Boing Boing's Undisclosed Paid Endorsements - Do They Violate FTC Guidelines?

Hey! What about the gifs!

I thought some of them were pretty good.

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The funny thing is he was responding to my use of the “wish list”, not the shopping cart.

His white knighting for a bunch of straw techno illiterates who regularly read BoingBoing and religiously buy everything it mentions is … as curious as it is relentless.

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Why it’s almost as if I knew that…

Everybody knows who Rob is affiliated with - our has been clearly disclosed that he works for Boing Boing.

My profile links to one of my websites, that in turns links to linkedin, which discloses my employers.

#But who does Skeptic work for? What it’s his (?) interest in all of this? What is the undisclosed agenda driving this train?

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What, you mean that both you and @beschizza are getting affiliate traffic from your posts, while @Skeptic is getting nothing? How sinister!

Full disclosure as part of the fUNRULY aFFILIATE pROGRAM: Michael is getting The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.

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I’ve been following this thread as it’s an interesting question (IMO) and I don’t think the answer is clear-cut. I don’t really want to address this specific issue (ultimately I’m siding with BB here though I’m not 100% enthusiastic about doing so) but the broader point that I believe Skeptic is drawing from - though we don’t necessarily reach the same conclusions.

BB has a certain tone. It’s likely the main reason most of us got hooked in the first place. It stems from something boingers have referred to frequently in these sorts of arguments (of which there have been many) - it’s the zine mentality, combined with personal blogging. There’s no overarching editorial voice, no article quotas or assignments or necessity to cover certain topics - boingers just post whatever they think is interesting, and skip the press releases and other crap many sites regurgitate as articles.

As a result, the audience views the site radically differently than say the Gizmodo-brand sites, or any other site. It’s very much like tumblr, if anything - a collection of random cool stuff posted by a variety of individuals doing it basically for their own entertainment.

This is where the dissonance comes from, because in truth BB is a money-making business (and by all appearances does quite well). I think this is great, because without the huge staff other sites have, they’ve managed to create something truly compelling and popular for a usually-overlooked audience (mutants), and without giving in to the pressure to bend to any specific audience (even mutants) or to editorialize that much - though anyone will certainly notice the bias (that I fully agree with) for freedom of expression, against totalitarianism and for human rights, for privacy and against Big Datamining and creepy monetization, etc. etc.

This is the BB brand, and the resultant trust that readers have developed over the years comes from that along with our admiration and respect for the individual boingers.

So, what do you honestly expect when BB or individual boingers do things that maybe not directly betray that trust, but which don’t instill confidence, either? I’m not just talking about this issue (and I’m glad Rob decided to do something to address it, after all the haranguing here, though as I said I side with BB in general intent here, dodgy VPN recommendation aside). Another recent example that got argued in the BBS is Cory’s click bait/misleading headlines and articles (I’m a fan and have a lot of respect for Cory but these really are a bit absurd sometimes).

This likely results from the precise reasons BB is great in the first place - in particular, lack of editorial oversight. I don’t want that to change, but individual boingers frequently don’t appear to take responsibility for their bigger mistakes (or they do address it but not fully), and that erodes trust.

I understand that the boingers usually take a different view on these issues than the complainants do, and I respect that, and most often agree with BB (though it’s not always clear at the start of the argument that I should). However, seemingly-automatic snarky dismissals (unless obviously warranted, which is definitely sometimes true) either from the boingers or the commentariat leave a bad taste. It seems from my perspective that the snark - always part of BB - has not necessarily increased that much in recent years, but it is deployed differently, and mostly towards criticism of BB, with less distinction between reasonable and unreasonable criticism. Mark’s google doc list of people who are disappointed in BB is an example (not sure if he still refers to that, if so I’ll probably be on it after this post).

You can say to me and others, “Well, go somewhere else, then!” - that’s really beside the point, and in my case (and a few others I know of), I already have. BB is still important to me and I’m not disappointed in it, I wear my Jackhammer Jill pin and t-shirts with pride, my tastes have just veered differently (TBH, I’ve mostly just withdrawn from the internet tap altogether for personal reasons and get almost everything from tumblr which is a lot more mindless generally). I’m still here in the BBS (occasionally) because the community surrounding BB is still largely to my taste, and IMO there’s absolutely none better anywhere.

Rob has pointed out in the past that us hard-core commentors are a very small part of the overall readership and our opinions do not necessarily matter that much from a business perspective, but as jlw points out in this very thread and has repeated and proved on previous occasions, BB does in fact take criticism and opinion seriously. So I think it’s healthy to raise these questions occasionally, especially as in this case when the answer seems obvious to the boingers at first even though it’s not that cut and dry.

I think raising an issue by asking a question is good, it’s non-confrontative if the question is genuinely inquisitive (and thus does not deserve automatic snark). But, it does also have to include “… and does it matter?” - which is what the real argument in this particular case boils down to.

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Can everyone just go to their corners for, like, half a minute.

@Skeptic, stop clicking on links from BB. It will make you happier. Just buy a tee shirt every once and a while and stay off Amazon, it works for me.
@beschizza, well, you said you’d put up a thing about affiliates, so, thanks.

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I think this topic now violates FTC Guidelines. For sanity.

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@KenatPopehat tweets about some of his incoming searches at times. You should post yours.

https://twitter.com/popehat/status/529447331016372224

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That’s a heartfelt post, Chris.

Surely, Skeptic and BWV812 are tapping into something important here. I base that on my data points of the length of the thread, the number of contributors, and my own seat-of-the-pants metric of [(how many times I’ve read it) > (my number of comments)]. This thread is gnawing at something, though I don’t think it’s been clearly articulated what that bone is.

Just as surely, BB hears that too. I’m not aware of another thread where there’ve been over 50 posts by BB staff - with them assiduously following, engaging. And the thread is still open.

It makes for an air of a certain uncertainty in the air.

If I’d hazard a guess in the general direction, I do believe this age of start-ups and flame-outs is important context. Communities form tightly around websites that move them, and all too often those communities get sold for a profit or in a firesale. See instagram. See upcoming. See delicious. See slashdot.

Or, they die away, see memepool, YTMND, or half a dozen sites I used to love and have forgotten. I worry mefi will be next.

I can’t say that’s why anyone else is in this thread, but it’s part of why I’m here. And for many, I’d wager it’s less about the fine-print of whatever the FTC sez and more about the guiding lights of mutants. For better or worse, this is our watering hole.

#notrueboinger

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Your frog, it is fiddlin’… This elephant approves.

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I think you need a hug… here ya go! Probably not as good as the snogging Bradly Cooper got from Betty White on the SNL special, but I’m sure it’ll do…

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“Oh no, that’s next door. It’s being-hit-on-the-head lessons in here.”

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Well, what you’ve articulated is pretty much why I was moved to comment, whereas I abstained from previous such arguments. I didn’t come up with all that on the fly just now, it’s been stewing for a while.

I read something about Lou Reed years ago, regarding his consistent drug use, to the effect of “he’s proven through his attitude, his actions - and his music - that we’re not going to hear about him being found dead of an overdose”. Well, it caught up with him eventually, but it was true. If we think of affiliate links and whatnot as an equivalent (work with me here), I think BB has proven to us that they won’t sell out and ruin a good thing as so many others have done (I haven’t looked at slashdot in years - user IDs are in, like, eight-digit territory now I think! was a time I felt like a newb with high-six-digits :wink: ).

But, “a certain uncertainty in the air” is a good way to put it.

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Great post! Its helping me to get my head around how I feel. I’ve read BB long enough to trust them not to do anything sketchy-- hell, I’ll click the links harder now knowing they’re making BB money, and it won’t affect my future clicking–but I guess I had a knee jerk, maybe naive, expectation that when there’s financial gain to be made in an opinion/editorial piece, it’s mentioned close to the link, and there was a weird bit of dissonance when I realized that wasn’t the case here. But you’re right, the real question is does it matter, and I can’t say that it does–it’s clear they are affiliate links for anyone taking 2 seconds to think about it. (I just never did, thus the “huh!” moment that led me to read this entire. freaking. thread.).

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If I had to lay some money down, I’d place it on the subscription model with “10 free articles per month” or the “complete this short survey for 2 days free access” add-on packs.

If there were micropayments, where we couldhad to pay $0.02 to read an article? pffft. That’s nothin’! Clicky-clicky-click-click-click!

And BB would finally rake in the dough so CD could stop having to lecture and write books and get back to collecting rare Libby’s Tiki-ware. JLW could get a decent van that doesn’t need repairs every other week, and Rob could finally medically transition to being a flesh-and-blood hobbit. Everybody wins!

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