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Microsoft Paying for Positive Xbox One Coverage on YouTube
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft, partnered with Machinima, has put forth a promotion for YouTube personalities: make a video about the Xbox One and get money for it. Problematically, they also require the reviewer not to disclose that they're getting paid (or mention anything negative), which breaks FTC disclosure rules (PDF). Microsoft has a well-known history of astroturfing, but is this the first proof of them doing it illegally?"
its legality is irrelevant
The astroturfing itself isn't that newsworthy, but if it could be proved MS is doing something illegal here, it might blow up and become quite something.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Fake reviews, Fake adverts, Fake court presentations...
Get a clue sunsine, there's not much else to that company APART from astroturf.
Maybe we can dedicate a whole website to the 1,000s of companies that do this type of thing.
Don't know about a website, but at Wikipedia people have collected a list of astroturfing cases.
SteamBox for you, then?
I was wondering how they were getting all this great coverage when the PS4 is in such high demand that you still can't find it anywhere and there Xbox Ones are stacked up like cordword in every Best Buy I've been to in the last few weeks.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Thanks for keeping us posted on how the PC gaming community doesn't like consoles. Without your post, I would never have guessed.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It's not a fine line at all in many jurisdictions, where any paid promotion must be explicitly disclosed. The agreement quoted here includes a gagging clause that's in direct conflict with that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
https://twitter.com/KyleOrl/st...
Its still not really apparent what, if any, involvement MS actually had in this.
The authors of the articles freely admit its an assumption
Witty Comment Here
'''
You agree to keep confidential at all times all matters relating to this Agreement, including, without limitation, the Promotional Requirements, and the CPM Compensation, listed above. You understand that You may not post a copy of this Agreement or any terms thereof online or share them with any third party (other than a legal or financial representative). You agree that You have read the Nondisclosure Agreement (attached hereto and marked as Exhibit “A”) and You understand and agree to all of terms of the Nondisclosure Agreement, which is incorporated as part of this Agreement.
'''
The sketchy bit for me is that Machinima bills itself as "Machinima is the dominant video entertainment network for young males around the world. " Doesn't seem to clearly state that it is, perhaps, a promotional entity as well.
Full contract at http://pastebin.com/vec6vjv5/
Machinima lives of these kind of promotions (all Machinima affiliates get multiple offers per month)
The total cost for this promotion for Machinima is 3750$ (promotion ends when this CPM target is met)
It is likely Microsoft entered into a deal with Machinima to increase it's visibility and Machinima did the promotion on it's own (like it has done with a lot of brands before)
There's nothing that indicates any wrongdoing on Microsoft's part. The agreement linked to in the article is between Machinima and the video creator and not the agreement between Microsoft and Machinima. There's no way to tell if the "positive endorsement" was required by Microsoft or if that's just something Machinima tagged on to the agreement, but hey it's Microsoft so lets bash them anyway and not let facts stand in the way.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
And Machinima is in violation for making such an agreement. This is hardly surprising, they greatly exploit their content producers because a large segment of them are kids coming out of high school that want to play video games for a living and really have no idea about the value of their work.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Well, I never did play Pokémon, but I have to ask: does one ever really outgrow Zelda? Maybe the new games don't do it for you, but don't you ever find yourself wanting to play Ocarina again?
That whole FTC ruling was directed primary at bloggers (people who use affiliate programs were hooked in there too). Remember, the initial ruling came back in 2009 when searching for some sort of product review usually brought up a bunch of blogs. If you look at http://www.business.ftc.gov/do... , over half of the document references bloggers.
That particular problem doesn't really exist anymore for a number of products/services, because Google's Penguin/Panda updates have shoved most independent "blog" type reviews down a few pages in favour of Amazon (for products), ResellerRatings/RipOffReport (for retailers), and similar sites. Those are way easier to astroturf, so companies just hire "marketing agencies" to take care of those now instead of wasting time chasing after individual unpredictable bloggers who might have their sense of morality kick in at any time.
Aside: Microsoft's a little behind the times, as usual. The "new" way to do things would be to hire a company to make a few YouTube "reviews" and then use their multiple accounts to like them all, while searching for negative ones and disliking them. It's cheaper and easier.
Anyway, technically they could get a warning/fine from the FTC (or those who make the videos could) for what's being done here, but it's pretty unlikely. The video rules to qualify for the CPM bump are a little convoluted, and if the FTC actually pushed for fines, in court MS could make the case that paying out a higher CPM for Xbox videos has a similar outcome to bidding more for specific search terms on AdWords with "-sucks -awful -terrible" as negative keywords and then publicly stating that they bit more for ad clicks from non-negative reviews.
By the way, who *doesn't* assume that there could be some bias in videos from Machinima/partners and similar outlets? Surely I'm not the only one who sees them in the same light as gaming publications where if they say something too negative they suddenly stop getting free/early access to future products or have advertising revenue cut back. It's one thing when you see "Gus's XBOX 1 review" where he's taken video with a handheld camcorder from 2005 and you kind of assume he spent his own money and just wanted to talk about it and you maybe even take what he says at face value. The clean-cut commercialized stuff, you always take with a grain of salt.
Ignoring all that, even if Microsoft were to somehow eat a fine, I doubt they'd care. They sold the original Xbox at a loss for years, and FTC fines at most are a slap on the wrist for the big players. If you're a large corporation, you can usually find a way to make breaking the law profitable even when you're caught.
Personally, Machinima content is so appallingly bad that this story is not surprising at all. Machinima needs a serious upgrade.
That's interesting. Most people I know grew out of playing Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto and start playing grownup games like Pokémon instead.
Two things:
1) TotalBiscuit is part of the Polaris MCN. He's also a partnered channel... thus he did not face recent wave of bullshit from Youtube and the music industry. AngryJoe is also part of Polaris IIRC but only an affiliate so the BS wave hit him as hard as it did the others. He is slowly recovering
2) Sleazy Youtube MCN + sleazy software and hardware company == love. MS and Machinima sitting in the money tree....
That killed any and all nostalgia value that Ocarina of Time had? "I hate Windows 8/8.1 so completely, that I'm going to uninstall Windows 7 and switch to Fedora or Ubuntu."
You're right that the headline overstates things, but on the flip side, this isn't a court of law. We are entitled to educated guesses as to where such a "positive endorsement clause" most likely originated from.
If YOUR guess is, "I bet Machinima did that by themselves", my opinion is that you're fucking naive. I could be wrong of course.
Have a nice day.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
It's called game testing, and it barely makes minimum wage. Unfortunately many high-school kids don't realize how little those jobs pay and actually make them "career goals".