this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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[–] tuxed 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Feels like I remember that one getting pretty good proof Linus didn't do anything, but could be wrong

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Linus wasn't accused of sexually harassing anyone. His company was accused of being a hostile work environment with sexual harassment by a former worker, but the accusations weren't against Linus himself. LTT hired a 3rd party law firm to investigate - LTT said the law firm basically said there wasn't legal liability based on the documentation they could find and LTT used that to absolve themselves and threaten to sue the accuser if she said anything else.

But this was an LTT hired lawfirm and LTT themselves reporting on what the report said - and since it's confidential you kind of just have to take their word that they're accurately reporting the findings. Further there were initially some corroborators of Madison's story who retracted and apologized quickly (assumingly after being threatened with legal action - Aprime is the example). Besides that a lot of the accusations were things that happened in person that wouldn't necessarily leave a digital trail so it's possible even if the 3rd party investigation was completely unbiased that everything Madison said was still true.

In the end believe what you want but it seems slimy enough that I stopped watching.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

One of the major accusations was that they asked too much of Madison for a single person to accomplish, and fired her over not meeting their expectations. While this is not great, it's not legally problematic.

[–] tuxed 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah you're correct on the accusations, I should have clarified.

But with that approach it doesn't sound like there is anything an organization could do against false accusations that would absolve them of wrongdoing. I'm all for bashing corrupt/horrible companies, but it feels like there should be at least some presumption of innocence unless there is any kind of proof. Painting all accused with the same brush just leads to devaluing the brush IMO. But like you said, people may (and will) believe what they want, and people are under no obligation to watch or support any creator unless they want to. In my case I just haven't seen any proof of wrongdoing (in this case, gamersnexus controversy was worse IMO).

What do you think a company should do in that situation, assuming it is being falsely accused? What would a "perfect" response be? I cant think of a much better one than what LTT did, given their circumstances, but would love to hear what a better response would look like.

[–] JohnDClay 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The only thing they could have done better was have the third party release the report. I don't think they released it yet, but they had intended to at one point. Maybe the lawyers told them they shouldn't?

[–] tuxed 1 points 2 months ago

Hm, not sure that would be legal even? Considering it likely contained information on different employees etc. But yeah, if possible it would have been nice to see.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Not to mention the law firm they hired advertises anti-union action, so that should tell you whether they can be trusted to be fair to workers..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

People can say nothing was done but the only info you’re going to get is going to be from the accusers. The company isn’t going to speak publicly about it and so we won’t ever know what their views are or what proof they have.

[–] tuxed 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They hired an external firm to investigate themselves and they found nothing, while the accuser had zero proof. There is plenty of things to accuse them for, the gamers nexus thing for one, but I'm a bit annoyed about false accusations sticking so hard when there is little reason to believe it. If anything it makes people less likely to believe actual victims.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

This was my impression. All of their scandals they’ve taken extremely seriously(it appears), done the work to fix and improve, and a lot of their issues seem to be results of fast scaling and organizational level problems that can be fixed.They haven’t just swept things under the rug where they’re able to be transparent. I just think the problem is what Luke has always said: When you open a company up to transparency, you gain criticism, and then the company has large incentives to shut down that transparency because all you use it for is to cause them problems.

Aside from that, the LTT community and outsiders seem very toxic toward them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Toxic work environment; misleading benchmark & product reviews.