My personal thoughts
At first it came off a bit whiney, but I watched the entire thing and I’m glad I did. It shows a pattern of carelessness and in some cases complete douchebaggery of LMG.
What they did to Billet Labs is absolutely un-fucking excusable. LMG and Linus, in particular, needs to be mercilessly shamed for that until Billet Labs gets a clear and unequivocal apology and paid restitution for damages. Fucking shameful. What a bunch of pricks.
Video Description
This video is not monetized. This video covers our serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of Linus Media Group, including Linus Tech Tips, ShortCircuit, and TechQuickie, particularly as it relates to rushing content out the door to favor – by staff’s own admission – quantity over quality. As the company continues to expand into its LTT Labs direction, the importance of accurate data increases; however, even as ‘only’ entertainment, there are still certain responsibilities to the consumer and the manufacturers to report fairly (and to have defined corrections processes in place). We tried to approach this as objectively as possible and hope that viewers are able to listen to the evidence we present, particularly as it relates to significant and frequent data errors that now present in nearly every technical review video.
Edit note: The Twitter thread from the former employee eclipses either issue from here. I still think a big root cause for all of this is the pressure and exhaustion coming from their pacing/content schedule. It will take a bit more than that to resolve this.
I watched the occasional LTT video, they are entertaining and helpful at a general understanding but I’ve often taken their data with a grain of salt.
Emily
spoiler tw
(formerly Anthony)
Young was the one writer at LTT who stood out as really knowing their stuff. She also was their in-house expert with Linux! (*Note: nothing happened to her at LMG, I’m using past tense because I’m not up to date with the latest roles she might be in)
Linus has been way more focused on running the business than the tech, especially compared to his days at NCIX and some years after.
The Billet situation sounds like a fuckup. So long as they make it right with them I don’t care tbh.
The data integrity issues and way too frequent post-edit corrections is imperative for LMG to fix, if they want their media to be trustworthy (like if they’re hyping up their labs)
Luckily, they’ve said what the fix is themselves and it’s relatively simple. All it really takes is them to either slow down with the rate of content to be able to carefully review it, or bring on more hosts and editors so that mistakes and errors can be caught and re-shot before publishing, and that due diligence is applied when preparing a product review.
Linus’ response is just meh, not good nor bad. The one thing is I don’t buy is Linus’ line of “just talk to us”. The community told them plenty of times, the writers and Linus themselves were very well aware of the problems of rushing and releasing half-baked content. Even if GN told them, the direction they were going with Linus Media Group and the new CEO and the buyout offer and all of that suggests where LMG’s wouldn’t be concerned with it as much as making sure the timing of their content maximizes revenue. Data issues brought to them by GN and the community would be cast to the wayside with just a footnote and silent correction, maybe with a couple empty words sprinkled on top.
So I’ll say it again to Linus from a fellow Canadian, whether he’ll listen or not: “Slow down, bud!”
Hey bud, no need to deadname anyone.
I use her current preferred pronouns, there are multiple Emilys at the LMG team and for people that might not recognize who I’m talking about if they haven’t watched LTT for a while (since 3 months ago). I figured by adding “formerly”, I was clear that it’s a name she no longer goes by and doesn’t feel represented herself well.
you were fine, some people just love to pounce on anything. one video is all that was released, it’s completely fine to explain that in this context. if we were talking to her directly, sure.
Disagree. As a casual LTT watcher i had no idea who Emily was until they said her former name. I’m sure there are others like me who don’t keep up with the latest happenings in every youtube channel. There’s no offense in providing extra information for clarity.
I thought you had to refer to a person by their old name for that to be the case, not just mention the existence of a former name. I could be wrong though.
Using the name is still deadnaming. Think of it like this. If you changed your name from Jim to John and saw a friend on the street, would you want them to say, “Hi John formerly Jim”? You’d likely just want them to call you by what your name is now. Add to that the likely dysphoria caused by some using a trans person’s dead name, and it is now causing harm for no real reason. When in doubt, just call people what they want to be called.
But it is natural to bring it up if you’re talking to a common friend that isn’t aware of the change of name. OP was talking to us comment reader instead of that person.
If they hadn’t done that, I would have had no idea who they were talking about. Sure don’t use their old name when talking to them, but you have to use it sometimes when talking about them or people will have no clue who you are talking about.
But your example just referred to someone by their old name. Not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a terrible example. Haha
Better example would be: Friend says, “Hey John, how are you! Remember when you used to go by Jim? Boy, those were crazy times back then.”
Is that deadnaming?
EDIT: my bad. Just re-read the OP post and your example is dead on. For some reason I had it different in my head. Never mind!
Thing is, a lot of people just aren’t aware of Emily’s transition, because she’s been in very few LTT videos since she came out. It makes sense to quickly mention what people used to know her as.
If she had been in dozens of videos since coming out your point would make sense, but she just hasn’t.
(Referring to other replies, sarcastically) I friggin’ love having people explain how it’s totally cool to do to people all’ the things they (or people like them, in relevant contexts) say not to! Like when five freaking people people show up, none citing so much as a blog post or having met a trans person once, explaining that it’s totally cool to deadname someone as long as it doesn’t bother the person doing the deadnaming.
I’m just a little tired of this “it’s fine and you’re the real problem for whining about it” (not quoting anyone currently present… I think) kind of attitude. Maybe I’d be singing a different tune if my convenience got to override everyone else’s comfort and even wellbeing.
Edit: At least I don’t feel so compelled to join Beehaw any more. Certainly not the uniformly careful bunch I’d, unreasonably I suppose, imagined. Silver linings!