims such as this without backing it up with facts. But if you do have any other examples I would love to read them.
I did not do any research but to me the comment you replied to made me pause and think for a bit.
If someone immediately assumes that a third party investigator is just being paid off by the firm they’re investigating, how is that firm supposed to prove their “innocence” to someone like that? A second investigator could just get a paycheck aswell, so that doesn’t change anything. They obviously can’t just publish the relevant information for privacy reasons.
What else are they supposed to do? I think that a certain amount of mistrust is good, especially when it comes to things where money and/or reputation is on the line, but the closer you get to personal relationships the more harmful unwarranted mistrust can be. Idk why I’m writing this reply to you, its more directed at the original comment poster, but ig I’m continuing on a tangent
It’s hard to trust a firm that is explicitly being paid by the company they’re investigating. I could be convinced that they are actually a neutral third party and that their investigation was unbiased if they had a track record of finding fault with their clients a significant portion of the time. (I haven’t done the research to see if that’s the case.)
However, you have to ask yourself - how many companies would choose to hire a firm which has that track record? Wouldn’t you pick one more likely to side with you?
The way to restore credibility is to have an actually independent third party investigation. Firm chosen by the accuser, perhaps. Or maybe something like binding arbitration. Even better, a union that can fight for the employees on somewhat even footing with the company.
Honestly, the best evidence they could provide to someone like that is suing Madison for defamation and winning. But they don’t want that, I don’t want that, and I’m sure you don’t want that either. It would also look mega bad for LTT. Which is why I think they mentioned that they could sue in the post, but chose not to.
And it’s not like some rando is going to be invested enough to pay a 3rd party to investigate LTT without a conflict of interest being there.
Everything else kinda needs to stay locked up due to employee privacy and data protection laws. So, I honestly can’t see how they can “win”.
I will say, LTT is a big corporation, and there is a massive power deferential between them and a single person. And given how difficult it is to stand up that, especially when you’re afraid of rocking the boat and losing your job, plus how fucking annoyed I am about the Billet Labs debacle and how they responded to that. I still believe that most of what Madison said was true, or at the very least, she believes what she’s saying is true
Could someone just give us a quick summary of what LTT is accused of?
Do we know if there is a court case about it? As this would be more interesting than just a release from the company auditing them?
Personally, I clearly don’t know so much about LTT, but I love their videos.
Here is a good writeup how it started: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamers-nexus-vs-linus-tech-tips-billet-labs-review-controversy
Relevant part is this:
On August 16th, 2023, ex-LTT employee Madison Suop posted a thread on X explaining her reasons for leaving Linus Tech Tips and the kind of workplace misconduct she purportedly experienced during her time there: https://x.com/suuuoppp/status/1691693740254228741
It’s important to talk about the timing. This person waited until there was already drama with Linus tech tips and they’re very unfavorable review of the liquid cooler they put on the wrong device. Which is a f***** up review.
The dogpiled on, did not involve the labor board, made the accusations and then said I don’t want to be involved and walk away. So the investigation is not about the water cooler review, which was the initial trigger for all the media, but about the accusations that were basically dropped drive-by-style
How else were they supposed to air their accusations?
LTTA fans would have immediately gone after her for her accusations if she randomly made them. LTT fans have done this in the past.
She definitely bandwagoned, but it was likely the safest way.
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Weren’t there a few (ex?) employees that came forward shortly after the initial accusations surfaced and confirmed it was true?
I could be misremembering things but I also vaguely recall the initial accusations being backed up with receipts. Wasn’t there an Imgur album with a whole bunch of screenshots of conversations proving the accusations weren’t made up? Or am I confusing two completely different situations together?
I didn’t follow the situation super closely, and moved on and forgot about it until I saw this post.
Edit: looks like i was indeed wrong and confusing two separate situations.
If you’re referring to APrime, he did release an updated statement on Twitter/X.
Last year, I made the decision to leave LMG influenced by a series of negative emotions that clouded my judgement. So over the past few months, I’ve taken the time to apologize privately to Linus, Yvonne, and others on the team because my actions and words were unfair to them.
Throughout my five years of employment there, they’ve shown nothing but kindness and forgiveness. We’ve had our differences, but none of them justified the comments I made or the disturbances I caused after my departure.
My decision to leave was unfortunately precipitated by a challenging period in my personal life, which I felt was affecting my work. The “drama” unfolded while I was on vacation, a time when I was hoping to recharge. Instead, I returned feeling more frustrated & immediately quit.
Since then, I’ve continued with therapy, which I had started in the Spring under the company health plan, and this eventually led to a diagnosis of certain mental health conditions. I’m grateful for the support I received, as it helped me understand and address these issues.
I genuinely miss the people at LMG (though the feeling may not be mutual) & feel my motives for leaving were misguided.
However, I’ve been fortunate to work with some incredibly talented and wonderful people since, & I’m excited about the prospect having more in the future. :)
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I agree with you, it reads that way to me as well. Playing devil’s advocate, if the accused company really was innocent of these charges and it was a disgruntled / vindictive employee…I can understand them wanting to put that out there. However, considering the power imbalance here, I think it was a dumb move. They should have taken the high ground this time and held that idea in reserve. I don’t think LTT is innocent here, BTW. I don’t know how guilty or not guilty they are. The place has a bad smell to it, though.
Linus himself just seems to give off that “nice guy on camera, exact opposite behind the scenes” kind of vibe. I’ve seen him get a bit riled up on podcast videos and it really comes off like he’s holding back. Perhaps the employee’s story was all too believable from others who get that perception of him. So I could see how the defamation threat would be like him/the company to try to show “we’re really angry and could do more but we’re gonna hold our temper”.
Completely agree. His creepiness is obvious to me. Unfortunately half this community will rally behind their boy no matter what he does. It’s disappointing but not surprising. It’s never been a serious / professionally operated channel, but it’s popular with a certain demographic.
I kinda get that vibe too. But without knowing more about him, I imagine what I perceive might also just be someone who’s very confident in themselves who doesn’t necessarily care very much what others think about him. Which, Linus has built his own company from the ground up, and it has made him very wealthy, so, he has some legitimate reason for that confidence, in his competence and his f you money. I suppose that might also co-occur with easily overlooking other people’s problems, or being narcissistic though. Which is bad for a boss (e.g. Elon). Still, hard to just summarily judge without more information
Appreciate the nuanced take and you make some great points. I question his actual competence, though. I think he’s good at faking it. The channel has always lacked rigor.
The channel has always lacked rigor.
Then again, they’re doing 10-15 minuite videos on what is essentially an entertainment platform, not multiple hour PHD dissertations.
If he’s just making videos for entertainment, then stop putting up false benchmarks and bad data. People are using his videos to make expensive buying decisions, and I don’t see any disclaimers on said videos saying “this is just for entertainment purposes”.
They should have taken the high ground this time
Any time there is this big of a power imbalance they should always take the high ground. And when they don’t that’s a good sign that you shouldn’t have much respect for them.
I think part of it was the stress of the grindset that Linus running the show was getting all the staff into. Pushing out content at a regular schedule, getting sponsorships and all of that.
The whole GN saga with data accuracy and the donated cooler that made LMG look inward for a bit and improve their process was for the best I think.
The investigation to me is just one element making sure LMG weren’t getting off on the wrong foot.
I think the complainant wasn’t wrong or defamatory at all to bring up concerns because even in LTT’s channel there was a video where the front and center stars of the team comment on how stressful things can be. When there’s an implicit hierarchy imbalance (Linus can say “we’re all equals here” all he wants) but fact is there’s a leadership structure in one way or another, which can cause one to take certain treatment in different ways.
It was a necessary “drama” imo. You mentioned the stress the team was put through but also I think Linus’ ego needed to be brought down a lot. The way he talked on wan show about the cooler is like someone who thinks he is a tech god, saying something is bad is expected but outright claiming the product is worthless and will never amount to anything is just bad taste specially when you got it for free AND didn’t bother testing it properly.
One can hope this situation will bring positive lasting change to the way the company is run but also the image Linus has of himself.
specially when you got it for free
This is irrelevant IMO, getting a product for free shouldn’t impact your review at all. The issue is they didn’t test it properly, which is what people watch the video for.
That said, I like GN’s policy here: no free stuff.
I literally wrote they didnt test it properly after
Yup, and I never said you didn’t. I just pointed out that “getting something for free” should have absolutely nothing to do with the product review. The review is about the merits of the product and whether it’s worth the asking price, how much they paid for it is completely irrelevant information.
It does make it worse because by accepting a free item they have a commitment to making at the very least a decent review, they didnt have to accept it, they could have sent it back (specially considering it was their prototype, you cannot buy a product at that stage). If they bought it and decided to shove it up their ass to test how well it cools their intestines I would find it extremely weird but fuck it, they bought it and they can do w/e they want with it.
by accepting a free item they have a commitment to making at the very least a decent review
Clearly not, because they didn’t. And we wouldn’t want free stuff to require good reviews, that’s called bribery.
I’m reading “decent review” as “put in the effort to make a thorough review” instead of “good review,” and I definitely agree that by accepting the free product they should be agreeing to put some effort into the review.
I feel like the fact they paid the same party that investigated them is an obvious enough conflict of interest to dismiss this out of hand. Whether the report is actually trustworthy or not, there is an incentive to come to a conclusion that aligns with whomever paid them and that alone should make people question the conclusions being made.
Okay. So what should LTT have done?
Ignore it completely and not respond?
Invite a third party to do it. The funds could have come from crowd-sourcing.
They hired an outside firm to audit them. That’s industry best practice
As far as the payment for the outside fund, I think they would have come under even more criticism if they crowdfunded the third party investigation. And then they would still be accused of having undue influence, because they would have chosen the third party.
In one sense they did crowdfund it, they just paid for the whole thing themselves.
They hired an outside firm to audit them. That’s industry best practice
That practice has lost its credibility.
Sounds like you have a bit of a hate boner.
I’d like to receive criticism to what I presented instead of you resorting to ad-hominem, please.
Nobody wants to watch a video to participate in a text-based debate
At my work we pay auditors to assess our security controls and I would chose a different company if I thought they were being anything less than honest with us on their findings. The agreements and SOW are set up at the beginning of the engagement, so the investigators get paid regardless of their findings. It’s not like the bond rating agencies on Wall Street.
There’s a difference in stakes and impact and intent: the client firm is actively interested in finding security holes and the outcome of a negative security report does not (usually) directly affect the continuing operations of the business or impact on the personal reputations of the business owners their ability to conduct business, or how moral they’re perceived by society.
A negative report here would be a devastating blow on Linus himself, his business is built around him and relies on audiences trusting him, it would also open up the door for legal action that could result in massive monetary damages and fines.
I’ve had “independent” valuations and audits. I’ve seen how these firms work - and it’s not independent. They obey the people that pay them or they don’t get any work in the future from anyone else “that firm destroyed my business”.
The most suspect aspect of the report is that they found nothing negative, everything was perfect. This on its face doesn’t ring true for any business I’ve ever seen, as well as how they responded to the accusations and how many people came out to accuse them.
You don’t think it’s possible that the accusations were mostly unfounded and the LTT crew are just decent people? They did bring up some issues with onboarding which are completely expected on smaller companies.
It’s entirely possible that literally everything she claimed was false or exaggerated but there’s still enough evidence of Linus acting less than decently on the WAN show with regard to his other actions that cast doubt.
The man who took another company’s prototype and auctioned it off then claimed that they already had an agreement before contacting them somehow had zero evidence of abuse of power? We should assume that his willingness to abuse his power ends at his businesses doorstep because some of his co-workers are decent people?
Of course it’s possible. But after that devastating Gamers Nexus debacle, Linus being actively dismissing of peoples concerns until it became a public issue, the multiple employees saying they were worked off their feet unable to do their job properly, and generally being a toxic environment… this firm gives it a perfectly clean bill of health - that’s not likely.
