The Linus Tech Tips controversy, explained

A popular YouTube channel called Linus Tech Tips was recently under fire for allegations of shoddy work, questionable ethics and sexual harassment allegations from an employee. The channel was started by Linus Sebastian in 2007 and began as a single guy in a room with a one-camera setup and is now a full corporation called Linus Media Group with more than 15 million subscribers.

The company hit a pretty big roadblock recently when it was accused of incorrectly testing a prototype cooling peripheral, calling it faulty, and then auctioning off the item without informing or asking permission from the company who supplied it for review. Following that, a former employee named Madison Reeve accused the Linus Media Group of fostering a toxic workplace and creating an unhealthy work environment. Let’s take a closer look at the Linus Tech Tips controversy.

Who is Linus Sebastian?

Linus Gabriel Sebastian was born on August 20, 1986 in British Columbia, Canada. His computer skills and knowledge were incubated when he worked at the retail store NCIX (Netlink Computer Inc.), where he learned about the computer industry as a whole, including sales, product management, and customer service. He started Linus Tech Tips as a hobby at first, to share his expertise with a wider audience.

In a video called “The Story of Linus Tech Tips,” Linus said he went “from being the weird kid to finding 10 million of you who are weird in exactly the same way that I am.” Linus Tech Tips grew steadily and fairly quickly, as Linus had a way about him that made complicated tech jargon seem more accessible. He would take complex technical topics and make them seem like he was having a conversation with you over Sunday dinner. This type of content caught on very quickly. A combo of entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to high-quality content made him one of the most famous influencers and YouTubers in the tech community.

What is Linus Tech Tips?

Over the years, the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel has grown from an unknown entity to one of the most prominent tech content providers on the site. It has more than 15 million subscribers and billions of views. The channel covers computers, gaming, culture, and consumer electronics. It has a wide variety of content, including tutorials and how-to guides; product reviews; news in the tech world; experiments, and collaborations with other channels.

How did the Linus Tech Tips controversy start?

Here’s where things get more serious. A YouTube channel called Gamers Nexus posted a video (above) that systematically outlined some serious problems and concerns about factual errors and ethical issues with Linus Tech Tips. “We’ve been seeing an alarming amount of conflicts from Linus Tech Tips as it relates to their corporate connections, their flow of money, and the potential bias as a result of those things,” host Steve Burke said. The video quickly scooped up almost 4 million views.

Gamers Nexus alleged that Linus focuses on quantity over quality and often rushes out content. They also said they were regularly inaccurate when testing hardware. The bulk of the controversy revolved around a prototype GPU cooling block from Billet Labs. Linus has a “responsibility to do due diligence on a product,” Burke said. Linus tested the block on an incompatible GPU and then called it a bad product. That decision, Burke said, was bad for Billet Labs, which is a very small company.

Then the company was accused of not returning the product but selling it instead, to which Linus said “we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype.”

This would be enough to make a company reevaluate its priorities, but then another serious allegation surfaced. A former employee named Madison Reeve posted an X thread where she accused the company of sexual harassment and fostering an environment that was toxic and detrimental to her health.

“I chose to quit my role at LTT because it, and the working environment I was facing, were ruining my mental health,” she said. “My work was called ‘dogshit’ I was called ‘incompetent’. When I would reach out to managers and try to get help with these situations, I would be told to ‘put on my big girl pants’ and be ‘more assertive.’”

She went on to say that working there brought her “mental health to an all-time low” and that she wouldn’t recommend any women work there. She said she was forced to go along with a “verbal agreement” that served as a “no drama contract,” which essentially acted as a warning despite Madison not being written up.

“A warning that came very shortly after I had come forward stating I had been inappropriately grabbed multiple times in the office, amongst other issues. I was barred from being in videos. So when you ask what happened? Why wasn’t she in more content? This is why.”

How did Linus respond to the allegations?

Linus initially responded to the Billet controversy in a lengthy screed where he called out Steve Burke for not following “proper journalistic practices” with the video. He also didn’t admit fault. “We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY – accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video.”

Either way, he said, he was “sorry [he] got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. … We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).”

Burke called the response “unhinged” and “unapologetic.” Weirdly, Linus’ long missive didn’t make the conversation go away (sarcasm), so his next move was to make a video titled “What do we do now?” In the video, CEO Terren Tong said Linus made a “clear and egregious judgement error” by not re-testing the product. Linus also finally said he was sorry for not retesting the product and that the channel would pause making videos for a week.

As for the assault allegations, CEO Terren Tong said he was “in a state of shock” and that he prided himself on “maintaining a safe and inclusive environment.” He said the company was doing an investigation and that the company’s “HR team will be conducting a more thorough assessment of the allegations,” and that he was “hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations.”

The company seems to have weathered the controversy and lately it’s business as usual over there. The newest video as of writing has Linus rating consoles as a PC Gamer.