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FTC: Machinima Took Secret Cash To Shill Xbox One
jfruh writes: The Machinima gaming video network took money from a marketing agency hired by Microsoft to pay "influencers" up to $45,000 to promote the Xbox One. Crucially, the video endorsers did not disclose that they'd been paid, which has caused trouble with the FTC. For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
But that was disclosed. It's okay to be a paid shill if you tell people you're a paid shill.
So if the management changes, the current management is not responsible for anything.
Of course, that was WAY back in 2013, when Allen DeBevoise was the CEO of the company. Now he's just the Chairman of our Board of Directors.
Lol, I'm not even joking.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Seriously, the past couple years it has reached the point where I'm questioning if half the things I'm reading online are even genuine, or just shilled marketing from some PR team to push an agenda or product. It's happened on imgur, on reddit, even 4chan. Nevermind the gawker media rags, gaming media, and even mainstream media. I wouldn't even be surprised if it has happened here. We've all probably seen it - these people we've never heard of who suddenly get mass exposure for no reason, or things that nobody would've given two shits about, but every network carries the story. (Hurr, is the dress black and blue or white and gold!?!)
It's like mass advertising has become mass propaganda, and there's nowhere you can go to escape it.
You're about a century late to the party. But better late than never.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of alternate reality are you living in?
What you haven't seen is a single effort to improve things by all those bullies hiding behind hashtags and euphemistic slogans. Now, if you count the number of women in the industry being harassed, doxxed and bullied, then you'll see why nobody but morons ever believed gamergate was related, in any way, to journalist ethics.
You can drop the bullshit, you're fooling no one. This might be the first time you've read something like this because you were too busy insulting women who dared to play and/or make games, but I've been a gamer for 30 years and this has been an issue widely known and discussed since the time of Nintendo Power (since I'm guessing you didn't even exists back then, let me tell you that this was a video games magazine distributed by Nintendo back in the late 80s).
Either way, the current management will eat the FTC fines (if any), and if the activity was criminal, I'm pretty sure the authorities can locate and drag in the former CxO's for the time period in question
Well, they won't have to look very far, at least. Machinima's CEO from 2013 is currently the Chairman of their Board of Directors. As soon as the heat came down, he resigned as CEO, became Chairman, appointed his own CEO successor, and hoped no would would notice the shell game.
The FTC got involved as far back as December in direct response to Gamergate pressure, and Gawker was forced update their disclosure policy (and tons of articles that were then clearly in violation). And just recently they updated their disclosure guidelines (guess who was running an ethics campaign asking for exactly that?):
http://www.reddit.com/r/Kotaku...
The section of the FTC's website that deals with disclosures was updated late last month:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advic...
Some of this new guidance directly reflects the language and particulars of the concerns GamerGate asked the FTC to address.
"Is “affiliate link” by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a “buy now” button?"
Consumers might not understand that “affiliate link” means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a “buy now” button would not be adequate
Does this guidance about affiliate links apply to links in my product reviews on someone else’s website, to my user comments, and to my tweets?
Yes, the same guidance applies anytime you endorse a product and get paid through affiliate links.
The revised webpage contains a great deal more language that needs to be analyzed but these two examples in particular reflect specific complaints GamerGate had about how Gawker Media handle their affiliate link disclosures. I know of no other group of people who were vocally complaining about this specific practice to the FTC. In addition, the FTC emails from my previous posts confirm that, yes, the FTC tailored part of their new guidance because of frequent complaints sent by GamerGate.
And then there are the many, many sites that have updated their ethics policies. It's shameful that you will lie about an entire group of people because you and the press want to pretend that GG isn't the driving force behind all this ethics reform.
If GG had only focused on issues like this, i for one would be cheering them on. But GG didn't come into existence when, for example, Jeff Gerstmann was fired under pressure from a game developer whose game he reviewed poorly, way back in 2007.
OK, try this. Go discuss Gertsmann's firing (or any other AAA corruption) on a bunch of game/tech news websites' forums or article comments and see if the discussion is censored on almost EVERY one of them.
Now try to discuss Nathan Grayson or Patricia Hernandez and see how much censorship and pure venom you encounter, by contrast.
Also notice that Gertsmann's firing was somehow not subject to a week-long, industry-wide news blackout in hopes it would go away. And that the people reporting on it weren't called harassers or mysogynists or terrorists in an attempt to intimidate them and distract from the criticism.
It is the behavior of the press that is the difference. The long-running popularity of Gamergate is the response to the gaming press's cover up of journalistic corruption and long-running smear campaign against gamers. None of the media's lies can ever change that fact.
P.S. AAA review "agreements" (for youtubers, etc.) similar to these were publicized by Totalbiscuit (a major pro-Gamergate guy) a year ago, long before the journalists caught on. GG has nothing against exposing AAA nor indie corruption.
They didn't erupt int