Alleged harassment and bullying at Linus Tech Tips 'not substantiated' and 'false' according to third-party investigation organised by tech channel

Linus Tech Tips has published a brief summary of a third-party investigation into allegations against the hardware review channel. The investigation—organised by the channel's owner, Linus Media Group—found no evidence of wrongdoing at the company.

Linus Tech Tips found itself embroiled in controversy in August of last year. What started as a criticism of its review process and an apology video quickly spiralled into allegations from a former employee of harrassment and inappropriate workplace behaviour. 

We received a statement from LMG CEO Terren Tong that same month confirming that the company would be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations, along with a stated commitment to publish the findings.

The channel has now tweeted a summary of the conclusions of the third party investigation into the claims.

Roper Greyel—the Vancouver-based legal firm specialising in labor and employment law—found the claims of bullying and harassment were unsubstantiated, and that allegations of a failure to address sexual harassment claims were false.

The tweet goes on to say that "any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore…the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them".

In response to allegations of abuse of power and retaliatory behaviour, Linus Tech Tips said:

"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.

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

The investigator shared a recommendation that LMG provide further training to its team regarding the raising of concerns and the reinforcement of existing workplace policies. LMG says that it had previously solicited anonymous feedback from its team to ensure that there were no further incidents of bullying or harassment.

The channel expresses the desire to move forward from the allegations and subsequent findings. However, it also suggests that there is still the opportunity for the company to seek a defamation lawsuit.

"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 will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation."

The suggestion that they could, but won't pursue a defamation lawsuit has received some backlash on Twitter, with some observers saying that this threatening language goes too far. 

"Why did there need to be a threat in this?" one user tweeted in response. 

"This could have been a half-decent update" said another. "The last two paragraphs ruined it".

Some have also questioned the merit of an investigation that was paid for by the accused party, while others say they consider the channel exonerated by the result.

We've contacted the former employee for comment.