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Did Nvidia Hire Online Actors to Promote Their Products?

fs123

fs123

fs123

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https://consumerist.com/2006/02/06/did-nvidia-hire-online-actors-to-promote-their-products/

About a week ago, The Consumerist stumbled upon claims made by various gaming websites (specifically, Elite *******s and [Update: a poster on the forums at] Beyond3D) that graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia, in cooperation with the Arbuthnot Entertainment Group (AEG), had seeded various gaming and PC hardware enthusiast sites with pro-Nvidia shills. That is to say, that AEG would hire employees to create ‘personas’ in various gaming communities, slowly building up the trust of other members by frequent posting unrelated to Nvidia, to later cash in that trust with message board postings talking up the positive qualities of Nvidia’s products.

The research done by these gaming websites and communities fingered a few likely suspects, but did not prove outright that AEG’s work—quoted on their web site as “Message board monitoring and response” and “Strategic seeding viral assets to ensure they are spread far and wide”—included placing ringers in their communities.
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An old article which may or may not be true but is this sort of stuff actually happening? One has to wonder..
 
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Oh boy, this is going to be a good thread

g0G3v.gif
 
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This is old news,it was probably part of the Nvidia Focus Group programme which started earlier:

https://consumerist.com/2006/02/08/nvidia-focus-group-member-details-hidden-program/

I remember the storm over it. A person on a forum admitted he was part of it and within a short period you had people,you all of a sudden found all these people with altered sigs with Nvidia Focus Group signatures in them. Some of them included a mod at AT forums in the graphics card section,etc.

The worst of them was Rollo. It appears it was all started due to the appauling FX series.

However,probably due to the fallout of the Oracle vs Google case,it is illegal in the US for companies to do anonymous astroturfing and it also has been illegal in the UK for a while too.

Both companies had to give records of paid bloggers,etc. It was discovered this chap was an Oracle paid blogger:

http://www.fosspatents.com/

A lot of his articles were used by the international news media like the BBC,in the Apple vs Google patent wars.
 
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AlamoX said:
By consumerist.com February 6, 2006

talking about rising the dead :D
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someone linked it in some forum post..misread the date but interesting nevertheless. Explains why some of the links in the article didn't work lol.
 
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It is technically illegal for anybody in the UK or US to do it.

However,in China a few years ago similar allegations were made:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/01/28/nvidia.said.pushing.kepler.trashing.radeon.7900/

NVIDIA was accused this week of using dishonest marketing to try to skew gamers towards its next-generation Kepler graphics hardware. Posters in the ChipHell forums claiming to have details of the new graphics core were reportedly discovered to be NVIDIA marketers. They made bold claims about Kepler's prices and performance in what appeared to be an attempt to downplay AMD's Radeon HD 7900 line.

Moderators were already locking down threads and banning the offending posters. NVIDIA hasn't responded to the accusations as of Saturday afternoon.

NVIDIA has faced such accusations before, albeit without the same mavity. Focus group members in 2006 weren't required to disclose their connection to the company and were accused of promoting NVIDIA on forums. Later checks showed that they weren't being asked to endorse the graphics cards, although it still raised conflict of interest concerns.

Concerns have existed that NVIDIA might be taking advantage of less stringent monitoring in Chinese-speaking countries to do what amounts to guerilla marketing. Whether or not it's accurate, many haven't ruled out the possibility that AMD might engage in similar tactics in the fiercely competitive gaming graphics market. [via HardForums]
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However,on UK and US based forums it should(hopefully) not be an issue due to the laws in these countries,as anybody who does have an affiliation with AMD or Nvidia would be legally obligated to show such an affiliation.
 
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Ha, where'd the thread contents go?Bell about to sound for round two .....ding ding :).

Back on topic, who knows, but I'd be surprised to be honest at least long term. Law aside, I mean you cannot get around the minimum wage and doesn't sound like an effective way of marketing to me, especially as people posting on forums are usually a bit more knowledgeable anyway and usually have their own minds made up - as you see on here, an AMD or Nvidia fan won't easily be pursuaded otherwise and will go to war over comments :P
 
DarrenM343 said:
Ha, where'd the thread contents go?Bell about to sound for round two .....ding ding :).

Back on topic, who knows, but I'd be surprised to be honest at least long term. Law aside, I mean you cannot get around the minimum wage and doesn't sound like an effective way of marketing to me, especially as people posting on forums are usually a bit more knowledgeable anyway and usually have their own minds made up - as you see on here, an AMD or Nvidia fan won't easily be pursuaded otherwise and will go to war over comments :P
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It depends - some of the Nvidia Focus Group members used to not only be on technical forums(although one was the video card forum moderator on AT forums!!),you would find them on comments sections in articles and remember on less techy forums the effect would be more.

However,once the programme was uncovered I do think some members like Rollo did more damage than good. He got banned from so many forums,I think Nvidia probably were doing epic facepalms all the time by then.

It does make me wonder if ATI or Intel tried similar tricks as well.
 
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Grabs a chair,

Gotta wonder why the hell 10 year old articles are being dredged up now.

Surely there's something more interesting to talk about, I can't name the source but I heard new gpu's are incoming.
 
I suppose companies can and do identify people who are essentially fanboys and pull them in deeper with incentives such as free products,etc.

Maybe that's why we have some posters constantly coming into rival threads and promoting their chosen company while trying to find fault with the rival.
 
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