What WON'T Money Buy These Days?

Well, well, well. Do you like Mountain Dew? How about that shiny new Alienware laptop? When you bought these products, did you think about where your money was going, what was being done with it? In the past, we used to be very concerned about where our consumer dollars were winding up, cause we sure didn't want to promote the spread of communism by purchasing anything that was made in China. Now, however, we're beginning to see an entirely new trend.
It seems that quality control is out, and dollar control is in.

Advertisers are starting to think that they control the market. They can tell you what to buy or not to buy, where to buy it, how much it should cost, and whether or not you get a free calendar with your purchase. Now they're even beginning to tell you whether or not you should enjoy your purchases.

The past week marked the end of an era at GameSpot. After over a decade in a variety of editorial roles, Jeff Gerstmann's tenure as editorial director has ended.

"Jeff was a central figure in the creation and evolution of GameSpot, having written hundreds of previews and reviews, and anchoring much of our multimedia content," said Ricardo Torres, editorial director of previews and events. "The award-winning editorial team he leaves behind wish him nothing but good luck in his future endeavors."

Due to legal constraints and the company policy of GameSpot parent CNET Networks, details of Gerstmann's departure cannot be disclosed publicly. However, contrary to widespread and unproven reports, his exit was not a result of pressure from an advertiser.
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So, after Eidos dumped tons of ad money on Gamespot, Jeff gives the game a 6.0 review, and issues a scathing video blog review as well. There was originally some controversy within the controversy, with some Gamespot/CNet/Eidos supporters claiming Jeff had hardly played the game at all before giving his negative and highly critical review, citing "Jeff's Xbox Live Gamercard, which only has six achievements and 90 Gamerscore points for the game". Jeff fought back, stating in a recent interview that "A reviewer's Xbox Live Gamercard is rarely a good place to look for answers about how much that reviewer has (or hasn't) played a game...For the record, I saw both endings in Kane & Lynch before writing about it." So, based on that quote, and the fact that his video review is very detailed about the game's ongoing flaws, it is very doubtful that Jeff only gave Kane & Lynch a quick glance before setting it on fire.

Next, CNet and Gamespot claimed that Gerstmann was fired for repeated incidents of "tone". Tycho of PennyArcade added his own two cents in a blog of his own.

Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site...Would that it were only about the 6.0 - at least then you'd know how to score something if you wanted to keep your Goddamned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous "tone" would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.

So, you can't even count on good, safe numbers anymore. You have to worry about your "tone". What you apparently DON'T have to worry about anymore is doing your job. All you need to do is write what the ad-men tell you to write, and everyone is happy and employed. How hard is it? Eidos pushed a game to market for the holiday season, rushed the production, and ended up with a crappy product. Jeff caught all their flaws, and, if you watch the video review, he tries REALLY hard to push the good parts of the game, but in the end, the mass of flaws and shortcomings far outweighs the tiny shiny parts that Jeff points out to us. And so, we have a man who was fired from a position he'd held for over 11 years...just for doing his job.

And how has this affected the world? Well, let's see. Pepsi obviously wants no part of Gerstmanngate, as evidenced by their speedy removal of advertising content from the Gamespot website. Apparently, as of December 1st, all game-related ads had been pulled from the Gamespot site and replaced by ads for Mountain Dew, Dell, and Sony products. However, early in the A.M. on December 2nd, all the Mountain Dew ads disappeared from the site, according to SarcasticGamer.

Very early this morning, the Pepsi/Mountain Dew ads came down. Coincidence? Maybe. But it seems rather unlikely that Pepsi bought a one day ad on Gamespot for Mountain Dew. It’s not like they’re on a tight budget. At one point yesterday, literally every ad space came up Dew. Now it’s Alienware (Dell). Lots and lots of Alienware.

Additionally, Gamespot members are rising up in favor of Gerstmann. How are they making their feelings known?

At last report, over 500 individuals have canceled their pay subscription to the site, with many more threatening to do so unless an explanation is given. But they've already moved past this, and some very upset GameSpot fans are starting to get organized. They're not talking about a simple boycott of the site; they're talking about boycotting the advertisers that use GS for promotion.

So, if Gamespot wants to "[think] with their wallet," as one poster put it, then disgruntled gamers will hit them where it hurts, by pulling as much money as possible from the people they feel are responsible for this silly event. It's a double-edged sword; by shutting out advertisers, Gamespot takes a hit for listening to the bottom line instead of good sense, and advertisers are informed that they are not the ones who get to tell us what's good or bad about a product.

In a loosely related development, social-networking site Facebook is now taking fire from leftist activist group MoveOn.org, among others, for it's new advertising network, Beacon, a part of the new Facebook Ads campaign.

Beacon is the internal project name at Facebook around an effort to work with third parties and gain access to very specific user data. An example may be a purchase of a book or DVD from Amazon. Under Beacon, the fact of that purchase will be sent to Facebook and automatically included in the user’s News Feed...The feed information includes the user name, what they did (bought something), what they bought, and where.
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Now, the third-party advertisers don't get any money for this. What they DO get is a free ad out of the link placed in the News Feed. Facebook, on the other hand, gets VERY specific data on its users, allowing them to more efficiently target advertising to the user in question. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? The problem arises when we look at how the data is collected.

With the new Beacon program, any time you make a purchase online, it will try to publish that action in your News Feed. This could pose several problems. MoveOn spokesman Adam Green addresses a few of these potenial issues.

[Adam] cited Facebook user testimonials that ranged from members who said their entire Christmas lists had been published on their News Feeds (spoiling many a surprise in the process) to student activists who were concerned that sensitive purchases might show up and result in serious consequences--"If a college kid rents Brokeback Mountain and some homophobic person on his campus sees that, that could be a real problem," he explained.
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Now, under the new Beacon program, Facebook users are given the choice to opt-out, but the option is apparently not user-friendly in the least. The option is well hidden within the Beacon framework, and there is currently no option for a global opt-out, meaning that a user who decides not to publish his latest purchase from Nike will be prompted again when he buys Live Free or Die Hard from Blockbuster.com. MoveOn believes that users should have the option to activate Beacon, not be forced to try and find ways to turn it off.

Facebook retaliated with statements pushing the integrity of their site. In a response issued on Nov. 20th, Facebook tried to downplay the fact that they were tracking your every move on the internet.

...this information is not public, it isn't an invasion of privacy. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users," the statement explained. "Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."
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So, it's not public. Only your friends can see it, if you've set up your Facebook account preferences with that in mind. But if you've got several friends (and some Facebook users clock in with thousands of friends), then could it not be argued that any information shared with them could very easily be considered "public"? MoveOn.org seems to think so, and they apparently have many Facebook users behind them, stating that "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission".

Now, originally, this was not an issue. According to MoveOn and TechCrunch, early screenshots of Beacon did in fact include a global opt-out option that would allow users to basically kill Beacon, never to see it again. The final version? No such button, my friends. In a rather pointed statement, Adam Green lays it on the line.

Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minute to put the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the privacy interests of their users
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Facebook decided to counter all this stink with a statement of their own, saying that user data would not be shared "unless a user receives notifications both on a participating website and on Facebook". However, these notifications are apparently not very clear, reportedly only consisting of a quick pop-up at the bottom of the user's screen, which the user, browsing a totally non-Facebook website, very likely won't ever notice while trying to be sure that his or her shipping address is correctly entered. This is, of course, a replacement for the original global opt-out that was removed "days before Beacon's launch", according to Adam Green.

TechCrunch briefly re-visited the issue after MoveOn dragged them into the ring by citing early Beacon screenshots found on the TechCrunch site. The article clearly tries not to take sides, but makes one fatal flaw.

Facebook’s best move is to make the new Beacon service opt-in only. But that reduces the value of the service to third parties who supply the information to Facebook, and get free links in return.

And, once again, we see this new initiative. Advertisers are worth more than users.

Facebook later responded by tweaking the way Beacon operates. Now, when Beacon sees a purchase, the external site displays a pop-up at the bottom of the screen asking whether the user wishes to publish this information to Facebook. If this notice is ignored, then the request will be queued, and the user will receive a notification the next time they visit their Facebook page, where they are again given the option to publish the information to their News Feed, or to remove the activity. There is also, now, an option under the "External Websites" Privacy settings in Facebook to allow users to change how Beacon notifies them about these stories. Users are able to choose whether they want to either Always or Never "Allow these websites to send stories to my profile", as well as a third "Notify Me First" option. HOWEVER, each external site must be dealt with individually. This means that each time a user who wishes to opt-out entirely does business with a Beacon-enabled site, they must then go to their Privacy settings and disable notifications from the new site (Source).

But here's where it starts to get really entertaining.

According to one security engineer’s analysis, Beacon partners transmit data to Facebook in bulk about members who visit their site. This is true even for those who opt out of Beacon by clicking on “No Thanks” when asked if the data can be shared with Facebook. The data is sent anyway. Facebook clarifies that it does not do anything with this opted-out data, and in fact deletes it from its servers. But the deletion occurs on Facebook’s servers, not the advertisers’. [Update: It gets even worse. Beacon partners are sending data indiscriminately about every single visitor to their sites back to Facebook, whether or not those people are even Facebook members. This includes very detailed user behavior. Again, Facebook says it deletes most of this data. But what are the partner sites thinking? They might as well be giving Facebook access to their bank accounts.]
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Don't believe what you're reading? Try it again, only this time, from a statement Facebook emailed to Computer Associates blogger Stefan Berteau.

When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.
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So, no matter who you are, if you're shopping at a Beacon affiliated site, Facebook knows about it, whether you hit "No, Thanks" or not. Even NON-Facebook user data is being submitted to Facebook. So when your grandmother, who has never even heard of Facebook, saves an article on the NY Times, Mark Zuckerberg knows about it. Now, on the advertiser's side, this is a blessing. It leaves them without all the leg-work of deciding what data to send to Facebook. But it also make Facebook privy to info it has absolutely no right to. In light of all this, advertisers are reportedly jumping ship left and right. Coca-Cola and Overstock.com were on board with Beacon when it launched, as an opt-out program, but now both companies have withdrawn from the fray since Beacon swapped paradigms to opt-in, and another big money account, Travelocity, is starting to look sideways at the whole deal as well. Sorry, guys. No easy ad-space for you! Let's take the paranoid angle for just a moment. Originally, Coca-Cola, Overstock, and Travelocity were all for a program that would force users to inadvertantly advertise for them, but now, when the dung strikes the rotating blades, and revised program where the user can choose whether or not to support the Beacon program, the payoff isn't worth the potential scandal. And so, the rats desert the sinking ship.

Interestingly enough, most of the information I was able to find on the Beacon scandal was presented by CNet, the company behind Gamespot.com. Why would a company even now deeply embroiled in it's own advertisers-vs.-users battle choose to follow a similar story SO very closely? Are they trying to point out fellow screw-ups in an effort to spread the blame around, or otherwise dilute the issue?

And after all is said and done, what is the issue? I'll lay it out for you. Corporate America wants you. They want your dollars, your opinions, your behavior, and basically the world you live in, to all be under their express control. The want you to have a choice, but they only want you to have the choices they approve of. So the next time you go to buy an Eidos game, think about how many advertising dollars it cost them to get your favorite magazine or blog to tout that game as "the best thing since Super Mario". The next time you see a targeted ad pop up on a webpage, perhaps you should stop and think about how Travelocity knew you were looking into a Caribbean getaway. Did you do something to prompt this? Is there any way to prevent it?

Your information is out there. What are you doing to protect it?