Linus Sebastian, the founder of the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel, has spoken out about its recent decline in viewership, describing it as a "very dramatic shift.

A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.

EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJE

Fun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.

Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.

Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?

  • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nzEnglish
    246·
    1 day ago

    His complete lack of self awareness and ability to own up and apologise when they’ve dropped the ball put me off the channel entirely. For example they found out one of their main sponsors Honey were scamming their viewers and essentially stealing from people, they just kept it quiet rather than owning it.

    That, and Emily was the best thing about the channel and she left so…

    • fatalicus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      121·
      22 hours ago

      About Honey, they didn’t find out that Honey was scamming viewers until everyone else did.

      What they found out earlier, at the same time as many other youtubers, was that Honey was “scamming” the youtubers themselves by replacing the youtubers reference codes.

      At the time they thought the viewers still got discounts, so they didn’t announce anything about it since it would seem like they asked the viewers not to take the discounts so that LTT could make more money.

    • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      155·
      1 day ago

      For example they found out one of their main sponsors Honey were scamming their viewers and essentially stealing from people, they just kept it quiet rather than owning it.

      That’s one of the things I was referring to. GamersNexus did an expose on the Honey thing and filed a class action suit over it because they were essentially stealing money from creators. Linus was complicit and aware and said nothing.

      Let’s also not forget the time Linus literally received a prototype cooler from Billet Labs for testing, was supposed to return it after review, and he not only reviewed it poorly (and used it for the wrong hardware), but then basically stole it and auctioned it off, later referring to this as “a small mistake.” Supposedly he only offered to pay for the prototype after this was also exposed by GN.

      Billet Labs’ statement on the issue:

      You, the PC community, are amazing. We’d like to thank you for your support, it means more than you can imagine.

      Steve at Gamers Nexus has publicly shown his integrity, at the huge risk of backlash, and we have nothing but respect for him for how he’s handled himself, both publicly and when speaking directly to us.

      …

      Regarding LTT, we are simply going to state the relevant facts:

      On 10th August, we were told by LTT via email that the block had been sold at auction. There was no apology.

      We replied on 10th August within 30 minutes, telling LTT that this wasn’t okay, and that this was a £XXXX prototype, and we asked if they planned to reimburse us at all.

      We received no reply and no offer of payment until 2 hours after the Gamers Nexus video went live on 14th August, at which point Linus himself emailed us directly.

      The exact monetary value of the prototype was offered as reimbursement. We have not received, nor have we asked for any other form of compensation.

      Dude’s just scummy. I’ve no idea why people will defend him to the ends of the earth.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        14 hours ago

        GamersNexus did an expose on the Honey thing and filed a class action suit over it because they were essentially stealing money from creators. Linus was complicit and aware and said nothing.

        I’ve no idea why people will defend him to the ends of the earth.

        Your information is out of date.

        That was massively overblown and turned out not to be entirely as claimed. I would really like it if people would attack him for things he actually did rather than making up accusations. it just makes you look like a bad actor.

        LTT only knew that they were stealing associate links, Which is something that only affects content creators and was already being shared between various content creators. That aspect was not something that affected users. The information was made available on the channels that content creators use. There was no need to highlight it to the general public in a video as it didn’t make any difference to them.

        The thing with Gamers Nexus was a completely different event where they were accused of changing the associate links so that users wouldn’t get good deals. That did affect users but that was a different scam and then GN deliberately went out of his way to conflate the two incidents.

      • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        17 hours ago

        And the Honey thing turned out to be a dud, the accusations false, and the lawsuit went nowhere. So good on them not to jump on the lawsuit train I guess.

      • fatalicus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        103·
        22 hours ago

        About the Billet Labs thing, they have shown, and Billet Labs verified it, that the original agreement was that LTT would keep the cooler.

        It was only after the bad review they asked for it back, and at that point there was miss communication between the person Billet Labs talked to and the logistics department at LTT, so the cooler wasn’t set aside as it should.