LTT vs Google.
I’ll side with LLT on this, but that doesn’t mean I want to support their channel.
Why? What did LTT do?
Out of the loop on this.
Quick summary, probably missing a lot, but…
- Two-ish years ago they decided to sell an overpriced backpack with no warranty. This was criticized considering everything else in the same price/quality categories would have lifetime warranties. This led to Linus Sebastien going on a rant about how warranties are worthless and people should just trust him and that anyone who wanted a warranty was going to threaten his wife (the CFO and one of the major shareholders) were he to die. LMG eventually walked back and provided a pretty good warranty but this is largely considered the “masks off” moment
- One-ish years ago, during a fan tour one of the engineers in Lab (LMG’s hardware testing warehouse) criticized Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus with some (actually false) nonsense claims about how LMG do their testing and why it makes them better than everyone else. After this blew up, Linus went on his podcast to say he stands by the engineer.
- Needless to say, GN and HUB took that personally and it led to GN doing one of their industry takedown videos (usually reserved for MSI or ASUS) on LMG with lots of documented examples of downright comedic levels of incompetence in how they review hardware and present results that point toward systemic issues that undermine all the orgs who actually take benchmarking and the like seriously. Look up the video, but it is stuff like not taking the plastic off a mouse (and then complaining about how it feels) or listing complete nonsense numbers for RAM that anyone with half a (computer parts) brain would have said “that can’t be right”.
- Also, GN pointed out that one of the most egregious examples was the recent one where LMG were sent a prototype GPU cooler and a GPU to review. LMG proceeded to “lose” the card they were sent and use a random different model for the test and then shit on the product endlessly while insisting it doesn’t matter that they didn’t actually test it because it was a shit product. They then sold the prototype at their convention to an unknown party. All while ghosting the company and ignoring their requests for the prototype back.
- This led to “drama” where Linus, on the LTT Forums, accused Steve (GN) of being biased and a horribly unprofessional reporter for not giving LMG a chance to get ahead of the accusations and insisted they had already addressed all the issues. Which was later revealed to be that they finally replied to the GPU Cooler company literally minutes before Linus posted to gaslight people.
- Also, as part of this, a former employee (Madison) who had left mysteriously spoke out about the sexual harassment and assault she experienced at LMG. This was consistent with vagueposting by other female former staff when referencing their time at LMG.
- The harassment was corroborated by other former staff (one has since recanted after he couldn’t find a new job in the kind of blog post that would make even John Xina himself raise an eyebrow) and audio of her manager (James Streib) making stripper jokes to the entire company during the company mandated sexual harassment seminar THE DAY AFTER MADISON QUIT BECAUSE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT re-surfaced. Streib is still the face of one of the LMG channels.
- This ALSO reminded people of when, OG of Maker Youtube and 3d Printing, Naomi Wu spoke about how Linus had insisted she come to his hotel room at like 3 am if she wanted to do a collaboration and that it made her feel uncomfortable. Allegedly this was all a big misunderstanding and Linus only accidentally removed his wife from the email chain, but Naomi is used to that shit and had much bigger stuff (like the CCP…) to deal with when this was resurfacing.
And just general douche-baggery.
But mostly? It just means to take anything LMG does with a massive grain of salt. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not above manipulating their audience and influence to push anti-consumer behavior. So a video where they were “too spicy” for Google for promoting alternatives (some of which LMG themselves operate) is, to quote the children, sus. And yeah, it sounds like the issue has nothing to do with “don’t use gmail or youtube” and all to do with “use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube”.
“use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube”.
This has always been my beef with Rossman. He always has something to sell–not just sponsored content–his own apps and solutions. He comes off like a used car salesman, just pushing the hard sell and making you feel like an idiot for not jumping at the chance to give him money. I’m sure he has made some positive movement in privacy and right to repair, but every time he talks I just feel like he’s going to try to get me to sign up for a timeshare. I don’t trust him.
Rossman is a different mess, but I think it is undeniable that he has been a net positive on r2r over the years. And I think he will continue to be as long as he is someone that outlets like GN and even LMG collaborate with or reference but minimally platform.
But yeah. I think Rossman is genuinely a free speech absolutist with strong libertarian tendencies. Stuff like his “I don’t care if that amazon delivery driver was racist or not, this is unacceptable” just undermines his efforts. Same with his never ending hatred of NYC because he ran a business into the ground. Also his tendency to push immediately from “ads bad” to “STEAL THAT SHIT”.
Like, I immediately think of THAT Dril quote, but I do have to give it up to LMG from like three or four years ago. The idea that people SHOULD be aware of how to run adblockers and even dns level adblockers. But to also understand that they are pirating content (whether that is bad is up to the individual) and that some sites are going to block them or not work. Because that is honest and “real”. And it provides a conversation that can be had between companies and consumers.
Whereas Rossman has increasingly been “If they aren’t going to let you block ads, fuck 'em. Pay a different company to let you access their content without ads or giving them money” which just paints everyone who cares about privacy as a childish pirate with no respect for the work of others.
I agree. He’s not perfect but I think he’s coming from the right side of things.
Ultimately antics that get clicks still motivate what he does tho
Great summary! Here is the other side of the debate:
-
The backpack is overengineered and spares no expense in materials and durability, making it expensive. It is not overpriced. It may be unreasonably costly and not worth the purchase. The reason being it costs a lot to manufacture, not because it’s overpriced.
-
Linus was stupid in his “no warranty needed” claim, as most people won’t (and shouldn’t) take his word for it. Nevertheless, it is true his store always replaced items without issue and continues to do so, warranty or not. The customer experience is generally much better than the average store, where you may have to fight for your warranty claim only for it to be refused anyway. This is what he meant. If stores are not honoring warranties, and his store is accepting returns without a warranty anyway, then what’s the piece of paper worth anyway? But people like the piece of mind it provides, they learned the lesson and are providing it now. Of course the warranty never mattered either way.
-
I did buy the backpack. Months later I received a replacement set of zippers. There is nothing wrong with the original zippers, they just felt these ones are better and people who bought the backpack before the change should get them too. This has never happened to me with another purchase in my life, where the store decided to upgrade it for free and ship it to another continent for free, without me asking.
-
Months later they discovered the material used for the backpack floor isn’t what they wanted. So they offered me (and all purchasers) a full refund and additional store credit. Nobody noticed the issue, nobody asked for refunds. They discovered it and offered refunds proactively, even though it’s a non-issue. Again never happen in my life with another purchase.
-
Shitty for the employee to shit on GN. Commendable for Linus to stand by his employee publicly instead of blaming him.
-
You are correct they had lot of quality issues. It is also worth mentioning their overhaul that happened after that, improved processed, slowed down upload cadence, and the formation of volunteer “beta tester” viewers who watch videos pre-release to find errors not found internally. Good for them to try to improve.
-
Auctioning off the prototype cooler was quite egregious! As usual Linus took the heat on himself and never named the responsible employee who misallocated the cooler in their inventory.
-
A third party investigation found the sexual harassment allegations unfounded. Due to the nature of this we might never know the details though.
-
Linus invited Naomi to meet him in the meeting rooms of his hotel’s lobby, which exist specifically for business meetings. She later untruthfully misrepresented it as an invite to his hotel room.
-
In general, the transparency at which their business operates makes it very easy to point out flaws. I think it’s better than the opaque businesses where this can’t happen.
-
I agree with these of your points I didn’t address.
Hope this provides both sides for readers, and thanks again.
Didnt they find out about the backpack floor BECAUSE one of the customers wore through the floor? I believe i remember linus telling them that “wasnt possible” or something to that effect before recieving the backpack in question and finding out the manufacturer removed the second layer they had requested because they thought it was a mistake
I hope I recall correctly: I was watching an episode of wan-show where they looked into a backpack returned from a miner after heavy wear, but little real damage. Live on the show they wanted to showcase the double bottom, so they cut into it (can’t recall if this was in the miners backpack or another one) and were surprized to realize there wasn’t a double bottom. Linus quickly assured, still live, that this would be handled for all customers.
LMG did blame the manifactures of the backpack for removing a layer in a late stage design adjustment, but LMG have also alledegly taken a huge cost on assuring customers that they can receive a new backpack for free if the bottom fails for any reason.
My memoery of this might be fuzzy, and the story I have heard comes fully from LMGs perspective, so take everything with a grain of salt.
I wish this was a top level comment. People just want to hate on LTT. Is it because they are successful? People misunderstand his arguments about warranty. I.e. a warranty means nothing if the company won’t uphold it.
I.e. a warranty means nothing if the company won’t uphold it.
Is that even legal? If you provide a warranty, you have to uphold it. Since LTT is in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act.
LTT is in Canada.
TIL
Have you even looked at the computer electronics business? Or lived a few decades? Otherwise how can you have no experience of a company deciding your use of a product doesn’t meet THEIR expectations and so they invalidate your warranty claim? Heck, look at what Intel is doing right now with its 13 and 14 series chips.
Legality is nothing without enforcement, and there’s like none of that for warranties in the US, and even less for global companies with overseas HQs.
Technically not legal, but depending on the wording, there’s a ton of gray area in what’s considered warranty-covered damage and what’s not warranty-covered damage. Companies absolutely take advantage of the gray area, even lying in some instances because they know that their users would rarely have the know-how to call them out on it and demand rightful warranty coverage. LTT’s argument is that if there is such large legal gray area on the warranty, it is meaningless to provide one to begin with
-
I love how they only ever really paraphrased the report and never showed us on the sexual harassment allegations. Bill Barr behavior
The one where they hired a lawyer (that i think was infamous for protecting the Canadian logging industry)?
Yeah. That is always bullshit. Unless you are doing REALLY illegal stuff AND are documenting it to an insane level, lawyers are not mandatory reporters. Their job is not to prove there was no wrongdoing. Their job is to investigate what risk the company is at to wrongdoing that, as far as they have been told, did not exist. And their report is the risk based upon documented evidence and interviews with employees.
So when a company does a third party investigation from a law firm they paid? They are not getting a clean bill of health. They are having all potential risks identified and doing what they can to mitigate that.
A very good friend of mine who tends to be on the other side of the court room when this stuff happens likes to describe it as: Paying a law firm to investigate your company is not an STD test. It is confirming that you don’t have any weeping sores and making sure you have plausible deniability for why all your condoms keep “falling off” while you stealth people.
But people hear “We investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing” and think it means… anything.
“Trust me bro” and “I think individual smart light bulbs are a good idea” were when I had to put LTT in the Jays 2 cents corner of shame.
Now I’m out of the loop, what happened with Jay?
As a person, nothing Jay is fine.
As a tech consumer advice channel, he is a joke. I still remember when ryzen first was getting good and after going over all the data on why it was better and cheaper he cuts to himself sitting behind a desk and tells everyone that they should do the “right” thing and buy intel, as it is the clear choice.
Damn haha, trash. I watched him way back in the day, but now I’m on the GN train
Oh man, I totally forgot about the Naomi Wu drama. I remember it kind of resolved in some way with some explanations of Linus maybe making some sense if you were generous. But under the light of everything that came after, eh, maybe it was serious after all.
I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus’s excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC’d to some of those emails anyway.
I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with…) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which… okay.
As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the “where there is smoke…” range. And it is why I point out that Madison’s harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.
Honestly when they first launched Channel Super Fun while at the Langley house they really were acting more like a fraternity than like employees at a company sponsored event (and I’ve been to some interesting company-sponsored events with virtually unlimited free alcoholic drinks and none have concerned me as much for the company culture as LTT’s early channel super fun videos)
They also really harassed Dennis a lot, to the point where he, not yet a citizen of the country he’s on a work visa in, looked close to tears and seemed to not be enjoying it. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in any videos for quite a while, so I wonder if he bounced as soon as he got Canadian citizenship…
Wouldn’t he have got citizenship ages ago? I thought he transitioned to a sponsor-focused role. I know he was in sponsor spots for a while but I block those so don’t know if he still is, but his Twiiter bio lists him as still being LTT sponsor creative lead.
I was honestly mostly thinking out loud. I can’t remember when I last saw him in a video, and I don’t know how long it takes for a Canadian work visa to translate into citizenship so I was really just guessing based on no evidence.
And I’m talking about 10+ year old videos that may or may not still be up for when he wasn’t a citizen yet, because that was when they were teasing him for not owning anything yet because he just moved to the country
Im curious, as mentioned in another comment mentioned here, what other/better courses of action would they have to take in order to “make better” with the communuty? They have taken lots of measures and changes to address all these concerns, but sounds like this is irredeemable from your point of view. Are there any points in this comment linked that you disagree with and why?
Im not trying to take a side, but rather see your comment as one sided of only accusations and not mentioning what they’ve done to make ammends.
Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not “subscribers go up” but actually show that you are better.
- I’ll skip the anti-consumer stuff regarding merch because that has always been the brand and they at least learned to not tell people to argue against their own rights.
- Antagonistic behavior toward competitors: They are still doing the “we are the best because we are the best” bullshit in their marketing. They’ve at least started collaborating with Wendell from Level1Techs again which is nice. But just reaching out to the other channels would go a long way. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are basically the kings of technical reviewing and would actually benefit Lab for a collab. And GN and HUB are very open about having group discords where all the tech youtubers talk to corroborate strange behavior or let people know that AMD fucked everyone over and they need to re-do all their work for the past week.
- Gross incompetence in their own tech reviews: They apparently have made it a subscriber benefit for Floatplane that people can pay to error check videos which… okay. And they’ve taken down a few videos where they REALLY cocked up basic facts and conclusions. But it is still the same mess they have always been.
- Fucking over small businesses: They eventually gave the cooler company money which I guess was nice? But it looks like they still do a “Linus is made and hates this horrible product” every few months when they want a viewership bonus and it isn’t like they are going to do that to the companies that sponsor the LMG convention…
As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?
A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about “people out for blood” all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn’t do a “What the fuck is wrong with you?” to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.
But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.
Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer’s name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of “this wouldn’t be a problem if he were a white man” level responses. So… I guess they already got the memo.
Could you link to the James Streib audio clips, blatant threats towards employees and Linus going to bat for D-Brand’s racist jokes? I haven’t heard those allegations before.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 is james sexually harassing people during the seminar
Here is the verbose “We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” post https://x.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057 with a real nice bit threatening anyone who ever dares to be a whistleblower again
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
And here is Linus playing the “what about the white man” card https://x.com/linusgsebastian/status/1778165221414347053
I don’t why people bring up the allegations like they had any backing whatsoever. They were debunked by a 3rd party investigation.
People bring it up because they are smart enough to understand “we investigated ourselves and found no signs of wrongdoing” is not a defense.
Already explained it elsewhere but, the super short version is: Law firms are nor mandatory reporters outside of the most extreme cases. They are not investigating wrongdoing. They are investigating liability. They are looking for what was done in writing and what can be explained in the event of a lawsuit (and discovery).
“I can take a shit in a box and put a guarantee on it. Believe me, I’ve got the time. My point is all they’ve done is sold you a guaranteed piece of shit.”
Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.
It is also very telling that the concerns over warranties came up when:
- The previous owner of the company who everyone knew and trusted died
- There was active concern over the future of the company
- The person trying to sell them that is a deranged lunatic with a sex pest best friend
- The company is actively under threat of a hostile takeover spearheaded by people who might have killed the previous owner.
Are warranties foolproof? no. But they give you something so that you are only deciding if a lawyer is worth it when circumstances change significantly. Rather than by default any time anything goes wrong.
Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.
Where? They’re not in this thread.
This also isn’t in defense of LTT; it’s basically Linus’ argument.
Thank you for taking the time to type this whole thing out! I thought I knew everything but I clearly only knew the GN takedown piece, wow.
Other than the stuff already mentioned here, people (probably fairly accurately) thought Linus was a salesman douche with no real knowledge of computers back in the NCIX days.
It was partially true, he was basically a warehouse manager who happened to get lucky making a successful youtube channel which he turned into his own media business after NCIX died.
But that’s what the key term is. It’s Linus Media Group. Their top goal is to create content that generates views for revenue, and not content that might be useful or takes a lot of effort to do.
Which is why you will almost never see any heavy IT people watching his videos. There are so many examples of people running entire data centers in their house better than LMG could do with actual budget, server space, and hardware. They used to use windows server for everything because they didn’t have anyone who knew linux lol.
Of course their biggest scandal was rushing content and not being diligent with their benchmarks. I honestly never had the impression that they were really the professionals or experts they present themselves to be.
That being said, I think if you view their videos more as entertainment and an entry level content into the IT world for people who otherwise wouldn’t be interested, their content is acceptable.
I wouldn’t watch their videos expecting to learn anything or trusting their expertise/benchmarks, but just for the vibes. Luckily we have real experts like tech jesus to keep them in check. I also think people who actually seek to learn something will eventually figure out LTT ain’t it.
LTT is tech content like Donut media is Automotive content. It’s edutainment at most.
I find it funny the amount of hate that LTT gets, it’s niche entertainment and you can watch it absolutely free anywhere in the world and Linus rejected a 9 figure sum to keep ownership of something he built, say that out loud… “He turned down over $100,000,000.” Yes they flog merch and have floatplane and all that bullshit but that’s how they stay independent.
You can take Donut and Motortrend as examples of how it all goes to shit. MT were YT only, then moved to their own paid streaming platform, then sold out to a network and told all their international subscribers to kick rocks because the network deal was more money.
Or the Donut route, where you get bought by venture capital who suck all the fun out of the job, try to monetise everything and wind up having all the talent leave and go start their own channels because they took a fun job and just made it a job.
They used to use windows server for everything because they didn’t have anyone who knew linux lol.
Obviously a Windows bad. Nothing else expected.
Because obviously this is the year of Linux desktop.But yes, Windows sometimes is annoying. But so is Linux and it’s ton of distros.
Doesnt prevent me from using best of both worlds.Tell me you haven’t worked with servers without telling me you haven’t worked with servers.
Windows server is notoriously terrible compared to Linux on a server. Most tech people (even those who happily run Windows on their desktops) know this.
The parent’s comment isn’t about “Windows bad” or “this is the year of the Linux desktop” it’s about a group of people cosplaying as tech wizards when they use laughably bad software to run their business because they lack technical expertise.
buddy, even Microsoft doesn’t use windows on their servers. https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux
They’ve been criticized of rushing and skimping on accurate / ethical review practices. There are also allegations that LTT is a fairly toxic work environment, but, the former has more concrete evidence since the janky reviews were recorded and uploaded.
And on a more subjective note, a lot of people aren’t really into the way that Linus behaves on camera. I’m in this camp. I find that he often comes off pretty arrogant and belittling when he’s interacting with his staff on camera.
And on a more subjective note, a lot of people aren’t really into the way that Linus behaves on camera. I’m in this camp. I find that he often comes off pretty arrogant and belittling when he’s interacting with his staff on camera.
I remember on the old site years ago saying that Linus came off as a bit of a douchebag and being downvoted to hell for it. Like, I get having relationships with friends where we’re always bullying each other a bit, but it never seemed to me like he was ever on the recieving end of that.
Yeah, as someone who has been in people management for a long time, he has a way of interacting with people that makes my HR spidey sense tingle.
It’s very subtle, but there some ways of collaborating and communicating with his employees that I’ve seen before, and are often associated with people who get shitty reviews from the ICs and peers.
HR Spidey sense! Love it.
After years on the job you have an eagle eye for the subtle hints that slip out. Talking over people, dismissing options that are different than yours, playfully teasing people that don’t reciprocate, etc.
Maybe it’s nothing, but when I watch his videos I have flashbacks to problematic leaders who often get shit reviews when employees are allowed to submit feedback anonymously.
But can you really reciprocate against the literal CEO/owner? I wouldnt dare to tease back my boss should he poke fun at me. No matter how playful it was meant to be. I would joke with his comment but never shoot bavk or at least aim to do it.
Yeah, people defend Linus and other faces like MKBHD for one huge reason: Parasocial relationships.
Just look at all the conversation happening in this thread with people defending the figure of Linus (and others). Influencers, even tech influencers, make money because they can monetize those people.
And Linus appeals primarily to the folks who like thinking of themselves as the tech person in the family or at the office, but really they are no more technical than slotting a stick of RAM into a case on average.
I saw one of his videos like a decade ago and was immediately turned off.
Lied about a review of a product prototype they’d been sent. “Lost” it, gave a bad review based on tests of it (but it was a different product, not the actual one). Then later apparently they SOLD this prototype & told the company who had lent them it that they’d lost it.
So you can totally trust them claiming they didn’t sexually harass women employees. /s
Apparently posted a video about how to avoid ads on YouTube using adblockers, etc.
Linus once said that ad blocking is piracy/theft. Fuck that clown.
I left when every other video was about the personal lives of Linus or his staff. I know that developing the parasocial is important to any channel, but it turns me off.
I actually like those, and started to watch the channel regularly after the house remodeling series.
What’s barely sufferable are the “we bought stuff from the internet and here it is. check out our sponsor…” videos that’s been published a lot lately.
Right? I learned how to block channel in FreeTube motivated entirely so I don’t have to see his stupid face in my recommendations
I feel like we’ll find out this was engineered for clicks by them.
i mean thumbnails are almost always engineered for the most engagement, yes.
and theirs are clearly clickbaity
They actually recently had a video about their thumbnails, and how different people see different thumbnails for the same video as they experiment to see what works.
At least they’re honest about it I guess.
same²
Ditto
Can I get a same to the power of three
same³
Now you got it.
(By the way, same⁴)
same⁵
Incredible I’ll save these for lunch tomorrow x
Ctrl+S a sandwich too.
For visibility, here is a list of ways around youtube ads the video was supposedly banned for mentioning:
Desktop:
- https://freetubeapp.io/
- https://github.com/LibreTubeApp/LibreTube
- https://github.com/yattee/yattee
- https://invidious.io/
- Apparently searching for a youtube url in Bing.com and clicking on the thumbnail gives you the video with no ads
Android:
I personally use Freetube and think it’s great
Firefox with uBlock Origin also works nicely.
Also SponsoBlock
Also revanced
I use pipepipe off fdroid and love it, it even has sponsorblock built in if you enable it!
Problem #00001: Relying on googlevideo in order to obtain information on how to avoid Google.
Dont they have a streaming platform where they post their videos too?
Yea Floatplane.
Also, Odyssee (at least Louis Rossmann, I follow him through Odyssee)
Sure, but they can’t get people to use it without utilizing the power of their competitor. You know, it’s like when a racing company steals a competitor’s car and then uses it to race against them. Totally legal. Definitely wouldn’t be banned.
You wouldn’t steal a car…
I just bought a Google Pixel!
So that I can install GrapheneOS on it.
I wish it didn’t have to be that way, lol. Can’t we have some quality third party hardware?
Fairphone? Graphene doesn’t support it tho 😭
Can’t they work it out? I don’t want to use Google hardware and I don’t want to use Google software. One provides one fix the other lacks.
I believe only the Pixel phones have the security hardware needed for Graphene.
They’re also one of the few phones left that has a truly unlockable bootloader without jumping through hoops or losing significant functionality.
I know, but Fairphone should address this issue and GrapheneOS guy should work with them on it to bring support to an actual secure and private phone that doesn’t rely on big evil Google.
You have to buy an OEM unlocked phone and the guaranteed way to do so it to buy it directly from the Google Store.
This is sooooo incredibly sad!!! I’m currently on an older iPhone and probably getting a Pixel next month; I would really have liked it if there were a bigger variety of phones where I could live truly Google-free, and I would much prefer not having to give Google money to not be reliant on Google…
Buy second hand or refurbished. Better for the planet, cheaper and you aren’t directly giving google anything :)
This is the route I’m probably going to go. Once I’m comfortable getting Graphene set up the way I need to. I do a lot of electronic payments and such so I need to make sure all those will work.
Thank you!
Look at the Nokia (yes, those Nokia) have models with android asap
It’s just a shame it doesn’t have any extra micro SSD card slots for extra storage…
I do find that disappointing but I don’t store many pictures on my phone so I think the 256gb will probably be more than enough for me.
I went through three Pixels (6, 6 pro, and 7) with Graphene before I finally gave up. Not because of Graphene, but because Pixels break so easily, and even small damage to the screen will almost certainly render the phone unusable. I’m a contractor, and I need a phone that can handle some moderate abuse. But even with Otterbox cases, my Pixels could just not hang.
Sadly, with a heavy heart and a wounded concience, I’ve gone back to Samsung. Yes, they spy on me, and yes I absolutely detest it, but at least I can drop my phone once a month and not have to replace it or pay $200 for a screen replacement.
That really blows. I have an office job and am generally easy on my electronics. Hopefully I won’t have any serious problems, but thanks for the heads up.
Anecdotally, my Pixel 4a which I have dropped multiple times still looks and works like new, even the battery is great!
I too had an otterbox case, which I think helped with those falls.
Dropped my phone (Pixel 7) a number of times. Can’t say I am trying hard.
I have a matte screen protector and a regular case on my phone. No cracks.I put mine in a case right away. Hopefully I won’t have problems.
Tell me you don’t have a note without telling me you don’t have a note;-;.
Always wanted a pixel myself, but similar thing being in a trade. My note 9 has a bent screen ffs and still works perfectly. It just needs to be pressed shut pccasionally… 200$ to replace the screen though, fuck that.
Lmao, not trying to jinx myself here, but I break my phones yearly, except this pixel 8 pro, which mostly only has the scratches on it that I got while waiting for the liquid glass screen protector to come in. This phone is a pretty good contender for being my longest used, minus my BlackBerry z10, a phone I miss dearly (you could replace everything minus the main board for 40 bucks). But yeah, it’s got some scratches since then, but again, I seem to break my phones yearly.
Here is the video in question.
Hopefully it stays up. If not, someone might want to push to archive.org / peertube /etc…
I hope this gets the streisand effect, but it’s probably too geeky of a topic for that
Was it about how to live without Google or how to bypass ads on YouTube?
both
The video that was removed talked about blocking ads on YouTube which goes against contract terms for YouTubers. The one about switching away from Google service is still up.
Then the lemmy title is misleading, no? Isn’t that against the rules?
He shouldn’t have referred to it as “blocking ads.”
Instead, say that you’ll be explaining how to “preserve privacy” or “uncluttered the viewing experience”, and it would be totally up to interpretation and assumption that he’s actually talking about blocking ads.
This dude is so smart but has literally the worst vibes I just can’t stand him for no reason lmfao
I fully agree and love what he does for the repair industry, but im with ya on that, I cant stand him either. Its a weird feeling.
No way this wasn’t calculated by LTT.
Although I agree that this content should be up on YT, I wouldn’t be surprised if LLT were well aware that this was a high risk video that could get struck down.
I hate conspiratorial thinking, but LLT is likely to benefit from this attention, and they have a history prioritizing subscriber counts over getting useful information into the hands of people.
I’d bet dollars to donuts it was planned. They’re all about views, sponsors, and subs. The “info” they publish is hack at best. They’re entertaining at times but it’s just that, entertainment, not tech news.
They have a separate channel for tech news. They also have a several hours long podcast style show on Fridays that focus on recapping the week’s tech news.
They also write and shoot videos weeks ahead of publication. Day and date news just isn’t the focus of the main LTT channel.
I think most discerning readers know this but trick or not, he did do the thing and exposed Google for a monopolist that they are.
Although the courts already deemed them a monopoly.
Either way, BREAK UP Alphabet!!!
The fact Louis had to disable comments on that video tells a lot 😄
Had suspicions with Rossman involved and a quick check of the ltt subreddit means I both need a shower and likely know why it was delisted:
The issue isn’t “how to live without google”. Plenty of those videos exist
The issue is encouraging people to use third party apps that violate the TOS and let you watch youtube without ads. That is not “living without google”. That is “You should ‘steal’ from google”
But honestly, not surprising. Rossman has pretty much always been on the “Fuck em, just pirate it” side of things for better or for worse.
Whereas LMG are still desparate to get back their viewership after all the harassment and incompetence accusations. So nothing better to make people think the company that encourages its users to advocate against warranties is pro-consumer than to pick a pointless fight with google. Which has the added benefit of advertising floatplane (see also: gun youtubers hamming it up over what youtube will let them do to advertise Ian McCollum’s latest side hustle).
ads are full of scams, malware and other harmful content because they are barely moderated
blocking them is basic security
They already steal all my personal information for profit. So fuck 'em. I got no sympathy for that company.
Fuck google, steal from them anyway you can
If YouTube wasn’t infested with ads that start in the middle of videos and force you to watch 2-3 minute ads constantly it wouldn’t even be an issue. Calling it stealing is a bit of a stretch.
Edit: I like how you edited a good 2/3rds of your comment.
