352
"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
(www.sportskeeda.com)
Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Everyone here is speculating about their content, but the simple answer is YouTube just changed how they count the view number. The change basically happened overnight, so it's not some slow attrition of views. They said in the WAN Show that while the view count halved, the number of likes hasn't changed (the view/like ratio doubled), and the revenue they earned hasn't changed (CPM doubled). All of this points that the same number of humans are watching, but what counts as a view in the "views" number just changed.
Could back up that theory that it's autoplay views being reduced and they are not worth much anyway
*the view/ like ratio ~~doubled~~ halved
The views halved, the likes stayed the same. So the ratio of likes to views is now higher.
Yes, likes/views is higher but you originally said views/likes is higher.
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I stopped watching LTT years ago. His channel is crap. He's a tech personality who seems to barely understand technology, so most of his videos are just over the top bullshit and stunts. Not to mention his awful annoying vocal fry. He's like the male Fran Drescher.
Plus, Linus has been a complete asshole to GamersNexus, one of the best channels for investigative journalism in tech. As far as I'm concerned, Linus is your typical business entity, and lacking ethics.
I never watched that channel very much, but in the several videos I’ve seen (maybe 10-12 total?), he seemed to know exactly what he was talking about.
I’d be interested in hearing what specific complaints technical experts have with the channel.
its that Nasal voice right? like lois from family guy
Oh Linus is a giant child.
He once got pissed off, because they got called out by an actual scientist. They were creating videos promoting fake products. Then they played victim and pushed it instead of, ya know, taking the high road.
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..
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.
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.
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.
About the Billet Labs thing, they have shown, and Billet Labs verified it, that the original agreement was that LTT would keep the cooler.
Shown where? I’ve seen no evidence of that anywhere, and I was following that controversy when it happened.
Here is the post from Billet Labs themselves where they verify that they only asked for the cooler back after the video had been released: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/18d6m3u/deleted_by_user/kcfmcnz/
Now, i'm not saying that LTT didn't do Billet Lbs dirty in regards to this whole situation.
They did not test the cooler correctly, and Linus was less than resonable in regards to retesting and such (something he has adressed himself here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641 ).
But people keep hanging up that they sold when they were supposed to send it back, when there was no such agreement beforehand.
Thanks for that. Not entirely as bad as originally indicated, but still pretty shady on LTT’s part
With everything I know of it, Linus was just rug-sweeping it before the exposé. Feels like Billet Labs got screwed but took the high road to prevent drama because LTT has a big community.
he rubbed me the wrong way when he created drama with employees like last year. fans/people were being sexist towards a female employee how she wasnt in tech, and she should do anything on the "show.
Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that'd be nice.
well google/YT is enshittifying themselves with AI and propaganda push, so it will be soon.
Users stop watching on Youtube to go watch on Tiktok. I can't see that as a win.
Perhaps the lesser of the two evils, considering Google's dominance. But yes, far from ideal.
Probably doesn't help that a bunch of the decent channels were bought by private equity and are now churning out boring, safe and uninteresting content.
https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI (a yt link, lol).
A brief summary from https://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-channel-private-equity/
Some channels like Donut Media, Veritasium, and Task and Purpose have been acquired publicly. Others, such as Dude Perfect and Coco Melon, have been acquired more privately, with no public disclosure.
Plenty others. A key giveaway is when a channel diverges their risk. When the front man who is the reason you have watched the channel suddenly has co-hosts and large segments from other channels in their regular content.
Oh, so that is why Veritasium went to shit. That's such a shame. It was a great channel that I was excited about when a new video would drop. Then low quality videos started coming out and I don't watch them anymore. Haven't unsubscribe yet though, maybe I should get around to that.
Honestly The PFAS and Monsanto videos were quite good in my opinion.
What is it you don't like about Veritasium lately?
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I stopped watching LTT videos when they just became long-form ads. Or when everyone five minutes was a sponsored segment.
I think the biggest channels I watch have under 4 million subscribers, and most of my channels have less than a million. I've never watched the big channels, so I don't really care.
A while back, YT asked me about turning on my watch history, but I didn't know it was off. I don't know what that was about--I think they changed something--but my knee-jerk reaction is to NOT do what they want me to do, so I left it off. Now I just watch whatever is new from my subscriptions, and don't have any suggestions cluttering my front page, which is a much better way to use YT, imo. So, thanks, YT.
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