LMG (the parent company) are pretty shameless about advertising and their former CEO (currently CCO with a controlling share of the company) outright tried to weaponize his community to actively advocate against their own consumer rights. Personally? I “ethically” think they are fair game. They actively fuck over consumers so… fuck them.
But also? Who cares. This is not stealing a loaf of bread to survive. This is grabbing content to entertain ourselves. From an ethical standpoint, it is REALLY hard to argue that theft (because piracy IS theft) is the ethical choice in this case but not any other… unless your personal ethics boil down to “I don’t like this person so fuck them. But I like that person so it is not right”
And… who gives a shit? If you want to pirate, pirate. Just don’t pretend one choice is “ethical” when another isn’t.
The gist of it is that LMG released their (massively overpriced, heavy, poorly engineered, and low capacity) “tech” backpack. And the first wave of buyers realized there was no warranty and questioned that. For context, it is incredibly common for any backpack in that price tier or above to have basically a no questions asked lifetime warranty (with the general idea that if you care enough to file a claim with Osprey or whatever, you are a big enough fan that you’ll probably buy another one anyway).
On the WAN show (I am not sure if it was that week or the next one), Linus spun up some sob story about how warranties aren’t fair because if he dies then his family will suffer for having to deal with that. And then he (and to a lesser extent Luke) started rambling about how written warranties aren’t worth anything anyway and you should just trust individuals… who were telling you to not trust them a few weeks back and are now talking about how they can’t commit to any written policy because they might die some day.
This went on for a few weeks and led to the infamous “Trust me, bro” meme/middle finger. Eventually led to (Computer Jesus at) Gamers Nexus dedicating a large part of a news update to explain why consumers SHOULD want a written warranty and that, going forward, they would be treating LMG as just another company even though they were friendly with Linus and the staff because they weren’t satisfied with how much they felt they needed to tiptoe around the bullshir. And GN even explained why they initially didn’t have a warranty on their screw drivers (?) but that they are now extending all existing purchases to have the same coverage as their mod mats and the like. I assume Rossman also went to town in between ranting about libertarian bullshit and how mean New York is and it is probably worth a listen. When he stays in his lane, Rossman is awesome for consumer rights.
And, for what it is worth, LMG did eventually do a written warranty for the backpack (and I think screwdriver?). But it was very much a “kicking and screaming” situation that highlighted that LTT will pretend they are pro consumer and “fighting for your rights” right up until it affects their bottom line. At which point they will spin sob stories and try to convince fans to actively not want what few consumer protections there are.
Can’t be arsed to look up which WAN shows involved Linus ranting but here are the GN videos. Obviously I am inherently biased toward those because… I care more about my rights as a consumer than what some whiny millionaire wants.
That is unfortunate. I used to watch their vids and assumed that their general ethics as a company have gotten worse based on their size, but it is sad to hear nonetheless.
Its one of those things that is incredibly obvious in hindsight. The actual “incident” was the same as any “hot take” over the years: Someone calls out Linus’s bullshit. He takes it as a personal insult, goes full Influencer to get the audience on his side, and does a “not really but really” call for action against whoever wronged him. Like, there are still some tech youtubers who “catch strays” any time the LMG community remember that they had the audacity to talk about how interacting with Linus was incredibly uncomfortable and unprofessional and so forth.
This was just extra “interesting” since it was a call to action against the people being called.
And I think it was this particular debacle that made people realize that the unofficial LTT subreddit… has a lot of LTT staff as mods. And that came up as an argument that LMG require staff running their subreddit in case someone tries to dox them at 2 am. Which… ignores that reddit has other message boards AND has really bad implications on work/life balance expectations.
But yeah. I still skim the occasional LTT video because… their bullshit six figure house mods are solving similar problems that I have and I can find a way to get that down to three figures. But I am definitely glad that the big computer companies are broadening to work more with the “b tier” computer youtubers like GN and Jay and the like. Nice to be able to get a fab tour without it needing to be a travel vlog by a millionaire.
LMG (the parent company) are pretty shameless about advertising and their former CEO (currently CCO with a controlling share of the company) outright tried to weaponize his community to actively advocate against their own consumer rights. Personally? I “ethically” think they are fair game. They actively fuck over consumers so… fuck them.
But also? Who cares. This is not stealing a loaf of bread to survive. This is grabbing content to entertain ourselves. From an ethical standpoint, it is REALLY hard to argue that theft (because piracy IS theft) is the ethical choice in this case but not any other… unless your personal ethics boil down to “I don’t like this person so fuck them. But I like that person so it is not right”
And… who gives a shit? If you want to pirate, pirate. Just don’t pretend one choice is “ethical” when another isn’t.
How is piracy theft for you, as in, what definition of theft are you using?
deleted by creator
Could you provide a source? I had not heard that about weaponizing their community.
The gist of it is that LMG released their (massively overpriced, heavy, poorly engineered, and low capacity) “tech” backpack. And the first wave of buyers realized there was no warranty and questioned that. For context, it is incredibly common for any backpack in that price tier or above to have basically a no questions asked lifetime warranty (with the general idea that if you care enough to file a claim with Osprey or whatever, you are a big enough fan that you’ll probably buy another one anyway).
On the WAN show (I am not sure if it was that week or the next one), Linus spun up some sob story about how warranties aren’t fair because if he dies then his family will suffer for having to deal with that. And then he (and to a lesser extent Luke) started rambling about how written warranties aren’t worth anything anyway and you should just trust individuals… who were telling you to not trust them a few weeks back and are now talking about how they can’t commit to any written policy because they might die some day.
This went on for a few weeks and led to the infamous “Trust me, bro” meme/middle finger. Eventually led to (Computer Jesus at) Gamers Nexus dedicating a large part of a news update to explain why consumers SHOULD want a written warranty and that, going forward, they would be treating LMG as just another company even though they were friendly with Linus and the staff because they weren’t satisfied with how much they felt they needed to tiptoe around the bullshir. And GN even explained why they initially didn’t have a warranty on their screw drivers (?) but that they are now extending all existing purchases to have the same coverage as their mod mats and the like. I assume Rossman also went to town in between ranting about libertarian bullshit and how mean New York is and it is probably worth a listen. When he stays in his lane, Rossman is awesome for consumer rights.
And, for what it is worth, LMG did eventually do a written warranty for the backpack (and I think screwdriver?). But it was very much a “kicking and screaming” situation that highlighted that LTT will pretend they are pro consumer and “fighting for your rights” right up until it affects their bottom line. At which point they will spin sob stories and try to convince fans to actively not want what few consumer protections there are.
Can’t be arsed to look up which WAN shows involved Linus ranting but here are the GN videos. Obviously I am inherently biased toward those because… I care more about my rights as a consumer than what some whiny millionaire wants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdxVtAiYeL0&t=95s is the GN summary and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsX3tUA-wJk&t=71s is their follow up that also includes a discussion of how they will be handling LMG different (as in, like every other company) going forward.
That is unfortunate. I used to watch their vids and assumed that their general ethics as a company have gotten worse based on their size, but it is sad to hear nonetheless.
Its one of those things that is incredibly obvious in hindsight. The actual “incident” was the same as any “hot take” over the years: Someone calls out Linus’s bullshit. He takes it as a personal insult, goes full Influencer to get the audience on his side, and does a “not really but really” call for action against whoever wronged him. Like, there are still some tech youtubers who “catch strays” any time the LMG community remember that they had the audacity to talk about how interacting with Linus was incredibly uncomfortable and unprofessional and so forth.
This was just extra “interesting” since it was a call to action against the people being called.
And I think it was this particular debacle that made people realize that the unofficial LTT subreddit… has a lot of LTT staff as mods. And that came up as an argument that LMG require staff running their subreddit in case someone tries to dox them at 2 am. Which… ignores that reddit has other message boards AND has really bad implications on work/life balance expectations.
But yeah. I still skim the occasional LTT video because… their bullshit six figure house mods are solving similar problems that I have and I can find a way to get that down to three figures. But I am definitely glad that the big computer companies are broadening to work more with the “b tier” computer youtubers like GN and Jay and the like. Nice to be able to get a fab tour without it needing to be a travel vlog by a millionaire.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=OdxVtAiYeL0&
https://piped.video/watch?v=jsX3tUA-wJk&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.