Serious Linus Tech Tips concludes internal investigation about allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, abuse of power, etc

[SunnyDays]

There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.

To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.

The investigation found that:

- Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.

- Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.

- Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.

- There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.

- Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.

In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.

With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.

Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.

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.

This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.

In case anyone needs context, here's a CBC article that goes over the allegations: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/linus-tech-tips-youtube-controversy-1.6940087
Or the original Twitter thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html

 

[SunnyDays]

It's really something seeing them hire lawyers to tell them they did nothing wrong and function perfectly as a business, and then threaten a lawsuit against the victim midway through.

 

[AR15mex]

It's really something seeing them hire lawyers to tell them they did nothing wrong and function perfectly as a business, and then threaten a lawsuit against the victim midway through.

As a business owner myself, I would do the same. If the baseless accusations would cost my business, the one that I have been building through the years, I would at least try to scare the person that is doing it.

 

[Raccoon]

 

[indospot]

I was kind of on board with this until they got to the part saying they have grounds for a defamation suit. A very weird thing to add here, especially when Madison's original accusations already included an instance of her job being "vaguely threatened". You'd think they'd learn not to say things in this kind of ominous tone.

 

[juuso]

Weird tone. Makes it look like they, rather than being genuinely interested in making sure these things don't happend, want to polish their image and blame the victim. Which of course is the case, but they could have at least tried to hide it better.

 

[Sheldon]

Looks like Linus Tech Tips is taking Bill Barr Law Tips.

Did they release the original investigator's report, too, or just their own summary of it?

 

[Razgriz]

I was kind of on board with this until they got to the part saying they have grounds for a defamation suit. A very weird thing to add here, especially when Madison's original accusations already included an instance of her job being "vaguely threatened". You'd think they'd learn not to say things in this kind of ominous tone.

Getting lawyers to not write vague legal threats in the prepared statements they give you is like pulling teeth unfortunately.

Lawyers generally write from the perspective that they want their client to be able to maximize the use of the legal system as much as possible, which means they tend to write statements like this, where they'll point to every right their client might have, even if they don't use it. (And in most cases, you do want this, just so we're clear - courts have thrown out cases because lawyers weren't extremely explicit about that sorta thing.)

It's something you get used to after seeing enough lawyer prepared statements; they don't mean anything, it's just a case of lawyerspeak interfering with the real world.

 

[eye0h]

People with boatloads of money smothering someone with expensive lawyers and scaring them into submission, tale as old as time.

 

[Koren Lesthe]

People have already forgot that they made a "our response" style video with a lot of jokes while talking about the allegations.

Can we add that stupid face to the banned stuff ?

 

[kimbo99]

Sounds like when you have crooked cops policing other crooked cops. Can't say I'm convinced there was no wrong doing.

 

[oldpuck]

This is a patently insufficient response. The vast majority of these claims don't have an objective standard, and if you're going to publish a review of your internal behavior, setting and communicating the standards to which you are being held.

The sum total of this statement is "we hired lawyers to find out if we did crimes. We found no crimes." The claims we're not criminal in nature, so who gives a shit that you didn't find any.

I'm not here to knock a channel I don't watch. My hope is that the claims were not substantial, because my hope is that no one got hurt, and there is not culture of toxicity anywhere. But this response doesn't hit what should be the minimum acceptable standard of transparency.

 

[hologram]

Hey good news everyone we looked into the allegations against us and it turns out we did nothing wrong!

 

[Spyder]

It's really something seeing them hire lawyers to tell them they did nothing wrong and function perfectly as a business, and then threaten a lawsuit against the victim midway through.

Worked for Jirard

 

[wakko]

It's really something seeing them hire lawyers to tell them they did nothing wrong and function perfectly as a business, and then threaten a lawsuit against the victim midway through.

Hey good news everyone we looked into the allegations against us and it turns out we did nothing wrong!

These internal investigations can get really intense and scary.

Usually, the way it works is:

Company: We want records of ALL of your conversations. Share ALL of your emails, phone text messages, Skype messages, Twitter DMs, Discord conversations, etc. So then we can use all of your communications as evidence to destroy you in court.

Accuser/Victim: No, I won't do that.

Company: Okay. Then we'll sue the fuck out of you for defamation.

Accuser/Victim: Okay, okay. I don't have money for lawyers. I'll cooperate with you. I'll give you records of everything.

 

[SunnyDays]

I think there's only two ways I could trust a third party audit/investigation into LMG.

#1 - a neutral / adversarial party does it, such as a regulator or a union.

#2 - they publish the full, unabridged investigation for the public to consume; of course this would have to be redacted.

#1 would be preferable but would pose substantial business risk to LMG, while #2 should be easy if things are so clear-cut as LMG's summary of the investigation is factual.