• AtomicPurple@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, everything else was bad, but I think ultimately forgivable if they can tighten up their testing and QA process going forward. The Billet Labs thing is on a whole other level though. Like, how do you even fuck up that bad as a professional organization?

    • cybervseas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Do you think LTT can invest in one laptop company and still review theirs and others’ laptops? I don’t know the right answer - I’m interested in your perspective.

      • AtomicPurple@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Hard to say. Linus has always made it sound like his investment in Framework is a personal one, not one made by LMG. If that’s the case, then I think any potential issues could be largely sidestepped by just having someone else do all the laptop reviews.

        If that’s not the case and LMG is directly involved with Framework, then it gets a bit tricky. To their credit, they’ve done a good job of disclosing the Framework investment whenever the company is brought up, but I don’t watch most of LTT’s review content, so I’m not sure if it’s being mentioned in the context of other laptop reviews. If not, it needs to be.
        The whole point of having that kind of disclosure though is so people know that the information being presented is potentially biased. At a certain point, it’s on the audience to take that bias into account and cross reference other sources before making any purchasing decisions. I’m not sure there’s anything LMG can really do to alleviate the perceived conflict of interest, unless they just stop reviewing laptops altogether. Whether or not it’s ethical to continue reviewing laptops in that context, even with a full disclosure, is a question I don’t have a good answer to.

        • cybervseas@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If Linus and his wife own 100% (or nearly 100%) of LMG, does it matter who invested in Framework? Especially when he has so much creative control?

          As far as I remember, they do not disclose the Framework investment when reviewing other laptops.

          Thank you, I appreciate your candor. You’ve given me some things to think about.

          • CRT 📺@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            As far as I remember, they do not disclose the Framework investment when reviewing other laptops.

            When Linus is hosting a laptop review he always has a disclaimer about being a Framework investor. I’m not sure about videos hosted by others because it’s been a while since I’ve watched one but I don’t think they do since it was a personal investment.

            • KluEvo@wirebase.org
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              1 year ago

              Every video about a laptop I’ve seen since he invested has had the framework disclaimer, including multiple shortcircuits by Alex.

          • AtomicPurple@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            If Linus and his wife own 100% (or nearly 100%) of LMG, does it matter who invested in Framework? Especially when he has so much creative control?

            At that point, just refer to the second half of my original replay. Though, if the investment is just a small part of something like an index fund, I’d say that concerns of bias probably aren’t warranted.