Did BDA use fake forum accounts & blogs created to promote Blu-Ray - "Phase Hydra"? (1 Viewer)

[Bob Black]

You'd have to be pretty naive to not see that this scheme is indeed true, that they have indeed been told to participate in such viral marketing tactics, and that the insiders are now trying to quell the fires. Nothing that Sony does surpises me after the David Manning scheme. They stop at nothing with their lies, deceit, and propaganda!

 

[Ryan-G]

Meh,

It's par for the course with Sony. Not the first time, or the third time, they've been nailed doing this. Take the PSP thing someone above mentioned, not exactly a "Must win" market, but they shilled that too.

Sony does have alot riding on BR winning though, enough that I can see them going to very great lengths to insure it. When you stop to consider it, if BR were to lose, not only would they be hurt by the loss of BR revenues, but they'd also take an enourmous hit on the PS3. If BR loses they're stuck with a proprietary disc format with low production runs that'll cost them quite a bit of extra money, and they'll risk losing publishers because of the margins of replication.

I suspect HD-DVD's got a few shills running around as well, especially around Samsung's launch there were a number of questionable people hanging out.

Shills are fairly easy to spot, the general tactic is to either work in groups of 2-3 or for one person to work 2-3 accounts. One person bashes the format, one person allows themselves to be convinced after a significant pile of posts, and one establishes himself as a believer in the "Opposition" over a period of time and goes to great lengths to be a high-profile very knowledgable friend to as many as possible, then converts over on some piece of "Significant news" very publicly. The accounts generally are 3-6 months old, established in advance, with a few dozen random posts. Some may be 12 months old or so depending on how well planned the campaign was.

A fourth account is used when fervor dies down to ignite a flame war, generally created on the spot, and is as extremely obnoxious as possible, often posting in favor of the opposition to first create a psychological image of the opposition catering to bottom-dwelers, and to allow the real fans of the format they're paid to support to promote it for them so they don't profile themselves.

The tactics are pretty well established in stock forums, as are the mechanics of how it works. Generally, the pro's at it will make sure they're using several different ISP's so that they can't be IP tracked.

 

[RickER]

Hmmm...you know a lot. I got my eye on you.

 

[Jim_K]

 

[Tim Glover]

Welcome to the world of HD DVD Jim. . XA-2?

 

[Jim_K]

Soon Tim, very soon. but yes I've got my crosshairs on the XA2.

 

[Cees Alons]

An excellent choice, Jim. For several reasons.

Too bad I cannot go fully format independent yet myself, because the options for a BD-player (including the PS3 I had in mind) still aren't very attractive over here at the moment. (At least, not to me, one problem being: I cannot even be sure it will play all my current BDs, in particular the Region-A ones.)


Cees

 

[ScottHM]

Yet you're not quite sure that the BDA is doing the same. Interesting.

I'm confident that there are enough unpaid evangelists on the various boards for these marketing strategies to be unnecessary, yet I'm cynical enough to believe that such efforts are in full force, and I don't expect either side to admit to it.

---------------

 

[Chris S]

So what are these "paid members" suppose to do? Start more crazy format war posts favoring their format? I think we're pretty good at doing that ourselves... we don't really need any help.

 

[Ryan-G]

Depends on which side they're on.

For HD-DVD's side, they'd keep pushing HD-DVD as hard as possible, doing their best to flame opposition out of existance through humiliation tactics, long enough to keep things ambiguous. HD-DVD's only hope is that things stay ambiguous enough that one or more BR studios goes neutral. Further, their goal would be to find fault with any public figure pushing BR, such as TheDigitalBits, casting insinuations about the person rather than discussing the posts. "Bill's being paid by BR to pimp them!" would be the kind of thing they'd use.

For BR's side, it'd be to directly oppose HD-DVD fans as much as possible, and to trumpet the sales totals whenever possible. BR's people would trumpet the PS3's sales, while ignoring the 360 add-on sales or dismissing them out of hand. They'd latch onto the "Children of Men" issue and act like it's a plague for all discs.

Both sides will resort to tactics I mentioned above, high-profile "Epiphanies" and such.

One sides goal is to keep things ambiguous, the other's is to crush resistance, both to use psychology.

Crazy format war posts are also in-line with both sides, when there's no major discussion, posting something inflamatory is probable.

It's a carefully calculated game to psychologically affect the educated consumers into doubting, and throwing the lurkers/passer-bys into confusion or dellusion.

 

[Edwin-S]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. As far as I'm concerned both sides are probably using tactics similar to what has been described in this thread. After all, there is a format war going on and in order to win a war, even one as minor as this one, both sides will use whatever tactics they see fit: including dirty tricks campaigns. That being said, neither side has admitted to the use of such tactics and that lack of admission was what the complaint in my original post was about. The starter of this thread, who is firmly in the HD DVD camp, worded his original thread title to indicate that the BDA had confirmed the existence of a dirty tricks campaign. However, the actual thread contained no such admission at all. That is why the thread title was subsequently modified to its present, more accurate, form.

On my part, I'm not an evangelist for either format since I now have both of them. I think Blu-ray has some longer term advantages; however, I wouldn't have a problem with an HD DVD win or even with co-existence. Although, considering past experiences, I see co-existence being the least likely of the three scenarios.

There is one thing I have noticed from reading some of the latest posts on this board. The constituency and attitudes on this board seem to have gone through some major changes since I originally signed up.

 

[Jim_K]

Yeah Cees, If you lived in the U.S. picking up a PS3 should be a no-brainer. It's an excellent piece of equipment and as close to a future proof BD player as you can get.

Given BD region coding I can understand your reluctance. Since the HD-DVD supporting studios don't seem to have a problem with the lack of regional coding it was a bit silly for the BDA to adopt it unless one or more of the supporting studios insisted upon it. Unfortunate and a mistake I think.

Anyhow for me, format free is the way to go. Instead of getting caught up in all of this silliness, now I can sit back relax and watch the insanity from afar.

 

[Tim Glover]

Humiliation tactics. Surely, you are joking here, but I didn't see a smiley afterward so I guess not.

Why can't people just support their format of choice without trying to belittle the other guy? Digs here, sound bites there. It's all kind of stupid and truthfully when I see them it just makes that person look rather dumb, not the format.

 

[Ryan-G]

You misunderstand me I think,

The shills use humiliation tactics. For example, a shill when cornerd by someone with equal or greater knowledge won't try to provide basis for their arguements, or debunk the basis of their opposing debater, they'll attack the poster themselves. Examples would be...

A cornered BR advocate finding a way to make the opponents support of HD-DVD based in the opponents desire to pirate.

A cornered HD-DVD advocate finding a way to make the BR supporters arguements based upon his desire for PS3 to succeed.

Searching through the person's post history and misrepresenting it as a bias, or even calling that person a shill knowing it'll cast doubt on their arguements.

Taking half-quotes out of a person's arguements so that it alters what he meant, ala tabloid soundbytes.

The goal is to minimze the poster in the other readers eyes, or redirect the discussion away from the corner they're painted into, with the best outcome being their target feeling completely alienated.

I'm not talking about average-poster, I'm talking about paid-shill. They're actually very easy to spot once you know the pattern, especially if they have some kind of posting flaw like the inability to spell a certain word, or a unusual grammar structure.

Too many years, and several thousands of dollars, I lost learning how shills work on stock boards. I'll never forget NCTI, my first stock ever, shills got me good.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

You guys don't think Amir from MS hasn't spread his fair share of FUD? You always have to take what these insiders say with a fair bit of skepticism.

One thing about paidgeek is that he's open to suggestions and takes what we have to say seriously. That does mean some kudos to Sony.

"Project Hydra" or whatever is nothing new. Companies do this all the time now. It doesn't make it right, but it shouldn't be a shock to anyone with half a brain.

Dan

 

[Rachael B]

Didn't Sony make a Quail-ya 007 TV...? Actually, it sounds like Sony's handy work to me.....not that I care. I'm on AVS quite a bit and I'm sick of viral marketers for both war mongering sides. Most of 'em are a bit too transparent to miss.

 

[Tim Glover]

Hydragate.

 

[Chris S]

Well my point was mostly in jest but you make some very good observations. These are exactly the same tactics I've seen on other boards and not just on AVS (which is nearly unreadable at times).

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I dunno, frankly I'd trust what Amir, posting under his own name and as a highly identifiable individual, has to say over an anonymous Sony employee going under the name "paidgeek."

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Amir has most certainly spun FUD on many occasions. Just before a slew of 50GB BD releases were *shipped* he was still suggesting that 50gb replication was a near impossibility and was doubtful to reach real production status within a year, if ever. The whole time he had real and accurate information about the progress of dual-layer replication, but just chose to keep promoting the negative spin as long as he could to try to defray BD's momentum.

I don't mind an agenda as long as it stays within the bounds of reasonable accuracy. Suggesting that HD DVD hardware might have an advantage because of required support for Dolby TrueHD or internet connectivity is an example of agenda-spin that's at least truthful. But Amir has time and time again spun his agenda outside the bounds of what's "reasonably accurate" and attempted to create a distorted perspective to try to promote his MS-sanctioned format.

Paidgeek seems to do a much better job of staying inside the lines of accuracy, and is much less of a "BD promoter" than just an insider who shares information when he has it to offer.