Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls
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The controversy continues to grow.

Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”

      • frostwhitewolf@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        The reason for the harassment was that the kids channel was purchased from someone else and also had paid subscriptions/views, hence why he never got a silver play button.

      • kadu@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        Linus wasn’t responsible directly, and it’s completely unfair to imply he’s the one who did this. He did not drive this poor person into suicide, this is not on him.

        But absolutely there’s something to be said about how big YouTubers use their platform to mobilize their audiences. When was the last time fans of a Disney Channel actor drove someone to suicide? On YouTube, that’s actually so frequent it’s scary.

        If you know you’re on a live stream with thousands listening, and millions watching the recording, you can’t simply start implying things about a kid with a public channel. Regardless of your intentions, you know what’s about to happen.

        And Linus did, in fact, keep hyping that useless plaque and did, in fact, act like it was stolen from him. It was only later on that his tone changed.

        • jetAEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think watching that auction video is very illuminating about his personality. He’s in full narcissist mode, but you can see him work out what he’s doing. And then he starts to backpedal, because I don’t think he’s a bad human being. He doesn’t want to hurt this guy. He just needed to time to stop being a narcissist.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZfh5IjGv8

          All that being said I think it’s incredibly unfair to bring normal people onto a large media platform. Just fucking going into the auction and recording people for the channels just not cool.

          Edit: I originally said videotape, but I realize nobody does that anymore

          • kadu@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Oh yeah, I absolutely do no want to imply malice - I don’t know him, but would never think Linus would purposely do something like that.

            But he is massively narcissistic, for sure.

            • jetAEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I think we can go beyond the malice standard and talk about reasonableness. I didn’t see anything in that entire auction scenario that was unreasonable. We can nitpick about lots the specifics but nothing was unreasonable. Even managing the audience was all reasonable.

              To bring this scenario up at this time, as that article does, is just trying to add field to the fire. And not actually be constructive.

              If that article, " journalist", had done some fact checking research, then at least they’d be adding to the discussion, and it’d be maybe not reasonable but justifiable to bring it up… Like finding the name of the deceased, verifying they died, verifying they died at that time for that reason. Verifying the story about the mother also being dead. All of this should be discoverable public record to a journalist who wants to verify a story. Talking to the father getting their position. What were the contributing factors to the event. What evidence of systemic harassment was there? Like all of this would be fundamental to journalism. But no it’s just shit posting pointing to somebody’s post on the internet which they haven’t done any verification of…

    • mihnt@kbin.social
      141·
      1 year ago

      I remember the video that this stems from. He wasn’t exactly a “little boy”, and I don’t mean by size. I mean that he was near or at adulthood.

      Linus gave up the plaque to him realizing that he had won the auction fair and square and even plugged his channel on the video.

      We don’t know how much Linus knew about his community doing this. Scouring the comments of Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far. However, I do admit the harassment could have taken place through DMs and other private communication.

    • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      god that’s heartbreaking. i had never heard of any of this before today. what a massive implosion.

      maybe i’m too dumb or old, but i cannot wrap my head around why “fans” are loyal to some sponsored content/native marketing organization like this enough to follow some kid around youtube and crap on their content. or harass someone doing their job. having to do tons of social media content professionally seems soul destroying… especially because “the bosses” only think about The Algorithm and maybe saw some SEO snakeoil pub telling them it’s better to generate 8 weak outputs than 2 strong outputs worth watching, because the “goal” is to harvest all those passive clicks and views of people who are bored out of their skull barely playing on their phone… instead of maybe targeting someone actively engaged and searching for something well made and relevant to their interests.

      so you get overpaid bozos who don’t know fuck about shit leaning heavy on underpaid young people to make more internet garbage for the sake of making more internet garbage, and then later complaining that views per output are down or reactions are lukewarm or engagement is off. imagine that job and then a handful of fuckups following you around and shitting on your online presence because you’re doing what you’re told in order to have a roof over your head and food to eat and dreams of a mildly secure future.

      as someone who was once idealistic and full of energy and stamina that was taken advantage of by ego-driven and deceptive exploiters: beware assholes, the rest of us can come together and build a world without a place for you in it.

    • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
      31·
      1 year ago

      This doesn’t feel right. The post seems very lacking in proof, and sounds incredibly farfetched. I remember seeing the NCIX auction video and thought I recall it being a young man buying the play button, not a child, but I could certainly be remembering wrong. The source is pretty bad too, I’ve never heard of that site, were there not more reputable sites with this story? I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, and I’m certainly not a Linus Stan, but it seems really fake.