05.25.08

Gemini version available ♊︎

Microsoft Shill Watch: Be Alert

Posted in Deception, Europe, Fraud, FUD, Microsoft at 1:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When an animal feels cornered, it gets aggressive

We will shortly show what seems like shills in suits (the more ‘sophisticated’ type) batting for OOXML, but there’s an important new report that has just been brought to our attention. It’s worth touching on it very briefly.

We kindly ask for your attention at the sight of this new BBC article about “AstroTurfing” and “sock puppets” (even the BBC uses these words). We covered this before on many occasions. We showed just how far Microsoft goes in that regard.

The new article makes a good read as a whole, but here is just a snippet.

But there is still plenty of scope for company employees to post bogus evaluations on websites that solicit product ratings from consumers, using multiple aliases – known as “sock puppetry”.

The EU’s Directive on Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices, a far-reaching attempt to regulate the whole relationship between firms and their customers, makes all these online tricks illegal.

Many EU countries are already enforcing its provisions, which should have come into effect last year. However, the UK is only now incorporating it into domestic law.

According to this article, come Monday we’ll see some action. The reaction from regulatory authorities first came to light over a year ago because the issue became so severe that it could no longer be ignored. It’s time to crack down on this sordid mess of fake & unethical grass-rooting. More assorted (and recent) examples are appended at the bottom for your reading pleasures.

“Microsoft hires agencies to do this type of work.”In essence, as we pointed out earlier this month, everyone needs to be aware that shills are never paid by Microsoft directly. It’s like lobbying in the sense that there’s a big black/grey industry out there which runs these scams and thus absorbs liability.

Microsoft hires agencies to do this type of work. It recently hired an agency to work on its public image, paying it about $300,000,000 for the job. This means that the checks, or high-end laptops, or whatever form the compensation comes in (sometimes rewards, discounts or favours) arrives from a proxy, which makes it slightly — but not impossible — to know where it all comes from originally and whom it serves.

___
[1]

Mba-Uzoukwu wrote that Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows.

[2]

Microsoft Sweden was later found to have offered extra “marketing contributions” to its business partners to encourage them to vote for OOXML, according to e-mails seen by Computer Sweden.

[3]

According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a ‘no strings attached gifts’. This ‘reward’ for their hard work on covering tech in general is coincidentally right before the launch of Vista to consumers. To be clear, these weren’t loans, they were gifts, and they were top-of-the-line Acer Ferrari laptops. Microsoft blogger Long Zheng broke the silence over the source of the freebies.

[4]

A ROW IS BREWING between a bunch of bloggers who took cash from Microsoft marketing outfit and stodgy old media types who take their bribes in less obvious ways.

The row started on Friday when the ValleyWag revealed how some “star boggers” had taken some cash from Federated Media to repeat some Microsoft sloganeering in copy on their websites.

Michael Arrington tells all how his Techcrunch site became “people-ready”. Gigaom’s Om Malik talks about when a business becomes “people ready”. Others named and shamed include Paul Kedrosky and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat, as well as Fred Wilson, the blogger-investor. Ads with the Volish motto appear on the blogger’s site.

[5]

Mercury News writers Mike Antonucci and Dean Takahashi demo and review the new Halo 3, Microsoft’s much anticipated new gaming title. Nooch calls it “one of the biggest days in videogame history.” And the duo discuss the approximately $800 press kit that showed up in the mail for Dean – a giant, personalized duffel bag filled with Halo 3 schwag.

Ferrari laptop

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023



  2. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning



  3. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source



  4. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day



  5. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day



  6. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  7. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  8. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  9. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  10. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  11. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  12. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  13. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  14. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  15. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  16. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  17. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  18. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  19. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  20. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  21. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  22. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023



  23. Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

    Links for the day



  24. Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

    Links for the day



  25. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Hidden Communities and Exam Prep is Not Education

    Links for the day



  26. Links 03/06/2023: IBM Betraying LibreOffice Some More (After Laying off LibreOffice Developers)

    Links for the day



  27. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Bubble Woes and Zond Updates

    Links for the day



  28. Links 03/06/2023: Apache NetBeans 18 and ArcaOS 5.0.8

    Links for the day



  29. IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 02, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, June 02, 2023



  30. The Developing World Abandons Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux at All-Time Highs on Desktops/Laptops

    Microsoft, with 80 billion dollars in longterm debt and endless layoffs, is losing the monopolies; the media doesn’t mention this, but some publicly-accessible data helps demonstrate that


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts