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[Video] Louis Rossmann | Informative & Unfortunate: How Linustechtips reveals the rot in influencer culture (youtu.be)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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00:00:00 - intro
00:00:39 - influencer culture is rotten
00:01:19 - my community post 00:03:20 - what is honey?

00:05:40 - Part 1: linus & honey, self-image perception vs. audience well being
00:06:41 - "would it have gone well for me?"
00:07:08 - it's not about you
00:07:35 - your responsibility as an influencer
00:08:28 - thieves can't be trusted
00:09:10 - browser extensions can monitor browser activity
00:09:36 - steve burke's missing context
00:09:45 - reading Linus' quote
00:10:28 - the part steve burke left out
00:11:05 - the "context" makes linus look worse
00:11:10 - Linus' manipulation to escape accountability
00:12:00 - what pisses me off
00:12:45 - you took money for high visibility video, post retraction on the main channel
00:13:02 - so post it
00:13:35 - Accepting the premise of assholes: part 1
00:14:00 - responsibility to your audience is more important than your perception of your image
00:14:30 - our audience should make our own decisions
00:15:13 - linus' manipulative nature
00:15:40 - louis loses it
00:16:02 - if linus cared about his audience, what he'd do

00:18:33 - why steve didn't include the context
00:19:43 - accepting the premise of assholes: part 2
00:20:45 - real influencer vs. poser influencer
00:21:20 - how steve got gaslit by accepting the premise of assholes
00:22:05 - how steve allowed himself to change
00:22:43 - steve updated his website for right to reply
00:23:44 - ignore the tone police

00:24:17 - what right to reply means to linus
00:24:55 - none of you care about right to reply
00:25:03 - right to reply: exhibit 1
00:25:30 - right to reply: exhibit 2
00:26:23 - right to reply: exhibit 3
00:27:00 - what right to reply means to linus
00:27:22 - ranting about steve burke more
00:28:15 - how to properly handle that situation

00:30:17 - the iMac video - my personal experience with linus' manipulation
00:30:40 - Linus' skeevy email to me
00:31:24 - Linus' broken iMac storyline
00:31:45 - i showed up while in canada
00:31:58 - i was honest about not needing travel money when offered since i was already there
00:32:39 - personality traits of a narcissist
00:33:05 - my email reply to linus I'm 99% certain either jessa or anna wrote after stealing my keyboard & deleting a page of curse words
00:33:30 - the cost ratio of the board to the video income makes this ridiculous
00:35:15 - imagine if I pulled this on steve burke
00:36:34 - imagine if I pulled this on paul daniels
00:36:41 - deference to the king, paul daniels
00:38:40 - Linus weaponized a joke 16 months later
00:39:29 - I am not a Linus Media Group shareholder
00:40:27 - businesses have loss leaders
00:40:55 - loss leaders are the responsibility of the business owner
00:42:10 - this is wrestling. it's not real
00:43:05 - my back and forth
00:44:23 - I can't behave like this to other content creators

00:45:03 - Linus trust me bro warranty thing
00:45:34 - A lost opportunity due to Linus' narcissism
00:46:00 - warranties are being eroded every year
00:46:33 - business owners that know it's not about them just make a warranty without throwing a fit
00:47:01 - linus made it about him
00:47:08 - linus monetized making fun of people who cared about consumer rights
00:47:14 - linus pits factions of his audience against each other, all to protect his fragile ego, at the expense of an opportunity to bring people together on consumer rights
00:47:50 - does linus run his business on trust me bro?
00:48:10 - does LMG trust you bro to have discussions on your pay with coworkers?
00:48:27 - does LMG trust you bro to not start their own youtube channels?
00:48:45 - The missed opportunity
00:50:08 - The right way to treat employees
00:50:30 - What my employees did for me

00:51:05 - Linus sends text message to the wrong phone
00:52:48 - Linus portrays steve as callous while sending msg to wrong phone
00:54:05 - we don't want to be like you
00:54:47 - My question to Linus
00:55:26 - the problem w/ people like Louis & Linus
00:56:27 - Nobody checks us, at our level
00:57:12 - Addressing people with similar experience 00:59:18 - someone else has had your experience
00:59:40 - i realize i am privileged in not having anything to lose
01:00:00 - your products will continue to sell
01:01:48 - a greenie for clinton

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[–] Statick 43 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I will never understand how anyone watches Linus. He's always come across as dishonest to me.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

I always feel greasy after watching him talk.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

He strikes me as someone who thinks "what's good for the company" way ahead of "what's good for the community" and because of that I have trouble trusting his integrity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

He's a business guy in the derogatory sense. A money man who only gives a shit about clout and dosh. He's also anti union. Which should say enough

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Being focused on your business is not an issue on its own. The infuriating part is the way postures himself as defender of that community and social media tech space in general when his actions go against them time and time again. The duplicity is what makes him unserious and untrustworthy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Yes, exactly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

I think a large portion of the population doesn't believe is honesty or sincerity anymore. So long as they're being entertained, it doesn't matter what happens back stage.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm not saying LTT is perfect but I really don't understand why they're being made the bad guys over the whole Honey thing.

Honey are the scumbags, it was known what they were doing before LTT dropped them yet nobody gave a fuck until it exploded a few weeks ago and somehow LTT are to blame?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 weeks ago

Honey might just be the straw. But Linus has a long list of controversies. And in every case, he never takes responsibility. It's always somebody else, or miscommunication, etc.

Like a decade ago, they were promoting some fake science products on their channel. When was brought out to light that the products were fake, they never made a retraction. Instead they made videos about being the victims about being called out because the videos were promoting fake products. Ltt promoted hyperloop and Tellspec. I'm sure there's more, but I can't recall

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I think the main issue is they figured out what Hobey was doing and they just silently dropped them and let them continue doing this shit to other people.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But that's what I'm saying, they weren't the first to figure it out, there was already a YouTube video up exposing it but nobody noticed it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well the issue is that they have a large platform and if they were ethical they would have shared and made sure people know about it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure but there was already news and videos about it back then. But nobody cared. Why was it in them when it was already public knowledge?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because they got paid thousands of dollars to promote it. When you accidentally promote a scam on your channel, you then go and apologize on the same channel when you learn about it. It's basic accountability.

They did that with their other sponsors they dropped for lesser reasons like Private Internet Access. Even the whole scandal with Asus was handled better even if they tuned out to be lairs and went back to working with them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Back then it wasn’t known to be scamming its users, only creators. Which was also Linus reasoning for why they didn’t make a huge deal out of it because if they told the audience „btw, that thing that saves you money costs us money, so would you be so kind as to not use it so we can make more money instead“, they would have been the assholes back then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Back then it wasn’t known to be scamming its users, only creators.

Absolutely nobody disputes that. But that's not the criticism of them. It's their excuse instead.

Which was also Linus reasoning for why they didn’t make a huge deal out of it because if they told the audience „btw, that thing that saves you money costs us money, so would you be so kind as to not use it so we can make more money instead“, they would have been the assholes back then.

That is pure gaslighting. They could have easily said:

We recently learned that one of our sponsors turned out to be stealing affiliate revenue from creators and as a result we are dropping them as a sponsor and making this video to spread the news. That said if you still find it useful, you can keep using it to save money when shopping.

They would have been praised by their audience, consumers and creators.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago

Oh, they absolutely should’ve mentioned it on WAN. Would have been the right thing to do. I understand though, why they didn’t and I’m not gonna paint them the villain because they didn’t. But yes ofc they aren’t the heroes either. Making that much drama out of it is just a little overblown though imo, when the real villain is PayPal/honey.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They weren't silent about it, they just didn't make a video. There were posts on the forum about it

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Precisely one of Louis' points. LTT took the money to give Honey tons of exposure (aka millions of views) on their video channel and then they dropped them by making a forum post a few thousand may see. Those two things are pretty far from being the same.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Is it really their job to notify creators through a main channel video though? Especially for something that, to their knowledge at the time, had no impact on the consumer?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

... I mean... It is though. Their whole channel is about technology, potential scams, and new inventions that could be helpful or hopeless.

It's like, if Steve Irwin discovered a unicorn that eats toes, yeah I expect Steve Irwin to tell us. This is straight up his alley, he's gonna teach us about animals, and if it's a particularly terrifying one that I shouldn't be near, all the more reason. This is quite literally how the man makes his money and the fact that he doesn't wanna talk about it is really weird.

Did he instead discover a random cannibal living under a bridge that eats toes? Yeah I can see why he doesn't make that an episode. It's not really on topic, it's for a very different crowd.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Differences of opinion on how one should notify their industry about a scam aside, I think both Rossman and GN are blowing this thing way out of proportion when they claim that this indicates some sort of deeper problem with LMG.

This whole thing just reeks of attention-seeking and rage bait, rather than an effort to improve the tech YouTube landscape

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If they were the ones promoting a service/product that they found out was a scam then yes, absolutely.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's wasn't a scam to the users. Just the content creators. He has no obligation to his competition to notify them their losing money?

Edit: I was wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

There actually is a case that the scam affected the users. One of the selling points of Honey's partnership programs with sellers (not content creators, but actual store fronts) was that you could top out the maximum savings honey could "find" so you might have a 20% coupon but honey can promise to find only 15%.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yes and this is the new recent discovery nobody knew about that part previously. So LTT could not have warned people as they didn't know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

That's a recent revelation.

LTT has publicly dropped sponsors before for consumer-facing issues, like with EUFY webcams. They also do secret shopping and other stuff with their sponsors, and are very willing to criticize them when they come up short on customer-facing issues.

TBut they dropped Honey for how they treated affiliates. That's a business-to-business dispute having nothing to do with the product itself. If you publicly burn a former sponsor over a backend financial dispute while the customer-facing side is unchanged, you're being unprofessional and will have trouble attracting future sponsors.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Okay fine I retract my original statement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

No don‘t. That honey is also scamming users, not just creators wasn’t known until very recently. When LTT dropped honey as sponsor they did so only based on the information that honey was scamming creators.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This. And that's if it finds a coipon at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When LTT dropped honey that wasn’t yet known though. They dropped honey only for scamming creators out of affiliate revenue. PayPal/honey colluding with companies to reduce the number and value of the coupons offered was only uncovered very recently.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sorry but are you thick or something? Even if they didn't have the resources to investigate how deep the rabbit hole went (and they do), they should've let other creators know using the same medium they used to promote it. Instead, they decided to cover their own asses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I‘m not saying they shouldn’t have at least mentioned it on the WAN-Show since that might’ve kept other creators from being scammed. Would have been nice. But making LTT the bad guy for this is massively overblown. If you want to be mad at them, there are plenty of better reasons.

But hell, I‘m not gonna blame ltt for being transparent about which sponsors they drop and why, because most channels do not do that. I’m also not gonna blame them for investigating further because they had no more reason to suspect any more foul play from honey than anybody else, beyond their reason for dropping them and also that’s not something ltt does at all.

LTT aren’t the bad guys here. Honey are. LTT just wasn’t the hero they could’ve been.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

Nobody is comparing them to Honey. There's also no need for there to be a single "bad guy". They also did not mention dropping Honey in the WAN show. They did it in a forum post.

They took Honey's money, promoted it, found out about part of the scam and then finally dropped them pretty quietly. They have a very large audience and, imo, that gives you the responsibility to not promote crappy products or services. You should let that audience inow if you mistakenly did do that. The only possible reason not to make a video about this is being afraid of scaring other sponsors.

Talking about other sponsors, they went from Honey to Karma which does pretty much the same thing. Both in functionality and scamming practices. So yeah, there's that too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I wouldn't expect if it was random recommendation in one of their videos. But yes, it is their responsibility to notify about it when they got paid thousands of dollars to promote it.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago

It's right there in their FAQ from 2014, I know because I looked for it back in the day. Anyone who didn't know wasn't paying attention, but the problem is that no one ever pays attention.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140608222205/http://joinhoney.com/help

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago

Linus will continue to show his ass until people are tired of looking at it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago

That video was so repetitive... youtube drama, man.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Interesting to hear that Linus is doing even more shady crap. The bit about sending the text message to a defunct phone that he knows was defunct is next level asshole behavior if true.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Or, perhaps, he made a mistake, as people do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

It would be plausible if the number was recently changed. But it was old number and there were many conversations on the new number dating back to LTX and LTT channel hack.
Then they also reviewed the video script and included the message from that old number in their video. It would have been caught if it was a mistake.

And what do people do when they make an honest mistake? Oh, apologize. Haven't seen them doing that. No it was well planned and executed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It was stated it was an old number from 2021, that Linus never used the old number and has had plenty of communication on the new number.

Again, if true, that's not a mistake, that's deliberate malice and I don't see or hear a apology if it was a honest mistake, which I do not think it is considering his pattern of behavior.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm here to make my traditional "Rossmann needs an editor" comment. Whenever one of his videos become popular.

He's a trove of useful information but he also rants unhinged and is sometimes unintelligible on what point he is trying to make. Which hurts the effectiveness of his communications.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

He really does. This could have been a 20min video top.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Worth noting that Steve from Gamers Nexus admitted that he reviewed this video before it went live, meaning that Rossmann and Steve were collaborating, so Rossmann cannot be seen as an objective third party.

Oh, and they're also starting some sort of project together, I think it'll be a podcast.

Not that it invalidates the point, but also creates an odd incentive here.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago

It wasn't a secret he saw the video early. https://gamers.nexus/ethics-statements/contact-vs-no-contact

What lack of objectivity do you see? From what I saw for every factual claim he provided sources/receipts and the rest was his opinion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Having consumed most sides of this "controversy" I don't understand how the top comment on this topic can be negative towards LTT. Based on the updoots this community seems way more interested in bashing LTT than being the generic LTT community on Lemmy. I would think a generic community would be more objective and rational.

This honey controversy seems silly and overblown, it's clear to me that gamers Nexus has a bone to pick, Rossman seems like he's got personal issues as well, and LTT seems to have responded rationally based on what they discussed in the last two or three WAN shows.

I'm not really interested in defending millionaires or taking sides in YouTube drama that is sooo meaningless. I am, however, interested in being a part of an LTT community that is level headed. I guess until moderators take action I'll just put notes on people and see if they have reoccurring themes in the future and comment on the issue again at a later time.

That has really been my favorite Lemmy feature to date.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

lived enough to become the villain

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

He was never a hero.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

There is only one good Linus and it has NEVER been the LTT one.

Remember when he was stepping away to focus on his family? Or when he stepped away to handle the rampant sexism at his facility?

He never stepped down at all lol. Every action of his is a manipulation.

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