LinusTechTips Is Losing Thousands of Fans. Why?

At its peak, Lionus TechTips was pulling

nearly 28 million subscribers across 10

channels and was worth over $100

million. However, the channel was also

one of the biggest promoters of a huge

influencer scam and recently got into a

controversy where the owner Lionus

bought a private jet while employees

were slaving away. My name's Ryan and

we're going to look at how Lionus

TechTips's company and reputation is

going downhill as well as give an update

as to where his company stands now. To

understand how far Lionus fell, you

first have to understand what he

actually built. Back in November 2008,

Lionus Sebastian started the Lionus Tech

Tips channel out of a spare bedroom in

Canada with his first video being about

an undisclosed AMD processor.

>> Thank you for joining me.

>> [laughter]

>> That didn't quite go as smoothly as I

>> His first videos were simple with no

production crew or a big budget. Just a

guy who was genuinely obsessed with tech

and wanted to share that with people and

people loved it with comments like

unedited reviews rock. Always enjoy

these. And I love Lina's tech tips. They

aren't boring like everything else.

They're short and straight to the point.

As a result, the channel grew from a

bedroom setup into a 100 person company

with 10 channels across the platform. By

its peak, LTT was one of YouTube's

biggest and most influential tech

channels. In 2023, he revealed that his

company got a huge buyout offer. We did

have a substantial offer recently to

sell out, [music] and I might as well

speak plainly. The offer was 100

million. And of course, he declined.

That's how big things were. But the

bigger you get, the more people are

watching when you mess up. And Lionus

was about to give them plenty. In August

2022, LTT launched a premium tech

backpack through [music] their

merchandise store, which sold for $250.

But when customers started asking about

the warranty policy for such an

expensive product, Lionus basically told

them this.

>> We are not formalizing anything, but we

will stand behind our products. Um,

[music] I think that we have a pretty

good

>> track.

>> I think we have a pretty good track

record for just kind of dealing with it.

His answer instantly triggered a wave of

backlash from viewers on the internet

with people saying things like, "LTT has

always discussed warranties from a

consumer standpoint and has constantly

called out companies for not honoring

warranties or having bad warranties for

the products they review. But now that

it's a product coming from LTT,

warranties don't matter. What a weird

hill to die on from the LTT crew. Shows

how out of touch Lionus has become. If a

hardware manufacturer had said

warranties don't matter, so we don't

need to offer one, he would be all over

them. And the hypocrisy is almost

palpable. I can't wait for Nvidia,

Intel, and other tech companies to adopt

the Trust Me Bro warranty. truly setting

a wonderful example to those LT

apparently tries to hold responsible on

how to treat consumers. Even people who

had already bought the backpack got to

question their decision after hearing

Lionus' take on warranty like one user

on X with this following tweet. The LTT

store backpack is expensive, a premium

product. I purchased one, but after

hearing what Linus Sebastian had to say

about not providing a written concrete

warranty, I think I need to cancel my

order. The fact that you won't even

provide a basic warranty, something

legally mandated in much of the first

world, something that comes with the

most basic products, let alone a $250

backpack, is very concerning and

immensely anti-consumer. And in response

to those angry tweets, Lionus replied

with, "It's likely we will formalize

some kind of warranty policy before we

actually start shipping. We have been

talking about it for months and weighing

our options, but it will need to be

bulletproof." My point is that lifetime

warranty or any warranty period means

nothing. I could just fold the company

and you'd be out of luck. So, at

the end of the day, you either trust me

to do the right thing or you don't. It

doesn't actually make a difference if we

have a formal warranty policy.

Eventually, he added a formal written

warranty, but at the same time, he

didn't forget to take advantage of all

the negative attention on his brand by

selling a Trust Me Bro warranty t-shirt,

essentially mocking the people raising

concerns. Although this was a small

controversy, the way he handled the

criticism and walked it back only after

enough pressure did not sit well with

people. But it was also the first time

you could see the pattern clearly.

dismiss the criticism, wait until the

pressure is too big to ignore, then fix

it quietly without ever admitting you

were wrong. And that pattern was about

to get a lot harder to ignore. On July

29th and 30th of 2023, Lionus created a

community-driven expo for PC hardware

and gaming enthusiasts called LTX 2023

in Vancouver, Canada. And on the first

day of the event, the channel Murfs

Gaming got a chance to visit the LTT

studio and Labs. And during the tour, a

lab employee proudly spoke about the

testing process in LTT's team.

>> The difference between us and somebody

like Gamers Nexus or Hardware Unbox is

we test new components, new tests every

time.

>> But little did he know, he was about to

start a huge war between the biggest

tech channels on the internet. 5 days

after the LTT Labs claim, Hardware

Unboxed another text channel with over

1.1 million subscribers was the first

one to fire back, saying, "LTT Labs

taking shots. I've rerun more benchmarks

and Lionus has spent money on testing

equipment and staff. If you have to tell

everyone how good your testing is in my

20 plus years of experience, that

generally means your testing isn't very

good. Your work speaks for itself, guys.

That's how you build credibility.

However, this was nothing compared to

what Gamers Nexus, a PC hardware reviews

channel with over 2.6 million

subscribers, got to say about LT. In a

40inute video titled The Problem with

Lionus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, and

Responsibility, Gamers Nexus host Steve

Burke exposed a couple of serious

problems from the LDT team with the

first one about the very thing LT Lab is

proud of, their testing data. And now,

even with its heavily marketed debut of

Labs, LMG is still consistently making

errors in nearly every single review

that they publish. It is okay to make

errors. All of us do this in this line

of work, but the concern we have is that

these types of errors are in nearly

every single LT technical or review type

of video. So, there are enough errors

that we can't fit them all into a normal

length.

>> Steve then pointed out the concerns he

had about the authenticity of Lionus's

review.

>> $200,000 into Laptop Maker Framework and

yet is also covering their product uh

and their competitor's products. LMG

also has a crossbranded against

screwdriver with Noctua on their store

while they're also reviewing Noctua

products favorably even when it's shown

to be hitting by their own data 100° C.

But the case that really set people off

was about one particular product

testing. On June 25th, 2023, LTT

released a video reviewing a copper

water cooler from Billet Labs, which is

a tiny startup. T team stuck this

special 3090 Ti water block on an RTX

4090.

>> If this wasn't a 3090 Ti, then we don't

have another 3090 Ti that we can take

apart.

>> How the hell did we not know what GPU

this thing was?

>> I thought it was a 3090 Ti.

>> So, we just casually had a 4090 sitting

on the shelf clearly labeled stating

that it should work despite it not being

explicitly compatible. However, it

didn't stop LT from trying.

>> Pri and continued with the video despite

misrepresenting the product. massively

by using it on an incompatible device

that it literally would not fit

properly. LT's presentation goes down

the path of being irresponsible,

presenting the product as much more

difficult to work with than it would be

if used properly.

>> And based on that flawed testing, his

conclusion about the product was the

following.

>> But it's a bad product.

>> It looks great.

>> Yeah, it looks super cool.

>> Are you just saying it's bad just purely

because of the price?

It's bad because it makes absolutely no

sense and nobody should buy it.

>> To Steve, this kind of behavior is

highly damaging.

>> Harms a small company and this kind of

behavior can kill someone's life work in

a heartbeat and it'd be based on invalid

testing and presentation. One of the

company

>> and even the founder of Billet Labs had

to clear the confusion in the video's

comment section saying Felix from Billet

Labs here. Great video, guys. But this

block was specifically for a 3090Ti,

not a 4090. We've since obtained a 4090

to test with, and using it with the

3090Ti block leaves a gap of around 1 mm

over the die, so it's never going to

cool properly. We're happy to answer any

questions in the comments below. We love

LTT, but it was difficult to watch their

criticisms when pretty much every design

issue that Lionus raised was done for a

reason, which was all explained to Adam

weeks ago, none of which, I guess, was

fed back to Lionus. We also sent a full

instruction manual that seemingly wasn't

used. Despite that, Lionus doubled down

on his opinion and didn't even show a

shred of guilt for essentially

destroying the product.

>> I don't know, guys. I'm not sure if I

can apologize for not spending another

100,200

300 $500 of various people's time

sitting and engineering a workaround to

a product that no matter the result

nobody should buy.

>> But it didn't stop there. Things got

even messier when Steve exposed the LTT

team trying to take advantage of Billet

Labs financially.

>> Gamers Nexus learned that the company

asked for the prototype back on June

28th. This would allow them to send it

out to other media or use it for further

development. Lionus Media Group agreed

at least twice to return the product.

The first time they agreed to send it

back was June 30th at LTX. Lionus Media

Group put the one-of-a-kind water block

up for auction at its Extra Life auction

event without the permission of Billet

Labs. Billet did not learn of this on

and this immediately triggered another

wave of hatred towards Lionus and his

team with comments saying, "How can you

mistreat a company like that?" Literally

auctioned off their best prototype. It

breaks my heart how they mistreated

Billet Labs, a public apology is in

place. Just hours after Gamers Nexus

uploaded their video, Lionus took to the

company's forum to respond with a rather

lengthy post. In it, he addressed his

controversy with Billet Lab's prototype,

saying, "We didn't sell the monolock,

but rather auctioned it for charity due

to a miscommunication and the fact that

while we haven't sent payment yet, we

have already agreed to compensate Billet

Labs for the cost of their prototype.

Nevertheless, the truth was much more

complicated." Billet Labs then posted

their public statement on Reddit about

the incident, saying, "Regarding LT, we

are simply going to state the relevant

facts." On the 10th of 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

prototype worth x amount of pounds. And

we asked if they plan 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 the 14th

of August, at which point Lionus himself

emailed us directly. The exact monetary

value of the prototype was offered as a

reimbursement. We have not received nor

have we asked for any other form of

compensation. At this point, it seemed

like nobody wanted to trust Lionus

anymore. with comments like, "It looks

like LTT would have just ignored them

without the backlash." And Lionus was

100% going to sweep this under the rug.

They knew Billet had zero pull until

another YouTube giant came out. But

Steve from Gamers Nexus wasn't done yet,

as he brought up another example of bad

review from the Short Circuit team. This

time it was about a gaming mouse.

>> This is not a smooth mouse, and that's

really disappointing. Uh especially on

like a premium gaming mouse. that should

be one of the primary focuses.

>> Pwnage then contacted LMG to notify them

that LMG had not removed the protective

film from the feet of the mouse.

>> However, the short circuit team denied

it at first as Lionus admitted it during

a later video saying

>> that our initial correction which was

posted said hey no it you know is high

friction and we did test it and there

were no films on which resulted in this

conclusion.

The only question that remains is, am I

recommending you buy this product? Due

to the strong criticism from the video,

it prompted a rather aggressive response

from the Pwnage team, saying, "Our mouse

was given as a prize to each of their

VIP whales to their recent Lionus Expo

event, but say not recommended. Talk to

your boss at Lionus Tech before you mess

up his credibility as well." For a

channel this big, you have a

responsibility to do basic study and not

spread misinformation.

But it wasn't just the Ponchinage team.

Viewers also expressed their

disappointment with people commenting

things like, "Most, if not all, premium

mice come with a protective film on the

feet." The fact that this professional

mouse reviewer didn't even check for

them is appalling. or even threw in some

sarcastic joke into the mix with, "Hey

guys, maybe grab a prototype from them

and sell it at auction, too." That'd

show them. And as the backlash getting

more intense, the short circuit team

eventually had to back down, admitting,

"We watched through all the raw footage

from this shoot. And it does appear that

the protective plastic film was indeed

still on the feet when David gave his

initial impressions of the glide field.

We've cut out the section of the video

regarding the glide issues so as to not

misrepresent the mouse. We deeply regret

allowing this error to happen and will

be implementing process changes so

similar issues are avoided in the

future. Importantly, we apologize for

getting it wrong in the video and we

apologize for how we handle the

communications that follow. Even Lionus

himself had to address this incident on

a podcast

>> and we did test it and there were no

films on the feet and we didn't do our

due diligence to figure this out. I am

extremely frustrated for a number of

reasons by this. Um so I just want to

say hey massive apology to onage then

went on and unlisted the video. But that

wasn't all. Lionus TechTips even

released a 20inut YouTube apology video

in which several high-ranking employees

and executives promised to do better.

>> Effective immediately, all YouTube video

production is on pause and our teams are

going to be spending this entire next

week focusing on long-term workflow

changes to make our content better in a

lasting [music] way. This means for the

first time in over 12 years, LT will be

missing not just one daily upload, but

many. While Lionus personally apologized

for everything,

>> whatever is being said about me and

whatever is being said about the team

should never have allowed my feelings to

distract from any [music] valid

criticism of our work. My decision, for

example, to not bother retesting the

monolock, that was obviously wrong, and

my lame response on the forum was a huge

and unnecessary blunder. I owe you guys

better, and [music]

I'm sorry. However, that was only half

of what August threw at LT. The very

next day, a former employee named

Madison Reev posted a detailed thread

about some of the reasons she left the

company. Among those reasons were

serious allegations of what was going on

inside the company. In her tweets,

Madison said, "I was consistently

belittled by certain members of upper

management. My work was called dog

I was called incompetent. When I would

reach out to managers and try to get

help with these situations, I would be

told to put on my big girl pants and be

more assertive. I was told I was bossy

when I was trying to be assertive like I

was asked to do. I was told I was

arguing when I was trying to discuss my

point of view. I was told to calm my

tits, stop being such a b and other

comments to similar effect. And it

didn't get any better with the working

environment. As Madison continued, work

from home was a whole issue. If you took

3 minutes to answer a personal email,

you could get in trouble. There is a

system of micromanaging and a level of

distrust because the amount of content

they have to push out daily is so

insane. I purposefully cut my leg open

so badly I would have to go to the ER to

get it stapled back together. It was

genuinely the only way in my mind to

take a day off without being harassed

for a reason why. I'd spoken to managers

about how I was struggling and how the

workload was too much for one person,

but I was belittled and told you just

have bad time managed skills. And even

worse, she was also harassed by other

employees who at one point asked her to

twerk during work hours and was

questioned about her sexual history.

Hearing all of these, fans were pissed

off beyond belief with comments saying,

"I am beyond disgusted to learn about

all of this. I had unsubed to all their

channels an hour ago over the

journalistic integrity issues, but

learning this leaves me speechless. I

hope you're doing better, Madison, and

thank you for bringing this to light.

And when people commented on Lionus to

address the allegations on his apology

video, many of these Madison related

comments were deleted. Before everything

went out of control, the LTT team

released a press statement saying, "We

are taking Madison's allegations

seriously. We are conducting an internal

assessment alongside bringing in a

third-party investigator to look into

the allegation. We are committed to

publishing the findings and implementing

any corrective actions that may arise

due to this. But the damage had already

been done as the Lionus TechTips channel

lost 200,000 followers just in August

2023 alone. The pattern from the

backpack controversy had just played out

again. He only moved on when the

pressure became impossible to ignore,

and this time it was on a much bigger

stage. If the 2023 crisis raised

questions about LTT's accuracy in

workplace culture, it was pale in

comparison to what happened in December

2024. On December 22nd, 2024, a YouTuber

named Megalag published a video titled

Exposing the Honey influencer scam. For

those who didn't know, Hana is a free

Chrome extension that automatically

searches for coupons on over 30,000

sites across the globe, which helps

users save time and money while shopping

online. The video revealed that Honey

had been secretly stealing money from

the very creators who had promoted them

via affiliated marketing. In order to

understand how that all works, you need

to know that when you click an affiliate

link and buy something, the influencer

who promoted that product earns a

commission for referring you to that

store. And behind all of that is a

complex mechanism operating quietly.

Let's say you're looking for a CPU and

after watching a Lionus video, you

decided to buy the one he recommended in

that video. And this is what happened

next. You see, after clicking Lionus'

affiliate link, you'll notice in the

URL, there's a tracking tag labeled

Short Circuit. That's a reference to one

of Lionus' YouTube channels. And this

tracking tag is how Newegg knows who to

pay a commission to. We can also see

that this tracking tag has been saved on

my browser in the form of a cookie that

will expire in 30 days. Then, when you

were at the checkout page, this took

place. Well, once Honey popped up, watch

what happened to Lionus' affiliate

cookie after we clicked apply discounts.

You see that? Honey came in, removed

Lionus' affiliate cookie, and replaced

it with their own, claiming credit for

the sale and pocketing the commission

money for themselves. It didn't take

long for that video to blow up, pulling

in nearly 19 million views to this day.

And LTT was right at the center of it.

Lionus TechTips, who have been promoting

Honey since 2017. Turns out that back in

2020, someone had already brought the

problem up on the LT forum, saying,

"Word on the street is that Honey takes

affiliate money. Is that a fact? Any

chance LTT will look into that?" And

when another user replied with, "I

failed to see how this is a problem," he

asked, "What about all the affiliates

losing money because of Honey and the

users that don't realize who is getting

screwed for Honey to make money? Am I

crazy for thinking Lionus is a crook for

this? Only to receive this answer. Yes,

you are the one who's in the wrong here.

There's literally nothing cru or shady

about Honey's business model.

Eventually, the topic was ignored until

2022 when another user noticed that

Lionus was no longer promoting Honey and

asked the team about it, which one of

Lionus' employees responded with, "We

ended the partnership with Honey due to

the way their service interacted with

affiliate links. Essentially, if someone

clicked on an affiliate link, for

example, one of ours below in the video

description on YouTube, and then if they

say, "Use Honey and search for a deal,"

Honey will override that tracking link

even if they don't find you a deal. But

the worst thing is, although the LT team

knew about this, they did nothing to

stop Honey from taking advantage of

other creators, especially since they

were one of the biggest promoters of

this scam. They did approximately 160

sponsored segments, all of which remain

live on YouTube. Those videos have

accumulated around 194 million views.

According to my data, that makes Lionus'

company LMG the third largest promoter

of Honey on YouTube. So yeah, in my

opinion, they should have made more

noise about this. And when asked why he

didn't warn people, his answer was this.

If I told everybody uninstall Honey, an

extension that supposedly gets them a

better deal because I wasn't making

enough money from it.

Do you really honestly ask yourself

truly think that would have gone good

for me?

>> And this left a bad taste in many

people's mouths, including Louis

Rossman, who immediately called out

Lionus's response to the scandal. Elinus

is asking his viewers to ask if they

think it would have gone well for him.

And my first thing, what makes me want

to punch my monitor is that it's not

about you. You gave up the right for it

to be about you or your image or how you

think you'd be perceived when you took

their money to advertise a closed source

browser extension to all of your users.

[music] And it wasn't cheap to advertise

on Lionus' channel. As Louis showed, it

could be anywhere from $7,000 for a

mid-roll ad to a $63,000 sponsored

video. And all of this brought another

huge wave of backlash toward Lionus with

comments saying LTT were one of the

biggest victims but made the least

noise. I think that's what's bothering

people. Genuine tech tip would have been

to uninstall Honey. Lionus is the same

guy who says using an ad block is piracy

because it hurts creators. But an

extension that literally steals your

affiliate money. It's not a big deal and

not his story to tell. Since this

controversy, the Lionus TechTips

channel's viewership has also dropped

sharply up to 50% in September 2025. And

even Lionus himself acknowledged on a

podcast through a video titled, "Our

views are down," that the decline in

viewership might be the result of his

past controversy. Um, you know, part of

the tech community that is just

completely

tuned out at this point in a like we can

never reach them again.

>> Yeah. [music] Way. And and I'll be

honest with you, you know, I don't

really know how to deal with it, right?

It it doesn't matter what the intent

was. It doesn't matter what our actions

have been. It just it just matters what,

you know, some snake put out to a very

large number of people to poison their

opinion, right?

>> But while his channel was bleeding

viewers, Lionus was busy making a very

different kind of decision. One that was

going to put Lionus back into the

spotlight, but not for the reasons he

expected. On April 2nd, 2026, Lionus

posted a video titled, "The Gamer Jet is

real and it costs $0," showcasing his

newest purchase. And the way he began

the video, immediately baffled everyone.

So, the April Fools wasn't a joke. We

actually bought a jet.

>> What started as a meme on WAN show when

I discovered that a jet propelled

aircraft is not as expensive as I

initially thought. when I started to

explore that one aircraft that I was

like this is shockingly affordable

>> because just a few years earlier on the

WAN show Lionus had a completely

different thought on private jets.

>> I I kind of look at private air travel

and I'm like um yeah it doesn't seem

great you know the the the sheer amount

of fuel consumption. So so I have my own

thoughts on private travel. I don't feel

it's necessary for me in any kind of

security way and and I'm not I'm not

super keen on it. I don't think it's

great.

>> So, when Lionus got asked about the

price, his answer was even more unreal.

>> So, because of the non-disclosure

agreement that we signed in order to

purchase it, like this whole world is

very closed door.

>> I can't actually tell you how much I

paid,

>> but what I can tell you is that if you

Google it, it's less than that. And the

second thing that I can tell you is that

with a little bit of uh girl math, $0.

>> But he got even more excited when it

came to the fuel cost of flying to

Mexico and back to Canada.

>> When we factor in that the fuel coming

[music] back from Mexico was half as

much as we paid to go down.

>> Oh wo. It actually cost less than buying

like a first class ticket for everyone,

[music] which was kind of mind-blowing.

>> However, the internet did not find this

convincing. News outlets started calling

him completely out of touch while many

viewers started expressing their disdain

with comments saying his poor employee

having to stand there and listen to his

boss brag about how rich he is. This was

the most husband trying to rationalize

his expensive purchase to his wife

conversation I've ever seen between two

straight men. On the LTT subreddit,

people were criticizing Lionus'

decisions left and right to the point

that he even got the moderators to

delete a bunch of negative comments

about the jet. And on YouTube, his name

became a hot topic for creators with

videos like the Lionus TechTip situation

is bad, which got over 1 million views

in just over 3 weeks, and internet

versus Lionus Tech Tips, which got

nearly 40,000 views under 2 weeks. So,

it's safe to say after all of these

controversies that Lionus' company

reputation has been on a downfall. If

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