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I can't believe people are OK with this!

They're not. Probably astroturfers trying to manipulate public opinion. Ignore them, they're lying POS.

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Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.

Yeah. the twitter angle was pretty much gratuitous.

It's probably twitter marketing parasites. Any "news" item that even remotely mentions twitter gets spammed everywhere.

Most people seriously underestimate just how much astroturfers = stealth/undercover marketers = shills = low lifes have invaded social networking sites and the net in general. They talk the talk of ethics but they rarely walk the walk. Twitter is currently one of the worst.

Anytime you see a one-sided "story" talking about some commercial product, or have trouble trying to have a legitimate discussion with a commercial product zealot (there are very few consumers who are zealots about any commercial product), you're probably dealing with an astroturfer. They are lying shits, make their life hell.

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Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.

You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.

Not clear. He endlessly spams the same propaganda, completely ignores responses (I have never seen him once acknowledge that any alternative point of view might be valid), and is in general just a mouthpiece. Just because it's worded nicely doesn't mean that it's not flamebait.

Very likely he's a sock puppet or astroturfer. The RIAA is spending many millions on anti-piracy propaganda and has the ethics of alley cats, you think they're not going to spend some of it on spamming social networking sites to drown out alternative points of view?

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Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.

I'm really tired of the overuse, especially in the news media, of the words "could" and "might".

Agreed but you're failing to recognize that this isn't news, it's marketing.

Almost all "news" items about products are written by marketers these days. They will abuse the English language as much as they think they can legally get away with. This particular "news" item appears to be a puff piece to drum up some interest in the G1 google phone.

The entire pocketgamer.co.uk web site appears to be marketing. Almost all the articles on it are puff pieces with no objective reporting at all.

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Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.

What Microsoft did was an obvious and blatant violation of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code. The bloggers should have publicly criticized these Microsoft tactics instead of going along with them.

One thing amazed me about the US when I lived there is how badly you are bombarded with adverts. Not just TV but everywhere. Really its like having a fast computer. You don't realise it until you start to try to use a slow one.

I found amazing, and very annoying. But for everyone else because they grew up with it they more or less blocked it out. Advertising companies know this, which is why adverts are becoming more and more intrusive. Take a look at this site.. http://www.womma.org/wombat/agenda.htm

It will give you an idea of how intrusive they actually get. Whats intresting in that site is that NCSofts Auto-Assault has used these marketing companies for viral/Gurrilla/astro-turfing. So having them put adverts into the game is just an extension of this to be honest.

As for the OP question. I wouldn't play it. I'd quit. If I am paying a subscription why the heck should I be paying to be spammed with adverts. Don't talk to me about it. Think it helps? Guess you have never seen "Deuce Bigalow: European gigalo" pictures in planetside.
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickablecult ure/entry/massive_ruins_planetside/

which incidently was hacked to stop adverts spawning in game (just basically edited the hosts file).

>People have fled those media for the internet, because they can control their mindspace.

You know I used to think this too, until I read this site. (PDFs of the courses there)

http://www.womma.org/wombat/agenda.htm

Advertisers won't be content until they pollute every medium.