LTT did not even have the decency to speak GamersNexus' name, and give them respect and apology. This is all I need to know about LMG.
The stuff Madison spoke of regarding workplace abuse is something I can believe and trust blindly, but I still have my reservations on the whole "I cut myself" part, because the internet has taught me that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. GrapheneOS scum dev also claimed early May 2023 that he was attempted to be "swatted", never giving evidence of it and silencing everyone asking for evidence.
That cuts both ways. eg: GN didn't have the decency - while claiming to do journalism - to do a standard journalist thing and approach LMG for comment. This is all I need to know about GN.
GN does not need to approach such a colossal entity when its clear how Linus can sell some startup's prototype despite being told otherwise. He explained his reasoning clearly on this issue. GN is arguably one of the most credible people on YouTube.
LMG is 200 odd people. You could say Nvidia with >10k employees is colossal perhaps, or you could say Cisco with >80k is. 200 people is barely a medium sized enterprise. Christ, the company I work for is nearer 2k people.
And in any of those cases, the size of the entity doesn't matter - its a very common journalistic practise to seek comment. I tend to think that because GN chose not to, that it veered away from a purely journalistic exercise because they are essentially a competitor. They still have the right to publish it and make the claims they want but it changes the framing of the video quite a bit for me.
Bear in mind that I think all benchmarking is over hyped in its reliability and importance so pretty much none of that side of things holds any real credibility with me at all - so i'm mostly judging GN based on they way they've presented this issue.
Finally, Linus didn't sell the startup's prototype, LMG did. And unless you're ignoring the whole trail of fact on that its pretty clear it was a stupid mistake but also how that came to be isn't some evil genius plan.
Nvidia does not even remotely have the fan following of what Linus has, because he is like top 10 YT channels, and YouTube happens to be the biggest loudspeaker besides Twitter. A company like Apple or Samsung has the kind of outreach that Linus has. Few YouTubers like MKBHD or MrBeast do.
GN did the correct thing and has explained the reason for not reaching out. He burned a massive bridge over this, and some fans have their heebie jeebies rustled because Linus is their tech god.
Who is LMG's owner? The CEO is a placeholder. Everybody and their child knows Linus calls the shots on everything. CEO was put in place with a very convenient timing to avoid the controversy over Anthony transitioning to Emily, and since then Emily has never appeared on a LMG video, instead only works BTS. The controversy would be riled up by a lot of the transphobic techies (both cis men and cis women) in LMG's community/fanbase, as is visible over the internet.
Crazy that although Mr. Beast has old clips of transphobic jokes, Mr. Beast handled Kris coming out fantastic. Linus talked about Emily like Linus was banning the transphobic comments just to keep decorum for the business. Mr. Beast talked about Kris like he was offended that people were insulting his friend.
If you told me 5 years ago I'd end up liking Mr. Beast and turning away from LTT, I don't think I would have believed it
To be fair I also find the whole "philanthropy" glamourisation of MrBeast very cheap. But that is more on me being a harsh critic, and seeing things objectively the way they are. I barely watched LMG content in the past year, and even that has crashed.
The white savior complex of Mr. Beast videos can be pretty rough, but I really don't hate him like other people do. Dude got his money started by saying words thousands of times and makes a big deal out of being a good person with his money. When other YouTubers in his sphere get famous by filming dead bodies in suicide forests and proudly hoarding as much money as possible, I have to respect the guy whose making networks of food bank and makes a point out of being a good friend. He saw the SunnyV2 video on Kris and said that he didn't give two fucks about how Kris' transition affected the company because she's his friend and it's her life. The Mr. Beast subreddit also took transphobia way more seriously than I expected them to, and they widely said it was because Mr. Beast content is about being a good friend, bigotry and concern trolling had no quarter.
At worst, Mr. Beast is a well meaning lib. As much as I don't like the practices, he's a good community guy who wants to bring people together. Mr. Beast making organizing charity a cool thing to do is good.