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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.
Just a reminder: Machinima is not a "youtuber". It's a professional gaming publication with accreditations to major industry events (like E3) and 15 years of experience, and that's merely using youtube to deliver their own content, including reviews, previews and yes, "native ads". So before any professional publication takes the distance from Machinima just remember that most of any other major gaming site or gaming journalist is or has been in the past guilty of doing the same things.
1. Not surprised
2. How many other marketing agencies are getting away with it?
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.
Remember everyone: #GamerGate is about harassing women and excluding minorities from gaming. It's absolutely not about ethics in gaming journalism and "pay for play" coverage, which never happens.
This message brought to you by gaming journalism.
1) Deepfreeze.it: http://www.deepfreeze.it/ does a great job of digging into and revealing the ties, 'backscratching' and outright corruption behind most of the gaming journalists on the big sites.
2) http://www.gamespot.com/forums... or at least the general question: "Gaming 'journalist' - seriously? It's a multibillion-dollar industry, and yet most of the "journalists" are freaks sitting in mom's basement desperately trying to pretend they're the next Perez Hilton, and who are tickled if someone even mentions they exist. None of them have the credibility of even the shammiest movie review shill.
-Styopa
But that was disclosed. It's okay to be a paid shill if you tell people you're a paid shill.
For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
But you stopped taking this kind of money as soon as the new management came in, right?
[crickets]
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So if hidden debt or undisclosed tax liabilities were discovered, would the fact that these were the byproduct of a previous management regime negate the culpability of the current management regime?
Isn't that what Marketing does?
And for good measure, crucify a random _half_ of the current one. Maybe that will send a message....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I work in bank robbing, and I have robbed banks many times. The most effective bank robberies are the ones where you don't run in and scream "This is a bank robbery!". I don't see a problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
But, sirs, that was YEARS ago--way back in the 2013 era. You can't hold us responsible for what happened in the long-long-ago!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Well, the problem with that approach is it delivers a death blow to market-based and libertarian ideas.
This doesn't worry me personally that much, but I do understand there's a lot of people who get cognitive dissonance off such a conclusion. Here's why we can't have both this and a 'market' or 'freedom'; basing things off people individual decisions means those decisions have to be legitimate.
If the rule is that you're lied to and tricked, no person can devote the amount of time and energy needed to unearth the truth against the continuing efforts of entire organizations to conceal it.
If that occurs in EVERY AREA OF LIFE then you have to triage, and you're working far too hard to test that your drinking water isn't poisoned to give much of a crap about gaming journalism. Generally food-related and immediate-safety-related things will pre-empt everything else, and you'll feel pretty embattled as a general thing. Everything else in life, you're fair game as you just don't have the bandwidth.
If there are no consequences to extensive conning, it becomes completely impossible for a market-based system to cope with it as the gains are way out of proportion to the losses. It becomes impossible to compete honestly for a large share (I think it's possible to deal honestly and get a marginal, niche share on specifically that as a positioning statement, but I also think it locks you out of any significant market share which kills your ability to access capital)
People's attention is not detailed enough to support a full range of honest products in a world of lies. For instance, I support Jim Sterling's patreon. Are there other Jim Sterlings? There might be but I'll never know about it, so Jim ends up holding 90% of that 'market' through having been that person consistently for many years, and building a huge catalog of works as that. Effectively, you can't jump in and do what Jim does because there's already a Jim, and the world is big enough to support one Jim.
Now if the world was NOT FULL OF LIES, you could hear about things and not have to check up on them and you'd not get burned or lied to. In that way a market economy could arise where people sought out goods and services based on what they heard about 'em and what the marketing information told them. The information would be correct and trustworthy, allowing for stratification of a market into categories where stuff balanced out depending on how it was sort of minmaxed. And it'd be clear no product could promise everything, because that'd be dishonest: everything has its downside and that'd be clear too.
We don't have that.
We have gaming journalism, writ large. And that's why this matters.
That is because you're considering 'effective' in strictly local terms rather than systemic terms.
A concept like 'ethics' is about managing the functioning of whole systems: it's not simply a moral scold.
I shan't moral scold, as I think you may not understand the concept. I am merely highlighting the system-failure side of things :)
Well, the problem with that approach is it delivers a death blow to market-based and libertarian ideas.
Either you've got to support a strong court system and the threat of force to back it up, or you've got to live by caveat emptor and not only let people simply deal with the consequences of fraud, but also make all debt the responsibility of the lender and not the borrower. Then you don't need a court system, and you can just work by might makes right. The only part which changes is not needing a court system. Guess that's anarchism.
Does this mean libertarianism is best described as the belief that a private court system is the best way to enable capitalism, which in turn is supposed to magically cure all ills with an invisible hand?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So if the management changes, the current management is not responsible for anything.
I'm not sure the judges will agree with that.
Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Sounds like the punishment is to promise to not do it again
The government seems to think it's okay to treat corporations as people--until it comes time to hold them ACCOUNTABLE for anything, of course. Then they're most definitely NOT treated like people.
"Your honor, I'm sorry that I stole from that cash register. But I promise not to do it again."
"Well okay, Tyrone, we won't give you any further punishment since you PROMISED not to do it again."
Why not?
Because that would allow companies to get out of any liability for illegal or negligent activity by simply shifting around their management structure regularly.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
No .. .corporations give continuity to a legal entity which can outlast humans ... if we start saying corporations have no culpability when their management turns over they could essentially give themselves a get out of jail free card ... "Oh, sorry, we have a new board so we get a clean slate".
And that will pretty much mean we're all completely fucked, because corporations will never be liable for anything every again.
As an entity, the corporation better still be responsible, or you can expect every company to start playing music chairs with the board to allow them to engage in egregiously illegal activity.
Individuals might be in some ways shielded from legal/criminal liability ... but no way in hell we need to be thinking about how to give corporations a legal loophole which will allow them to do anything they please.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I work in marketing, and have paid for "advertorials" many times. The most effective ads are ones not marked as advertisements. I don't see any problem with this
Well, it isn't a problem if you're a marketer. It is, however, a BIG problem if you're a consumer who's being lied to.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If the business has a debt, or any other liability, that liability of course continues regardless of changes in management. Assuming it's incorporated, the business carries liabilities completely independent of management or ownership. Which is why you can sue the business, you don't have to sue each individual stockholder for $1 each.
CULPABILITY is essentially a moral issue. Culpability refers to knowingly doing WRONG, to being guilty in an ethical sense. One cannot possibly be guilty (culpable) of something you didn't even know about, of an act that you had no part in.
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.
Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it....
Looks like the ultimate loophole has been found!
What is most surprising is that Microsoft used paid shills. Who knew?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I work in marketing, and have paid for "advertorials" many times. The most effective ads are ones not marked as advertisements. I don't see any problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
Now you see, that's because you're an abominable monster. Humans have this mental construct called a "sense of honesty" which makes them feel offense at this kind of activity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The actual order (probably not linked in the article because why would you do that?)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I work in murdering people, and have paid for "executions" many times. The most effective executions are ones not marked as executions. I don't see any problem with this, it's way more common than you think.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Thank you for the convenient definitions of "fraud" and "unencumbered by anything resembling a conscience".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"For its part, Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge."
So what? Corporations all want to be treatred as citizens and have the same rights as people, the corporation, in it's current state, should still be punished for wrongdoing.
Good news: The Board of Directors doesn't shift very often (if at all - it's kind of glacial at best), and those members are usually among those in the dock when a company is accused of something bad.
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... while fining the current company if there are financial repercussions.
So no, it's not as if a company can get out of something by shuffling the business card titles.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Since i can't tell if the parent is being sarcastic or doubly sarcastic, i'll say this.
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.
They didn't erupt into fury until an indie female developer had sex with a journalist who never even reviewed her game. _That_ was the ethical violation so shocking that it demanded the creation of a movement. And then followed up by throwing a hissy-fit about Sarkesion's and Wu's op-ed pieces. And because there was no rational reason for the level of objections they were raising they resorted to misogynistic threats and insults of anyone who disagreed with them.
So now actual violations of ethics in game journalism are being overshadowed by the group that's using ethics as a flag to wave over their apparent rage that women are involved in gaming and have opinions about it. Claiming to be concerned about "ethics" while focusing almost exclusively on categories of people you dislike is like saying "think of the children" while drafting laws to enable spying on and imprisonment of the kinds of people you dislike.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's not as if you actually expected Microsoft to go "yep... we did that. Our bad." ...right?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why not? I could care less either way, but would YOU like to get hung for your predecessor's mis-deeds?? Wouldn't be fair to you, now would it...
It's not me that's being punished, it's the company that's being punished, regardless of who the current executives and managers are. Isn't that the whole reason that "corporations are people", so that they can act and be acted upon independently of any real person that works there?
It for instance means that the directors wouldn't get prosecuted, but the company could get a fine. Of course that still means the current management take a hit in their paycheque, while the previous management get away scot free. Not entirely fair.
No, it would mean either the current employees take a hit to their paycheck or the customers end up paying more for the product. But the top management? Never.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
Yes, because the FTC now trumps the right to free speech. Everyone is a drooling idiot and needs to be protected from big bad corporations. Don't like em, turn em off.
So, who is paying you?
The first link was a rant by twitter, someone who is so obsessed with Microsoft that most of his comments are about them. In that same post, he created a list of Slashdot accounts he declared to be paid Microsoft shills, based on evidence such as
Likewise in windows you can change the background color and text color of the BSOD (or at least you could uder 98, I haven't had the desire to play around with it under 2000 / XP since they crash much less frequently).
My Windows Server 2003 desktop (YES I USE IT AS A DESKTOP!) is perfectly stable and has yet to give me one single hiccup.
CmdrTaco is gay
Shut up, Twitter.
(the last comment was made after it was discovered that "twitter" had created and was using extra ./ accounts)
And based on your posting style, I might assume you and he were the same person.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Not that i don't agree with you but the "Corporation/Company" benefited. So they many not have did it or known it but they benefited still the same.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Well, as corporate officers, they'd have to fight the charges, or somehow deal with them, but this isn't about the new leaders, it is about the company. If you fire the CEO of a car company when it is found that their cars all explode into a giant fireball at 6,000 miles, the corporation is still responsible and the new CEO has to deal with leading the corporation through that. I don't think anyone blames the new CEO for the problem, though (unless he was a member of the executive team during past misdeeds).
Either you've got to support a strong court system and the threat of force to back it up, or you've got to live by caveat emptor and not only let people simply deal with the consequences of fraud, but also make all debt the responsibility of the lender and not the borrower. Then you don't need a court system, and you can just work by might makes right. The only part which changes is not needing a court system.
There's another option, which is where a legislature sets some standards and a regulatory agency to ensure that the uninformed general public is not subject to too much danger and/or fraud before things get too bad. For example, ensuring that actual scientifically verified medicine is used to treat illness rather than snake oil. That way, there aren't quite as many lawsuits about whether or not someone would or would not have died with or without the non-treatment (in proceedings in which it is not at all guaranteed that justice will actually be served).
Of course grifters and con artists running businesses that depend on this kind of fraud, might band together and appeal to religious bigots (who are trying to shove their version of God down everyone's throats), along with war mongers and racists, to form a political party to call such oversight of their actions "government interference" and "bureaucracy". Because, as you know, accidents with customers and/or employees never happen.
I wouldn't want to get hung for my predecessors misdeeds but the corporation certainly should. The corporation was the same before and after. Why should shareholders benefit simply because they fire the last CEO before anyone outside the organization figured out what was going on?
It is well established law that commercial speech has a lower bar to regulation than non commercial speech. We regulate what advertisers, food producers, credit and financial sellers (and many more) can and must print all the time. This is no different. More pointedly, they aren't saying you can't do exactly what they did, you just have to tell people you're doing it. How am I should I determine if I don't like a particular bad corporation and "turn it off" without some basic information about what it's doing? Freedom of speech and transparency aren't orthogonal.
It's not really the same business if the management structure has changed. In that case, they're not really backpedaling after getting caught doing something wrong; they're party to a lump of shit being handed off to them, and have to decide how to handle it.
I would hope any responsible business would make such a decision--even if it looks, on the surface, unethical and *highly* illegal, you want to get a handle on the whole thing first to identify why it's in place, if there was some mitigating factor, and then *how* to handle it if it is in fact unethical and *highly* illegal. I'd rather new management fly with it for several months if that's what it takes to identify, understand, document, develop an action plan for, and explain the situation. In situations of urgency, the timing changes: management devotes large amounts of resources to stopping things which, for example, incur loss of life; they may possibly mitigate the situation first, e.g. by implementing crude lock-out systems on processes which regularly place employees in immediate danger of loss of limb or life, allowing them to continue business as usual while planning out how to permanently resolve the situation.
That's how proper businesses handle things. Improper businesses fire a bunch of people, creating fear, homelessness, tarnished professional reputations, ineffective countermeasures, and a sharp reduction of remaining employees capable of learning from the situation and making better decisions in future, similar situations. Then they make the same mistakes all over again in a few years.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
The most effective ads are lies portrayed as truth.
FTFY.
Machinima notes that this happened in 2013, when the current management was not in charge.
Yeah, but did they know about it?
If yes, why didn't they disclose it to the authorities?
If no, why are they not aware that something like that went on in their company?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh, what a surprise, you forgot to post that evidence he asked for.
.).
Here, let me show you how it's done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That is direct video evidence of an anti-Gamergate Sarkeesian supporter threatening physical violence against a pro-GG guy. We unquestionably know exactly who that guy is (and which side he's on), exactly who he's talking to, and exactly what he said. It took me less than a minute to find the link.
But I bet almost no one reading this has heard of it until now. If there were a video of a guy promoting Gamergate and threatening Sarkeesian, everyone knows we would never hear the end of it, ever, across dozens (probably hundreds) of sites. It proves that those sites are not anti-threats or anti-harrassment; they're just anti-GG (i.e. anti-ethics).
Even so, if you tell me that Sarkeesian isn’t responsible for what that jerk said, and he doesn’t represent her, I would 100% agree with you (and ask you to put two and two together . .
P.S. As a bonus, here are journalistic ethics experts confirming unethical game journo behavior:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We knew for a long time that Machinima was up to no good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
[NSFW - As most of the stuff by Oney]
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
If I were to hire a PR firm, I sure wouldn't want to be supervising everything they do. If I was going to do that, I'd just do my own PR.
If you indeed did that, you may not want to look *too* surprised when your company name is excoriated in the press due to something dumb on the PR firm's part.
Here's a clue: When you hire a PR firm, you do it to get ideas out of them, and to have them do the grunt-work of buying ads, setting up and running booths at shows, order/buy cheap swag on your behalf for your TAMs and reps to give away, and crap like that. Once you hire them, you had damned well better approve everything they do that interacts with anyone outside of your company. You approve the swag, you approve the sales pitches, you approve the ads, you approve the schmoozing of bloggers and journalists so that shit like this does not happen.
It's your company, your brand, your reputation.
Otherwise, Microsoft can point the finger all they want, but they're the beneficiary of the shill-job, so they get to eat the blame when it's discovered.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Hint: What you described is anarchy, not libertarianism.
Please learn the difference...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The article does incorrectly push this into far worse light. It wasn't secret money. It was a PR contract. PR contracts are not unusual or secret, the underhanded bit is the illegal behaviour on Machinima's part, don't know for sure whether MS new about that, but I doubt it. companies like MS hire 100's of PR companies, they can't monitor them all and usually they have strict conditions in the contracts stating they will not act illegally or unethically, places like MS can't afford to be found to have intentionally done something like this.
Yes, because the FTC now trumps the right to free speech. Everyone is a drooling idiot and needs to be protected from big bad corporations. Don't like em, turn em off.
This sort of idiocy is the reductio ad absurdum of libertarianism and the belief that any government action is bad, and anything done by business is good.
Meanwhile, in the real world, corporations are quite rightly limited in what they can do. They do not have the freedom to lie in their advertising, for instance.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It depends who owns it.
And when you sell a company, you also sell its assets and liabilities.
If my due diligence fails to pick up on the fact that the company I just bought in fact owes another billion in taxes they forgot to mention, then I am the one who owes that billion to the government.
(In practice, I'd also be suing the former owners for damages, but I still owe the government).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Does this mean libertarianism is best described as the belief that a private court system is the best way to enable capitalism, which in turn is supposed to magically cure all ills with an invisible hand?
Yes, but with libertarianism you won't have nasty old capitalism, but a real free market. And there's no magic, you just need perfect information, no barriers to entry, no monopolies or cartels, perfectly rational actors and so on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Hint: What you described is anarchy, not libertarianism.
Please learn the difference...
Libertarianism as commonly understood would soon amount to anarchy. With no government at all, those with the most money/guns would be able to do what they liked.
Of course, in practice you could have watered-down libertarianism (some government, some taxes, a limited police force, some sort of contract court and so on) but this would mean saying "all government is evil, except for this new type of government we have re-created which is basically the same as an Eighteenth Century government" and this doesn't have the same appeal to rugged individualists.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There is a difference though between the company being liable and the management being liable. It for instance means that the directors wouldn't get prosecuted, but the company could get a fine. Of course that still means the current management take a hit in their paycheque, while the previous management get away scot free. Not entirely fair.
Directors are hardly ever prosecuted unless it's really egregious fraud, like Enron.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
When you watch a TV show in the UK that has product placement in it, the warning appears before the show or movie telling you. The U.S. should start doing this.
I don't remember ever seeing this warning here in the UK. Do they hide it in some small print somewhere or am I just incredibly unobservant?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"Machinima Inc" is the one they're talking about, not Machinima in general, which is the creation of cinema using virtual machines, mostly games that let you control or script characters. Everywhere I see this story, the editorial never mentions that it is a particular company called "Machinima Inc". Please don't forget the "Inc" part of the name as this distinguishes it from the concept of Machinima itself.
Twinstiq, game news